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Our social media swami Kris Bradley and I saw a nice demonstration of augmented reality a few weeks back that really got my gears turning.   By definition, augmented reality is "a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.  As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality."

You don't hear a ton about augmented reality, but it definitely bears some attention as the potential is there...POSSIBLY...to revitalize print advertising because augmented reality actually uses image recognition through a mobile device to allow you to interact with whatever picture or advertisement you're looking at.

It's pretty cool to see and there IS potential...but is there ENOUGH potential that YOU should be considering it? 

Sounds almost surreal, huh?    (funny voice)  "Should you be considering augmented reality as a part of your marketing mix?"

That depends on how much print advertising figures into your budget already, I believe, but to get a better understanding of both the problem and the potential, let's look at the facts about print media.

We're going to focus mostly on the decline of newspaper readership and sales, as that's a great barometer for what has happened with other print media and the immediacy - or lack thereof - of newspapers is a strong discussion point.

First of all, it's no secret that newpaper sales have been dropping for years...since the advent of the Internet age, newspaper sales have dropped consistently 2% per year with that number increasing in recent years.  Possibly the worst year was 2008 when, along with the decline in overall sales, newspaper ad revenues overall dropped 23%!    For all incense and porpoises a quarter of all ad revenues LOST!  And they're not coming back.

How bad has it been for newspapers?   Well, right here in Lancaster Pennsylvania we used to have the Intelligencer Journal as the morning paper and the Lancaster New Era as the afternoon paper...all under the same ownership.      In 2009, the Lancaster New Era merged with Intelligencer Journal and became Lancaster's lone daily newspaper...continuing under the name "Intelligencer Journal."        A little trivia for you...until last year when the paper was renamed and rebranded "LNP," the Intelligencer Journal was the oldest continuous newspaper in the USA that had not changed its name.     Thanks to wikipedia for that little nugget and for some of these stats I'm spewing.

Anyway, the two papers merged simply because declining revenues made it necessary.   In October of last year, the name was changed to "LNP" and the design is now more of a tabloid look.

That's just Lancaster...The New York Times, the Boston Globe...their employees had to make great concessions so they could stay in business...same with the San Francisco Chornicle.  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped print altogether and is now just Internet-based.          How bad has it really gotten?   The Newspaper Revitalization Act was introduced in March 2009 and is still being debated in Congress as a possible solution for newspapers.   It would allow newspaper companies to restructure as non-profits with the accompanying tax breaks.   This would allow be like NPR, PBS and myriad public broadcasting companies...but they would be barred from political endorsements.    Seems like that would be okay, as politicians are also relying less on print media to exercise their influence.  

It's sad to see, but newspapers and magazines are basically going the same route as the printed YellowPages or YellowBook...you know, that big doorstop that's delivered every year wrapped in protective plastic on your doorstep.  These businesses weren't taking the Internet seriously enough in the early 2000's and by the time they DID, there were already too many other Internet-based resources where people could get the same information...WhitePages, SuperPages, Google Places, Yahoo Local.   Those names had earned trust with the Internet community and now the PRINT media was the outsider.  Same with newspapers...by the time the local newspapers got on the Internet bandwagon, Internet "surfers"  (haha...when was the last time you heard THAT term used)   Internet "surfers" had already decided that they trust CNN.com, ABC.com, USAToday.com and other print resources that were ahead of the curve and beat them to the punch.

So...with all of this negative factual information...why on earth would anyone be advertising in newspapers and magazines anymore?

Truth is, while readership has declined there STILL IS readership and there are STILL businesses who see nice returns from print media.  Those returns are diminishing, though, and this concept of Augmented Reality brings to the fore some true potential because it ALLOWS THE READER TO INTERACT WITH THE PRINT MEDIA THROUGH A TABLET, IPAD OR OTHER MOBILE DEVICE.

Yep...it's pretty cool.  The demonstration I saw was with school materials...you know, those educational posters you see in the hallways of most schools and different printed materials kids are given?   Let's say your 8th grader is walking through the hall at their school and they see a poster on the wall near their locker promoting healthy eating habits.   If your 8th grader holds up their mobile device...say their iPad...if they hold up their iPad and view the healthy eating poster through their iPad, the device recognizes the poster image through an app and presents several options on the iPad screen that your child can then interact with using the touchscreen.   The options could be suggestions for creating better balanced meals or when you should eat or healthy snack suggestions....the list goes on.   But the bottom line is...the child is no longer just looking at a poster on the wall.   They can now be more engaged and...potentially...more likely to learn and more likely to benefit from the information the poster has to offer.   Especially since now the poster offers information beyond what's printed.

Personally, I think it's great for kids because of this.  I can see a market for it in this environment...but what about adults?   Would this same concept work on print ads...and even billboards?   That's kind of a scary thought.  I'll give your minds a break and we'll talk about the augmented reality pros and cons in print advertising when we come back...

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We're back on the MIND Your Business podcast and we're talking augmented reality.   This isn't really me, it's Milli Vanilli.

But I digress.

So we touched on how this augmented reality thang can be beneficial in an educational environment with kids, but what about adults and print advertising?

Think about this for a moment.  Let's say you're looking in a Food and Wine magazine and you see an advertisement for a winery in your area or in an area you intend to visit.  The ad piques your interest, so you get out your smartphone, aim the camera lens at the ad and your smartphone recognizes the image.  Upon recognizing the image, your smartphone then generates on-screen images you can interact with by the touch screen.  Think of those on-screen images like navigation choices on a website.  You could touch one image to get a menu of their selection of wines, you could touch another to learn the difference between their cabernet and their merlot and so-on.

Instead of merely viewing a two-dimensional image on a printed page, you're now viewing it through your device and through image recognition your device is allowing you to interact with the ad and find out more about that business right on the spot!   Right there in the moment.  The immediacy of it is definitely a plus because you can learn more about the business IMMEDIATELY without having to go to your laptop, PC or MAC and do a search.  The level of engagement is enticing, as well, because you can have numerous on-screen images to interact with and learn more.

On the surface, this sounds good and potential is there.  However, QR codes were the "wave of the future" just a couple of years back and NOW where are they?   They didn't pan out quite like what was expected, to say the least.

Engagement potential is there, but I believe right now there are too many cons with Augmented Reality in printed ads.  Not to say it can't be improved, but right on the surface two things jump out.

1)  Most print ads direct people to your business website anyway and they can interact with your actual website...so why would they want to interact with a print ad?   Again, you could argue that you're capitalizing on immediacy and that people will pull out their smartphone to interact with your ad IN THE MOMENT.  However, people are mostly conditioned now to either go to your website on their computer or look it up on their smartphone as mobile search is easy.

2)  The mobile device has to remain pointed at the printed material in order for the interactive elements to continue showing up on the touch screen.   This really cuts into engagement time because...I don't know about you...but I really don't want to be stuck aiming my mobile device at a print ad for too terribly long.   This alone raises the question of just how much interactive material it would make sense to provide.   The learning curve of something like this for a business could be quite expensive.

This concept could actually work with billboards, as well, although that opens up a pandora's box of potential problems regarding sensible use of your mobile device...friends don't let friends augment and drive.

The concept could spread to include advertisements on park benches, those obnoxious ads on the sides of buses, ads in busses and subways, really any printed advertisements.   We even saw a demonstration of viewing an actual website through the mobile app and interacting, which seemed wayyyy too gratuitous.  Kinda like looking at a picture of a picture.

There are a lot of print media companies still in business and still doing well.  The need for some kind of technological interaction with print media is definitely there and Augmented Reality is a step in the right direction, but I believe its appeal is definitely limited to more educational realms and not so much with advertising as today's consumers really are conditioned to search online for a given website after viewing the printed material or seeing a TV commercial, billboard, etc.

Will this concept evolve to revitalize print advertising?  We'll see...it definitely bridges a gap, but the main hurdle to overcome is that this use of the technology is coming along late in the marketing game...like the Yellow pages example.  Is it too late?   If you want to see a nice video presentation of this, there's a nice one on a-r-i-n-e-d-dot-org.  That's augmented reality in education...

And now, as promised, I've got another blog post idea for you...one that is working GREAT for some of our clients who are doing it.   It's really simple, too...Have a member of your staff relate their favorite interaction they have had with a client...their coolest memory of customer service.   And none of this stoic, ambiguous stuff.   I recently had a client whose staff member related a story where he said "It was a Saturday and I was relaxing and I got a call from a client who needed help with a piece of equipment that wasn't working and they needed it for a work project THAT NIGHT.  I helped them fix it over the phone.   They were happy because their equipment was fixed and working...I was happy because I didn't have to go in to work."

I think we all have had moments where we can relate and that's what this is all about.   Share those relatable stories with your visitors.



Thank you for tuning into this week's MIND Your Business podcast, presented by the minds at MIND Development and Design...and our good friends over at Fresh Roasted Hosting...a good homegrown PA company!    Send us your questions on Facebook, on our Ask A Question page on the website or email us...info@minddnd.com.   We'll see you next week!



Make sure to do a post on the Pizza Delivery Guy thang for this coming Tuesday!  Include embedded YouTube video with "R-rated language that half of you use in frustration when the kids aren't around."