Waitrose, a grocery retailer, has partnered with Blippar, makers of a powerful augmented reality platform of the same name, to launch a new campaign that aims to make purchasing groceries online more intuitive. Blippar is becoming a popular tool for retailers and other businesses because it allows them to engage consumers in a more dynamic manner by transforming static advertisements and printed materials into immersive 3D, virtual reality experiences. Waitrose recently launched a new 90-second commercial. Viewers with the Blippar mobile app were able to unlock exclusive content embedded within the commercial.
The content contained in the commercial included recipes befitting the holiday season as well as exclusive interviews with some world renowned chefs. Waitrose will be developing a way for the technology to make shopping online more engaging, hoping to appeal to the growing number of consumers making purchases from their mobile devices as opposed to their PCs. Other retailers, such as Britain’s Tesco, have adopted the technology for similar campaigns.
Ambrish Mitra, CEO of Blippar, believes that augmented reality is much more than just a novelty technology. Mitra claims that consumers are downloading the Blippar mobile app at a rampant pace and that many of them use the app to interact with AR advertisements more than once. Augmented reality certainly seems to be finding favor with consumers, especially those enamored with mobile technology.
