Gimmick or Gee-Whiz: Esquire Augments Reality

A new article by Steve Smith. Found it interesting.

For those looking for the next bright, shiny object to catch their short attention span, augmented reality is it this season. “AR” merges digital/virtual data with the physical world by layering the two together on a computer or mobile display. When a webcam or cell phone can recognize a designated physical object, the view of the object on screen will be “augmented” with a movable 3D rendering, videos or any other kind of digital data overlay.

In their never-ending hunt for ways to reenergize the print environment (especially to the dwindling advertiser pool), magazines are incorporating AR tricks into their pages this year. Last summer, Popular Science offered readers a cover that, when held up to a PC webcam and running the appropriate software, would superimpose computer-rendered images on their view of the cover.

This basic AR technique is being used more robustly in the December issue of Esquire, in which the Robert Downey Jr. cover and about half a dozen interior pages will use the technique. According to an AP report on the issue, when held up to a webcam, the cover will show Downey popping out from the page to do some improv antics. Two Lexus auto ads will include AR, and their sponsorship is helping to finance the project. Regular Esquire features like a fashion spread and “Funny Jokes From a Beautiful Woman” will activate clever video accompaniments. Rotating the fashion spread, for instance, makes the models change seasonal garb or suffer a snowball pelting.

The current state of print-to-Web AR techniques suffers the usual weaknesses of blending physical and digital realms. Magazine readers need to be near their laptop or PC, armed with a webcam and the right intermediary software/Web site that recognizes the captured image. Are people browsing a magazine going to be motivated to pull over the laptop or carry their magazine over to the nearest PC to make this bridge? Experience with the ill-fated CueCat hand scanner of the early 2000s suggests that publishers are more enamored of making this bridge than are their readers. Without compelling content to lure the user to the effect, there is little reason for them to make the effort.

Which is not to say that AR has no future with magazines. The cell phone is the obvious answer to the problems that have hampered similar print-to-digital connections in the past. Using a cell phone camera with the right software to activate a print AR experience would be a more likely reflex than firing up the PC webcam. Then again, mobile platforms also require some kind of easy and ubiquitous software bridge that makes the AR connection possible. Magazine publishers have had a hard enough time getting their users to scan ad pages and 2D bar codes with their mobile devices.

The print-to-digital connection continues to fascinate publishers because of its potential appeal for advertisers. But for consumers, unless and until the publisher provides a real reason to bother activating these links, AR, mobile scan codes and the like will continue to offer a bridge to nowhere.