Eye on AR - Fall 2022
A blog post dedicated to the people who know how to make communication with friends and family less boring! Our AR team has been busy this quarter working on creating new, innovative experiences for brands and their audiences. Keep reading to learn more about the *many* exciting projects they have been working on.
Lens List Fashion Month
Digital AR marketing company Lenslist held another challenge and our AR team just had to participate! We felt as though the Snapchat x Lenslist AR Fashion Month Challenge would be a perfect opportunity to experiment with Lens Studios’ newest features and to design a lens for the fashion/makeup market—a market where AR and its technologies are rapidly transforming the ways companies engage with customers.
The Snapchat x Lenslist AR Fashion Month Challenge called upon creators to “design original fashion and beauty lenses to help [the] AR community get dressed, made-up, and ready for the most stylish events of the year” (Lenslist).
Our lens, Elemental Euphoria, captures the beauty of nature with a fashion twist. The AR team designed three unique lenses inspired by the elements: earth, fire, and water. Each one contains wearable jewelry and makeup that incorporate custom 3D assets and 2D motion graphics. For example, for the earth, emerald jewels were used; for fire, gold, and designs that looked like the sun’s rays; for water, rain clouds, and other images associated with water.
The Elemental Euphoria Lens is a try-on lens that takes advantage of Lens Studios’ newest technologies including voice activation. When users speak, the lens will change to a different element. Try out “Elemental Euphoria” by clicking here, and congratulations to all the creators who participated in this contest!
Branded Effects for Instagram
Our AR team loves Instagram as much as Snapchat and TikTok! This September we designed and published 2 branded effects for Instagram Camera.
Have you ever wondered what tool you are, or what Mr. Men, Little Miss character you are? These two simple randomizer lenses we created for Snap-on and Mr. Men Little Miss allow users to engage with their favorite brands in a fun, interactive ways. Click the links below to test out the effects and share your results with us @baretreemedia.
Vote for Change
November 08, 2022 marked midterm elections in the United States. This Instagram camera effect encourages not just our fans but everyone to get out and vote. To vote for a change, every voice matters. Find our “Vote for a Change” filter on Instagram Camera or on our effects page.
Ugly Sweater
For National Ugly Sweater day on December 17, our AR team created a voice-activated, interactive try-on lens featuring four different ugly sweaters designed by BTM team members. We even created a BTM-themed sweater that features our company colors. Our team loved getting to create assets unique and personal to them.
Interested in something unique for your brand? Reach out to our team!
Bare Tree Media is a full-service creative studio and digital publisher creating super slick, mobile-facing content! We would love to bring your brand’s ideas to life through digital animation and AR. Check out our Augmented Reality page to see branded experiences we created for TikTok, Snapchat, & Instagram.
Eye on AR - Summer 2022
Our AR team has been busy this quarter working on creating new, innovative experiences for brands and their audiences. Keep reading to learn more about the *many* exciting projects they have been working on.
Lens List Snapchat Selection
Lens List wanted to join the Smurfs for a game of soccer! Our hyper-casual gamified lens, “Smurf Soccer,” was featured on Lens List’s June Snapchat Selection for its complexity and user-friendliness. It’s been an honor to be featured alongside so many other talented AR designers and studios. See Lens List’s Instagram for the feature post and try our “Smurf Soccer” Lens by clicking the snapcode!
This is not the first AR experience we created for the Smurfs. We also designed a gamified lens where users can help the Smurfs keep our beaches clean. This effect was created for the Smurfs’ larger sustainability campaign.
Baller Lenses
Bleed Green or The Dubs? Our AR designer, Wayne, created Celtics and Warriors “Final Spinner” Lenses for Snapchat and TikTok. Users were able to embrace their inner Tatum & Curry and support their favorite team during the NBA Finals. The Celtics and Warriors lenses had over 794,000 views and 630,000 views respectively on Snapchat.
As a Boston-based studio, we may be a bit biased, but we would like to offer up a congratulations to both teams on all their hard work and effort throughout the season. The 2022 NBA season has ended but show your support to two all-star teams next season by following us on TikTok!
Summer Fun
What better way to welcome Summer than with an AR experience? Pool float, palm tree, and ocean designs transport users to a place of tropical paradise and challenge them to put their beach ball volleyball skills to the test.
Using full-body tracking, users can hit a beach ball into the air. The lens also has multi-user capabilities, meaning you can play with your friends in the same frame. Try our Summer Beach Party Lens by clicking here.
Interested in something unique for your brand? Reach out to our team!
Bare Tree Media is a full-service creative studio and digital publisher creating super slick, mobile-facing content! We would love to bring your brand’s ideas to life through digital animation and AR. Check out our Augmented Reality page to see branded experiences we created for TikTok, Snapchat, & Instagram.
Spring 2022 Newsletter
In this issue of our newsletter, we will be recapping all the creative content we made and shared throughout the spring. As always, we would like to thank our clients and business partners for their endless support and flexibility, and we look forward to collaborating with them on new projects this summer.
Quidd Partnerships
In case you missed it on our socials, we are beyond excited to officially announce our partnership with Quidd, the leading digital collectible marketplace. Bare Tree Media is working with Quidd to launch digital collectibles to fans. Upcoming collaborations will feature a variety of popular licensed brands. Previously, Bare Tree Media and Quidd partnered to release Smurfs-themed content and within the first two hours of launching, the series sold out and sales exceeded $100,000. More details announced at: https://bit.ly/
“Given the monumental success [of our first launch on Quidd], we are scheduling monthly product releases through year-end on the Quidd platform and invite brands to join us…by working with Bare Tree Media, brands can offer non-NFT digital collectibles to fans to be bought on the primary market and sold on the secondary market within Quidd…” — Robert Ferrari, president of Bare Tree Media
PAX East Conference & Licensing Expo
Members of our team had a chance to attend the PAX East Gaming conference in Boston, MA for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Our team enjoyed checking out the latest in all things gaming, including many indie games created by local game studios. We also finalized a partnership with an amazing global gaming company. We look forward to announcing the details of the partnership soon…so stay tuned!
According to their website, the Las Vegas Licensing Expo “has connected the world’s most influential…brand owners and agents with consumer goods manufacturers, licensees, and retailers.” Thousands of licensing industry professionals flew to Las Vegas May 23rd-26th to build partnerships, plan channel releases, and expose themselves to some of the newest brands available to the licensing world—and the BTM team was no exception!
Our studio representatives had the opportunity to meet with our valued licensors and discuss brand and product strategies for 2022 and 2023. We held 50+ meetings over three days with companies, including but not limited to, Sanrio (Hello Kitty), Mr. Men Little Miss, Hasbro, Care Bears, the Smurfs, and Pokemon.
“For me, this was the first meeting with a lot of our licensing partners in person due to COVID. I had the opportunity to network and gained more insight into the future of licensing in general. I was invited to a ‘Women in Toys’ breakfast and attended a character parade, featuring famous characters from Teletubbies, Squishmallows, etc. Overall, this experience was great and informative, despite it being at a limited capacity. The free swag was great too!” — Josie Martin, licensing coordinator at Bare Tree Media
Our AR team collaborated with the Smurfs to unveil a Snapchat Lens featured at the Licensing Expo. This hyper-casual gamified lens uses real-time 3D simulations and collision detection to bring users a fun, user-friendly AR experience. This lens also contains a custom link to a Smurfs sticker pack, available for iMessage, that has previously been promoted on our socials. Brands went crazy over the demo and requested our team to create AR experiences for them. Click here to try it out.
ARL Pet Prom & Adopt Don't Shop
Just because Earth Day is in April does not mean we can’t celebrate our planet and the beautiful things it contains all year round. May is National Pet Month and April is National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day. Bare Tree Media wanted to take the time to encourage our audience to support pets of all kinds.
In keeping with our mission of supporting animal welfare, we partnered with the Animal Rescue League of Boston and designed custom GIFS to promote their “Pet Prom.” The ARL Pet Prom highlights animals looking for their own fairytale happy endings. In addition, our AR team designed an Instagram Camera effect for the event that you can use on your own adopted pet.
Congratulations to the winners, Zilla and Fern, and be sure to check out these GIFs on the ARL’s official GIPHY page.
We created an official GIPHY page for the City of Boston Animal Care and Control Shelter and designed custom GIFS to promote pet adoption and care. Adopting from shelters provides all types of deserving pets with a safe and loving home. Our design intern, Wendy, created a special animated sticker pack for the occasion. Check them out and use them for yourself!
In addition, one of our AR designers, Wayne, created a lens you can use on your own adopted pet! This lens uses machine learning to detect the faces of dogs and cats—even hamsters and then applies the animations. We were so thrilled to see many of our Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok users try this lens.
Tiny Headed Kingdom Roll-out
Say hello to your favorite people with a PIF (a Pip GIF)! This month, Bare Tree Media collaborated with Tiny Headed Kingdom to release GIFs of everyone’s favorite tiny headed animals. Stay tuned for the release of more GIFs this June by checking out our GIPHY page.
#StandWithUkraine
We at Bare Tree Media, like so many around the world, are shocked and saddened by the sudden war that erupted in Ukraine. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected, and though we hope for peace to come quickly, we must be part of the solution.
Join us in showing solidarity with the Ukrainian people by sharing and donating to hospitals and other humanitarian efforts, including this one set up by our friends at Geeks for Less, who have strong Ukrainian roots. Donate here.
Eye on AR
Our AR, Design, and Social Media teams worked together to launch multiple virtual experiences across various platforms just in time for festival season! We designed 4 TikTok effects using Effect House and launched them the weekend of Coachella:
Pick one that encapsulates your festival weekend mood and share it while you jam out with your friends!
We are so excited to announce that Effect House is now available for everyone to use on TikTok. We look forward to seeing brands and creators flex their creative muscles in the world of AR. To see what you can create using Effect House, check out the effects we have made on our TikTok profile @baretreemedia.
Bare Tree Media and TikTok Expand AR Partnership
Boston, MA — September 3, 2020 — Bare Tree Media, a leader in the design and creation of branded augmented reality (AR) experiences, has expanded its partnership with TikTok. The two companies will work together under the company’s recently announced TikTok for Business Marketing Partner Program to connect advertisers with trusted creative and technology providers who can help scale success on the TikTok platform.
“With the launch of the TikTok For Business Marketing Partner Program, we’re building new opportunities for marketers to be creative storytellers and meaningfully engage with the TikTok community. We’re thrilled to collaborate with some of the most strategic and trusted leaders in the advertising industry and continue giving marketers access to more tools to successfully create, measure, and optimize ad campaigns on TikTok. We can’t wait to collaborate with partners to bring a creative and joyful experience to our brand partners and the broader TikTok community.” — Melissa Yang, Head of Ecosystem Partnerships, Global Business Solutions at TikTok
Bare Tree Media will be creating branded 2D and 3D AR effects for clients of TikTok, as well as introducing new clients to the TikTok platform.
“Bare Tree Media has been strongly positioned to leverage its leadership position of helping brands engage consumers through creative and interactive experiences. We are excited to broaden our partnership with TikTok and to bring our clients added value through marketing opportunities within the TikTok platform.” — Robert Ferrari, President of Bare Tree Media
About Bare Tree Media
As a pioneer in the digital creative and technology sector, Bare Tree Media enables brands to reach, engage, and entertain consumers through the creation and digital publishing of branded emojis, messaging stickers, GIFs, digital collectibles, metaverse virtual goods, and augmented reality experiences within popular messaging platforms. Interested brands can learn more at www.baretreemedia.com or contact Bare Tree Media at info@baretreemedia.com.
About TikTok
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Their mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok has global offices including Los Angeles, Mountain View, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, please visit www.tiktok.com.
Bare Tree Media Partners with TikTok to Bring AR to Brands
Boston, MA — June 25, 2020 — Bare Tree Media has been selected by TikTok as a preferred AR (Augmented Reality) design agency partner. As part of the TikTok Branded Effects Partner Program, Bare Tree Media will be assigned to strategize and design TikTok AR effects for brand campaigns.
“With the digital landscape always evolving, we are consistently investing in our interactive competencies such as augmented reality. We are honored to be selected into this partnership to create branded AR experiences to engage audiences within the popular TikTok platform.” — Robert Ferrari, President of Bare Tree Media
Through TikTok’s technology and Bare Tree Media’s in-depth expertise in 2D and 3D AR design, this partnership will help to scale creativity and production of AR effects for brands. This partnership builds on TikTok’s newly launched Branded Scan, which activates certain visual effects after recognizing a flat image as a branded product.
“Branded Effects give brands the opportunity to interact with TikTok users in a way that’s engaging and fun. We’re thrilled to partner with the most creative leaders in 2D and 3D development to bring this playful, immersive experience to our brand partners and the broader TikTok community.” — Melissa Yang, Head of Ecosystem Partnerships, Global Business Solutions at TikTok
About Bare Tree Media
As a pioneer in the digital creative and technology sector, Bare Tree Media enables brands to reach, engage, and entertain consumers through the creation and digital publishing of branded emojis, messaging stickers, GIFs, digital collectibles, metaverse virtual goods, and augmented reality experiences within popular messaging platforms. Interested brands can learn more at www.baretreemedia.com or contact Bare Tree Media at info@baretreemedia.com.
About TikTok
TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Their mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. TikTok has global offices including Los Angeles, Mountain View, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo. For more information, please visit www.tiktok.com.
The Best of Snap Summit 2020
Like most recent events, this year’s Snapchat Summit was adapted virtually as opposed to existing in a physical space; it might seem like a no-brainer for a company whose expertise is in the digital realm—but if anything, this year’s summit has proven Snapchat’s ambition of bridging the gap between between augmented reality, and reality.
If the theme of Snapchat up until now has been “show, don’t tell” the mantra they’ve adopted moving forward seems to be “experience, don’t show”. What this means for brands is that Snapchat has uniquely positioned itself to allow artists & studios to create unique, branded AR experiences that transcend the digital sphere.
Below I’ve highlighted the features that I’m most excited about, as well as how they can be utilized to elevate users’ AR experiences.
Local Lenses:
These dynamic lenses use real-life locations (whole areas or specific buildings) to create a unified AR experience that different Snapchatters can share, as long as they’re in the same physical space—the first of its kind. In the example above, multiple people are creating a mural of different colors on one shared space using multiple phones. This added expertiental element creates a unified experience that exists wholly online, but that facilitates physical community. This is the first best of both worlds experience.
Photo courtesy of Snapchat.
Snap Scan & Marker Lenses:
Scan Partners is a powerful tool for brands. It allows the camera to recognize an item and then attaches it to a specific lens. The examples Snapchat used were a plant-identifer that, when clicked, would provide information on how to care for that plant (including links to buy those items). But they can also be utilized by luxury brands in order to create beautiful AR experiences in the physical world, once again blending the 2. Louis Vuitton recently added their logo as a marker lens, which means that when their logo is scanned in real life in Snapchat, a virtual door to their latest showroom opens highlighting classic and current collections in a virtual showroom. Too-Faced marked their 'Born This Way' product packaging—so when scanned, users can try it on virtually. Marker lenses elimiate the need to advertise via Snapcode, as well—the product is the Snapcode.
Photo courtesy of Snapchat.
SnapML:
The developer tool now features SnapM (or Snapchat Machine Learning), which lets developers bring their own machine-learning models to power Snap lenses, making what is possible to create limited only to the imagination. This allows for the creation of lenses that were previously impossible (such as the Van Gogh filter below, created by Nicholas Dominici) that would benefit anything from a new movie or video game with a singular aesthetic, to a museum wanting to highlight a current exhibition.
Additionally, this allows the creation of extremely accurate tracking of faces, gestures, feet, and even landmarks such as buildings. Below, you can see the practical application that Wannaby has used: they created a try-it-on filter that lets users see their newest shoe in a variety of colors (yes, that shoe is AR, not real).
In short, SnapML has destroyed many creative boundaries that previously existed—the new “brand experience” is limited (mostly) by what you can imagine vs by technology, as used to be the case.
Photo courtesy of Snapchat.
Places:
Snapchat is making it easier than ever to integrate call-to-actions with their app and lenses. One example of this is “Places”, which would lead to an outside-Snap call to action such as ordering a physical product online, whether it’s that new lipstick or food from their favorite delivery spot! This would be especially crucial for smaller businesses that need to receive local support.
Photo courtesy of Snapchat.
Integration SnapKits:
If your brand has an existing app, Snapchat will now let you integrate their technology with it in order to create a new layer of interaction with your fans. This is more abstract in thought, but can be applicable to any number of brands across any discipline—it’s an equally powerful tool both for those brands within the entertainment industry, and outside of it. Rally Road is an app that is meant for classic car investments, but has integrated Snapchat’s CreativeKit to let users purchase shares in rare items and share them with their friends in a unique AR environment. Atom movie tickets has also utilized this to let its users browse movies, purchase tickets, and choose seats together in one easy experience. There are numerous types of kits available, each with their own unique perks (AdKit, which makes monetizing apps easy with SnapAds, CreativeKit, which allows apps to bring real-time data into Snapchat, and CameraKit, which brings the power os Snapchat camera to your apps).
Photo courtesy of Snapchat.
Where Do I Start?
If you're interested leveraging Snapchat for Any of the above uses, a qualified creative studio is your best bet, since we know the ins-and-outs of not only best creative practices to create an attractive filter, but can also help determine which strategy is the way to go when the options can seem endless and equally appealing (especially after this year's summit).
We here at Bare Tree Media would love to collaborate with any artist, strategist, or brand who's just as pumped about these new Snapchat features as we are! You can take a look to see the lenses we've already created.
How to Bring Some Fun to Your Video Calls
How to Bring Some Fun to Your Video Calls
As we adjust to a new normal, video conference calls have become the number one way to get some quality face time with co-workers, clients and loved ones. If you’ve been like us, you’ve been spending a majority of the time in these calls and want to break up the monotony with a bit fun! Using Snapchat’s desktop app Snap Camera or simple videos, you can add exciting backgrounds and AR effects to your video feed.
How to Add Videos to Zoom
Adding fun videos to Zoom calls is super easy! Once you are in a Zoom Meeting, in the bottom left corner of the window, you will see a ‘Start Video’ button. Click on the up arrow to the right of the icon and select ‘Choose Virtual Background..’
This will bring you to your video settings within Zoom. You will see five default videos from Zoom that you can try out. But if you want something special hit that plus button to the right and choose ‘Add Video’. A finder window will open up where you can navigate to any mp4 video file you have on your computer.
And that’s it! You should now have a fun video playing in the background!
If you’d like to use our enchanted forest video background you can download it right below by hitting the download button. Then right click on the video, hit ‘Save Video As’ and choose where you would like to save the video onto your computer.
How to Use AR Effects
If you’d like to get a little fancier, you can use Snap Camera to add a wide variety of AR effects to some of the most popular video call apps including Google Hangouts, Skype, Twitch and more! Unfortunately Snap Camera doesn’t currently work on Zoom with the latest macOS (though they are working to fix this!) but if you are on a Windows computer you can follow the instructions below for Zoom as well.
First, Install Snap Camera
You can download Snap Camera to your computer here. Once it downloads, double click and follow the instructions to install the application. Snap Camera will automatically open and show a wide range of suggested lenses. Click on any effect to try it out!
Next, Update your Video Settings in your Video Call App
Once you have Snap Camera setup, open up your video call app of choice and go to the video settings. There you should see a dropdown to select which webcam you would like to use and select ‘Snap Camera’. If you don’t see ‘Snap Camera’ listed you may need to restart both applications or your computer for Snap Camera to appear on the list of options.
Lastly, choose an AR Effect and have fun!
After Snap Camera is selected as the video source, you can pick any AR effect you would like within Snap Camera and it will update in your video call. Try out our enchanted forest effect by searching ‘Enchanted Forest’ or search ‘Bare Tree Media’ to see all of our Snapchat effects!
Interested in having your own custom AR effect or video background created?
Reach out to our team!
Bare Tree Media is a full-service creative studio with a dash of technology and a whole lot of fun! Our mission is to help your brand stand out visually and engage your audience through creative and interactive content. Although we specialize in the creation and digital publishing of branded emojis, messaging stickers, GIFs and augmented reality, our talented artists and animators can create just about anything for your marketing needs.
Wimpy Kid Introduces Augmented Reality and Sticker Keyboards
Boston, MA – January 24, 2020 – Massachusetts-based companies Wimpy Kid, Inc. and Bare Tree Media expanded their digital partnership with the introduction of augmented reality social media effects and a global expansion of their stickers within keyboard mobile applications.
“I love seeing fans around the globe engage with the Wimpy Kid brand using our existing emoji-style stickers. This year, we wanted to expand the Wimpy Kid universe and I’m thrilled to have the brand-new augmented reality and sticker formats on major global platforms. I’m really looking forward to seeing where Greg can go with his fans in 2020!” — Jeff Kinney, Author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series
To kick off 2020, Bare Tree Media designed and released three augmented reality effects themed around Diary of a Wimpy Kid 14: Wrecking Ball. The AR effects offer users the ability to insert a swinging virtual wrecking ball into their camera scene and then wreck, record, and share a real world scene of their choice. The AR filters are available to engage Wimpy Kid fans on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
“Augmented reality is a great marketing platform for brands to engage audiences and a perfect fit for the Wimpy Kid fanbase to create and share their special moments with a wrecking ball.” — Robert Ferrari, President of Bare Tree Media
Bare Tree Media also expanded their Wimpy Kid-branded digital presence to include digital stickers released within Baidu’s keyboard apps worldwide, including Facemoji Keyboard in the United States, Simeji in Japan, and Baidu IME in China.
“We are delighted to kick off 2020 by launching these stickers with Bare Tree Media and Wimpy Kid, Inc. Now, our keyboard app users around the world can all enjoy Wimpy Kid’s uniquely charming brand of humor when they chat with their friends online.” — Josh Fenn, Senior Marketing Manager at Baidu
About Bare Tree Media
As a pioneer in the digital creative and technology sector, Bare Tree Media enables brands to reach, engage, and entertain consumers through the creation and digital publishing of branded emojis, messaging stickers, GIFs, digital collectibles, metaverse virtual goods, and augmented reality experiences within popular messaging platforms. Interested brands can learn more at www.baretreemedia.com or contact Bare Tree Media at info@baretreemedia.com.
About “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”
More than 200 million copies of the books in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series have been sold globally. Published in 2007, the first book was an instant bestseller and remained on the New York Times bestseller list since its publication and through the release of the fourteenth book. This is more than 686 weeks total!
Published on November 5, 2019, the fourteenth installment in the series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball, immediately hit #1 on the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times bestseller lists.
About the Author
Jeff Kinney is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and a six-time Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award winner for Favorite Book for his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Jeff has been named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. He is also the creator of Poptropica, which was named one of Time’s 50 Best Websites. He spent his childhood in the Washington, D.C., area and moved to New England in 1995. Jeff lives with his wife and two sons in Massachusetts, where they own a bookstore, An Unlikely Story. For more about Wimpy Kid visit wimpykid.com.
AR in Advertising: The New Era of Interaction
Connection to audience has always been fundamental in the creation of a brand message. The link between brands and their audience is what creates brand loyalty—people buy things that align with their personal values and that they feel an emotional attachment to. That’s what keeps them coming back. However, what that connection looks like has begun to shift. Augmented Reality (AR) is changing the way brands can interact with their fanbases in an unprecedented way, and many brand juggernauts have already embraced paving the way for the new era of interaction.
Amazon
Amazon is known for taking risks and trying almost anything in order to get results, but their foray into AR is a decidedly calculated risk. They recently acquired Body Labs, a company that uses cameras to scan their users and report weight, size, and height. The implications of this save Amazon a lot of headache: consumers will not worry about their clothes fitting if bought online (the largest detractor by far for why people don’t shop online), and Amazon won’t have to issue as many refunds or track as many returns. From a business perspective, they’re addressing and eliminating reasons that consumers don’t buy their products and creating a better experience for when they do buy it, since the clothes will fit versus a disappointing or even frustrating return. This positive experience becomes associated with Amazon and drives the consumer to go back.
Entertainment Industry
Snapchat needs no introduction: they are one of the leaders for AR filters, lenses and games. This technology is still evolving, and so is the community centered around creating for it. They have, on average, 70 million users using AR lenses for 3 minutes per day. This is the perfect platform for brands in the entertainment industry (TV shows, movies, and personalities) to promote themselves and their brand. However, recently Snapchat has been moving into a new arena—ecommerce for ANY brand, thanks to a new feature called now Shoppable AR. Shoppable AR allows companies to actually advertise through Snapchat by redirecting users to a website from a lens. This could be a product page for merchandise, a trailer for a movie—any link on the internet is fair game. Forerunners of taking advantage of this include King, who promoted their famous game Candy Crush through an install button right in their filter, STX Entertainment, who had a trailer for their upcoming movie “I Feel Pretty”, and Blizzard Entertainment, who utilized a filter to promote their new expansion pack, Battle for Azeroth.
Exponential Growth
AR isn’t just entering the ecommerce industry, it’s redefining it. It’s providing its consumers the ability to directly interact with their brand, to become a part of it. That kind of inclusivity encourages attachment, which encourages brand loyalty. The brands that have found the greatest success don’t just appeal to their consumers, they engage with them and become a part of them, like a member of their family. They make their consumers feel good; AR provides an unprecedented engagement level on that front.
The data speaks for itself: AR has exploded in growth over the last year, and it’s not looking like it’s going to stop anytime soon. Augmented Reality companies have grown 50% since the beginning of 2018 across 290 prominent companies, according to The Venture Reality Fund. AR and VR companies have raised over $1.8 billion in funding and are only continuing to expand. And although AR started out small, like the Facebook and Snapchat lenses we’re all familiar with, it’s beginning to branch out at a rapid pace, continuing to be developed and supported by goliaths and forerunners who see and fully comprehend its value, and who know making an investment now will yield profits later.
AR is still an understated marketing tool for now, but that will change sooner rather than later. Instead of being behind on the trend, brands should take full advantage of what AR can offer and showcase their product in a way that gets consumers excited about it—and thus, drives sales up, up, up.
Personalized Emojis are Taking Messaging by Storm
Recently, custom emojis have been sprouting up on all major messaging platforms like Apple, Google, Samsung, and Snapchat. These were started by Bitmoji, a company that allowed users to create their own personal emoji. Once Snapchat acquired Bitmoji, the race was on for all major messengers to create their own. These personal emojis are used by a wide range of age groups and are some of the most popular stickers.
Bitmoji
Bitmojis were the first personalized emojis to take messaging by storm. They were designed to fill the gap between selfies and text messages by sending a personal sticker that could express emotion. This idea took off and was acquired by Snapchat to become the avatars for all Snapchat users. Bitmojis were a massive success and are now on most major messengers as well as Snapchat. These custom stickers led to most major messengers adopting their own personalized emojis.
Apple Memojis
Apple is currently testing their new personalized emojis that are expected to be released with iOS12 called Memojis. Previously Apple launched Animojis, which were animated stickers of the user’s facial motions illustrated by various animals. Memojis, are an extension on these animated stickers, by allowing users to use their animated character. This movement is then translated to your Memoji on your screen, creating your own personal animated sticker. The Memoji’s are completely customizable to make your own unique animated messages.
Samsung AR Emojis
Samsung Augmented Reality (AR) Emojis allow a user to create their own personalized emoji. These emojis are able to be customized with different effects that make the sticker look more cartoonish or more lifelike. Samsung also gives you the option to change the clothes of your custom sticker.
Recently, Samsung updated their AR Emojis with the addition of 18 more set stickers to add onto your emoji, making the total 36. Right after the release of these extra stickers, Samsung also announced they will be launching 18 more additional stickers soon. These personalized stickers are only available the Galaxy S9 and S9+.
However, creating custom stickers is not the only thing that AR Emoji allows a user to do. It also has a feature that brands can utilize, like Disney who released some of their classic characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck onto the platform. Then Disney followed up with a release of the Incredibles characters to promote the newly released sequel to the film.
Google Minis
Google recently announced that they are launching a keyboard add-on called Minis that allows users to send customized stickers of themselves. The user will take a picture of themselves and a digital sticker of them will be created. Google is taking a unique approach to their customizable stickers. Unlike Snapchat and Samsung, Google Minis will have packs to purchase containing different gear and backgrounds for your personal sticker. Currently, these custom stickers are only available in the Beta keyboard, however, we should expect to see them soon.
