Have customers looking to increase engagement time with customers and prospects? Try an AR game. This is the message of RealityBLU, whose WorldViewAR platform “democratizes” AR by creating AR experiences from videos in a matter of minutes.
The three traditional products offered by WorldViewAR are holographic twins, or holotwins; 360-degree virtual portals; and 3D AR objects. Now,RealityBLU has added a fourth product—AR games(licensed separately). Like other products in the WorldViewAR platform, these games are all but plug and play. They are predesigned, and users simply upload logos, images, and other elements to customize them for their own or their clients’ use.
We might call it “AR for the masses.”
Source: Screenshot from RealityBLU webinar “Activating Customers with AR Games” (August 30, 2023)
How Does It Work?
How does it work? Pick your game, customize with your own elements, and deploy via print, email, text, or in-app. Players sign up, providing their names and email addresses in order to play, and that contact information is added to your clients’ CRMs. Once signed up, gamers can play for high score and prizes. Client (or sponsor) logos can be added in the background, giving them exposure for the entire time the player is engaged with the game.
“We see enormous amount of engagement time where we’ve deployed these games in conjunction with their marketing campaigns,” notes MJ Anderson, co-founder and chief experience officer for RealityBLU, speaking on the company’s August 30, 2023 webinar “Activating Customers with AR Games.” “We’ve made it really easy and inexpensive to do.”
One of the areas where RealityBLU sees particularly strong engagement with AR games is in the world of sports marketing. If customers are already sponsoring professional or collegiate teams as part of their marketing mix, games are a natural way to augment those promotions:
- Fan scans QR or clicks a link.
- Fan plays the game for prizes.
- Fan enters high score for offer.
- Name and email are captured.
- Prize offer is fulfilled via email.
- Metrics are collected and analyzed.
Source: Screenshot from RealityBLU webinar “Activating Customers with AR Games” (August 30, 2023)
Currently, RealityBLU offers three titles in its AR games portfolio: Basketball Shooter, Baseball HomeRun Derby, and Football Throwing Competition. Everything on the screen is customizable—scoreboard graphics, sky graphics, goal post graphics, even player uniform graphics.
“If you attend a live sporting event, you’ll see signage and logos spread throughout the venue,” says Anderson. “Those are all sponsored positions. We’ve translated that same concept into the game engine.”
WorldView AR Games also has an age gate built in. If a customer’s marketplace requires the user to be of a certain age, the gate can be configured.
Games are designed so printers can use the game to not only charge their customers for the service of running AR game promotions, but also as a way tosell sponsorship positions. “You can configure emailsthat go to fans—include the high score to let them see how well they did to encourage them to play again,” Anderson continues. “We always get a certain number of replays with these games.”
Source: Screenshot from RealityBLU webinar “Activating Customers with AR Games” (August 30, 2023)
What’s the ROI?
Beyond fun and games, marketers need to see ROI, right? What kind of metrics are RealityBLU’s customers seeing? A 5x increase in conversion(calculated based on an amalgam of its customers’ results compared to industry numbers for other channels such as email, blog SEO, organic social, and webinars).
“Anyone in marketing who must answer to a CFO knows that it’s all about showing ROI, and we believe that is what our game product does,” says Anderson. “These stats don’t even include games stats. They are just from our traditional products.”
How do AR games compare? An AR scene averagesa 75-second engagement per scene. This grows to 10-12 minutes when it’s a game.
Anderson also pointed to other industry numbers associated with AR over other channels:
Case Study #1: University of Wisconsin Basketball
Moving on to real-life examples, Anderson points to a promotion RealityBLU deployed last winter around basketball season with the University of Wisconsin and its bookstore. The university licensed the rights to use the image of its lead point guard, ChuckyHepburne, as the spokesperson for the game. “When you play this game, Chucky appears on the scene first and tells you how to play,” says Anderson.
The game ran for three weeks before March Madnessand achieved the following stats:
“If the bookstore has an active lead in their CRM,they know that individual represents in the area of $100 in revenue from that individual,” says Anderson. “For them, it was extraordinarily successful campaign.”
Anderson notes that these games also tend to get a lot of likes, shares, and forwards. “One of the secondary and tertiary benefits to these games is that they get passed around...a lot,” he says.
Case Study #2: American Baseball Association
The second case study comes from the American Baseball Association, a minor league in the Midwest. The ABA used RealityBLU’s baseballgame for a three-day promotion in advance of its All-Star game. The league sponsor was New Balance.
Source: Screenshot from RealityBLU webinar “Activating Customers with AR Games” (August 30, 2023)
Over that 3-day campaign period, the game resulted in the following metrics:
“New Balance had placed signage in the stadiumwhere the game was played,” says Anderson. “Plus their logo was placed inside the AR game. So the game represented 210 additional hours of eyeball time beyond what they got in the game itself. That was a very eye-opening stat for all of us.”
The American Association Baseball also used the game to drive downloads of its app that they use to sell tickets. “We have done other promotions where sponsors encouraged mobile downloads of a mobile app as well,” says Anderson. “It’s an interesting way to get people to download apps.”
Want to test the games for yourself? Scan the QR codes in these images and give them a whirl.
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