Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast

If you're a Brand Founder, eCommerce Entrepreneur or Growth Marketer and looking to scale your eComm brand, then this is the podcast for you. We'll be interviewing industry leading eCommerce founders and marketing strategists and bringing their insights and actionable take-aways for you to implement and drive your revenue growth.

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Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast

#20 - Amplify Your Customer’s Brand Experience using Augmented Reality w/ Rich Watson

February 10, 2022 • Right Hook Digital • Season 1 • Episode 20

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and the constant evolution of technology. When it comes to business, if you’re not across the latter two, you’re likely headed for trouble. The past year brought many upheavals to the paid advertising game, with iOS14 prompt and attribution issues leaving many eCom brand owners clambering for answers and ways to pivot. Now, savvy entrepreneurs are actively looking for ideal solutions to tell their brand story in a powerful manner that engages both prospects and loyalists alike.

Enter Augmented Reality (AR). Join Scott & Ray in this episode as they chat with Rich Watson, Founder of Augmented Hype, and find out why augmented reality presents a new way of reaching and inciting fanfare among your customers.

As an avid fan of AR and a believer of building relationships with audiences, Rich dishes on the industry verticals that have been successful in integrating AR campaigns into their marketing strategy as well as the technical aspects needed to start your brand's AR initiatives. This conversation also gets real on the public adoption of AR technology and the steps needed to measure the impact and reach of AR campaigns.

Plus, you don’t don't want to miss Rich's outlook on the Metaverse, how AR technology will bridge the gap between the present & the future, and the next steps you'll need to take to ride in on the augmented reality marketing wave.

For real-time updates, connect with Rich:

Join Rich’s AR Ads Strategies Facebook group for updates, tips & examples of AR ads from Rich, and get first dibs on news from Augmented Hype and the AR world!

Platforms & websites referenced in this episode:

If you enjoyed this episode, connect with us and share your feedback:

Join our Growth & Greatness eCommerce group and connect with fellow business owners & digital marketers alike: Growth & Greatness eCommerce on Facebook

If you want to learn more about us and what we do at Right Hook, visit our website: Right Hook Digital

Full episode transcript & chapter markers for this episode are available on the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast Buzzsprout page!

0:00 - 0:27 - G&G eCommerce Podcast Theme
This is the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast, powered by Right Hook Digital, with your hosts Scott Seward & Raymond Johnston. If you’re an eCommerce brand founder, entrepreneur, or marketer looking to accelerate profitable growth for your business, then listen in ‘cause this is the podcast for you.

0:27 - 7:15 - Introduction of guest Rich Watson
Scott (0:27 - 0:35) - Welcome back to the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast! Ray, good to have you back, after doing the last episode by myself. How’s it been?

Ray (0:35 - 0:38) - It’s good, man! You did a great job in the last episode.

Scott (0:38 - 0:46) - Thanks, man, appreciate the kind words! It’s getting there. I think this might be episode 20, I think. That’s, like, a milestone for podcasts, right?

Ray (0:46 - 0:54) - Yeah, they say, I think, if you can make it past the 20th one, the probability of you sticking around for many years is pretty high.

Scott (0:54 - 1:33) - Nice! It’s starting to feel a lot less clunky, even though I had some mishaps with the last one with the missed pre-recording of the intro, but anyway. Anyway, enough about us. We have, this week, we’ve got Mr. Rich Watson with us, who is an augmented reality specialist. I’ve been jamming with him a little bit over the last 6 months, especially, he’s just working in a really interesting space and we’ve had Casie Lane Millhouse on the podcast, previously, who’s a mutual friend as well, and talking about the augmented reality side. But really wanted to bring Rich on, he’s speaking, and congratulations on an upcoming speaking gig at AdWorld. Welcome to the show, man!

Rich (1:33 - 1:40) - Cheers, yeah! Really good to be here, I’m really excited to talk about everything Meta, everything augmented reality in these trying times.

Scott (1:40 - 2:45) - Yeah, man! There is a lot happening, just a lot happening in this space at the moment. It’s pretty crazy. You know, as we recorded last week, Facebook, Meta, got pretty slammed - it’s probably the first quarter that they’ve had a slowdown in user growth. There’s been, probably, a loss, a bit of a, you know, a shifting in the monopoly of paid ads with Facebook and the platform, and TikTok really being a key player. And then, there’s also so much happening in the crypto, metaverse space as well, and how that’s gonna affect, I guess, this whole industry, and it’s still a bit of an unknown. That’s what makes it really interesting at the moment, looking at the future of this space and how these, I guess, somewhat different industries at the moment are going to converge and impact each other. But, Rich, let’s just start with a bit of a background on you. How’d you get into this space, especially with the augmented reality side? Where did you get started?

Rich (2:45 - 5:06) - Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I’ve been doing Facebook ads now for, between 7 and 8 years. I’ve worked with agencies, I’ve had my own agency, been a freelancer as well so I’ve done it all. And really, like, the need for augmented reality for me came out of, you know, the whole iOS14 year we had which, obviously, was pretty difficult. Some people, their ads dropped off completely; some, sort of, bounced back - there’s a lot of different stuff going on. For me, it was more of a shift towards, you know, that sort of marketing that always worked, the fundamental marketing of building a relationship with the audience which, I guess, maybe, I sort of started to rely on Facebook’s hacks and algorithm a little bit too much. Moving toward that relationship again and, sort of, realizing that the people that I’m working with are, not often, knowledgeable on the types of creatives, types of content, types of messaging that’s needed. It, sort of, led to me, sort of, starting to look at different ways of getting creative through. At that time, I was also quite interested in NFTs (non-fungible tokens), I still am, I was sort of getting into it, I guess, middle of last year. A few of the apps and projects I’m interested in, you can actually view your NFTs in AR, ‘This is really cool,’ ‘cause there’s really no one else doing this. Of course, you know, there’s extra utility on top of it. I started thinking, ‘Well, actually, this could actually apply to marketing the same way, the same way that I’m able to actually experience my NFT, to a slightly different level.’ There must be a way for people to experience your product to a slightly different level, which is your brand or something like that. So I started to look into augmented reality marketing, I realized that it’s actually not a new thing at all, and I think the first augmented reality ads have actually been available, like, since 2018 or something like that, but they’re still in beta. Since then, I’ve looked at it, you know, found that, actually, you know, the personalization of the ads as far beyond anything else you can do within the platform with Facebook and Instagram, specifically. I already told you the facts so it’s been a really interesting, sort of, 6 - 7 months for me - seeing a little bit into the future and what I feel might dominate the marketing space, so yeah.

Scott (5:06 - 5:46) - It seems to be one of those spaces where, I recall, going back to the, I don’t know whether you saw the interview that Gary V. did with Zucks couple of months ago. It sort of struck me, something that stood out, this feels like the space that’s been spoken about for quite a long time, going back 2015, 2016, but just hasn’t really hit that adoption curb or that level of technology where it can be utilized effectively mainstream, but it feels like it’s starting to get to that point now where it is useful and it is effective and it is being integrated by brands. How do you, sort of, see that adoption at the moment and where are we?

Rich (5:46 - 7:15) - Yeah, it’s a good question because I feel that people are seeing it as quite risky because of the fact that there are not a lot of use cases. There’s a lot of people doing it for brand activation, brand awareness, things like this with AR and they also tend to be quite established, you know, quite big brands and quite established companies. So, I think that might scare a lot of people off, but what I’ve been doing is I’ve been applying it to, you know, sort of, small, medium-sized enterprises like, people who, you wouldn’t really expect to be able to afford AR, but actually, it can be quite affordable, really, depending on the complexity of the filter. And, of course, from that, sort of, not really experiment, but adopting it, it means that they’re standing out because no one else is really doing this. I feel like that, the fact that there’s not many case studies and use cases is, maybe, getting people, you know, they’re shying away from it a little bit, but because it’s starting to permutate the rest of our lives, we’re seeing it all over the place, as I said, we’re used to filters on Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok as well, so the more used to it people get, the more adoption into the marketing space there’ll be. But I still think there’s a gap between people understanding what a filter is on Instagram, or what augmented reality is. I think they think they’re 2 different things, but really, it’s a very shallow, dipping-your-toes-in augmented reality in my view.

7:15 - 13:00 - Public adoption of Augmented Reality (AR) and its use cases
Ray (7:15 - 7:22) - Rich, what are the different use cases you’re seeing right now with people adopting AR? Obviously, filters is one, which you’ve mentioned, but it goes beyond that, doesn’t it?

Rich (7:22 - 7:51) - Definitely, yeah. So, there’s quite a few examples from some quite big brands like IKEA, and there’s lots of different types of augmented reality experience you can have. The main ones are like the try-on filter. You can also have aesthetic filters, and these are ones that overlay, you know, your face or your body or using the front camera. But then, yeah, things like, with IKEA, they’re doing the back-camera stuff where you can actually see something within your space…

Ray (7:51 - 7:54) - Yeah, I’ve seen that. It’s really cool.

Scott (7:54 - 7:58) - I’ve played with that a bit lately. That is fun, that is cool, really effective.

Rich (7:58 - 9:17) - There’s a brand, I can’t remember the name of the brand, but they’re Dutch, I believe they’re Dutch, I might have gotten the country wrong. Anyway, it’s a bicycle brand, and they’ve actually, I think it’s been quite cool to see them experimenting, basically, using the back-camera, sort of, filter, you can actually experience, you can actually put the bicycle in your space and you can, you know, put it down, and you can get really, really close to it, and you can look at the detail of it, different elements of it. You know, if you’re at home, this is especially effective during COVID, you can sit there and you can put this bicycle in your room, and you can go to it and look at it and almost test it out, obviously you can’t sit on it or ride it, that’s the only thing you can’t do, but all of the other aspects of it, I mean, that you’re experiencing that’s as close as the actual bicycle as you can. I’ve seen that, I obviously don’t know the, you know, financial information, but I’ve seen that ad for a long time so that tells me that there’s something working there with that, which is really interesting, so it brings a whole new dynamic to high-ticket selling, if it’s something that’s very aesthetic, or even something where you need to view it to experience it a little bit more. It could be a really good way of, like, you know, selling a high-ticket item in my mind.

Scott (9:17 - 9:27) - That’s, kind of, I guess, the main objective, right? Just trying to bridge that gap between shopping in-store, holding it in your hand, and then being able to do it in your own living room.

Rich (9:29 - 10:31) - Yeah, exactly. There’s a few ones that we worked on, you know, cosmetics, lipsticks, things like that - you couldn’t even go on, I guess, in some places where you could go on, try a makeup on, but you couldn’t just jump in a store and put some lipstick on. They’d kick you out so it’s almost giving you like a deeper element of the experience, and I think we’ll see this a lot more when more people get into the space and a lot more people, sort of, are much more creative and they let their creativity flow a little bit more where the augmented reality ad won’t necessarily even, specifically, be about the product. It’ll be about experiencing a brand so you’ll have, you know some sort of motif or some colors or sounds or something, you know, some sort of experience of, you know, whatever nature sample or visuals, and that will get you to be, you know, more familiar with the brand and that’s, sort of, how you’re building the relationship with people, I believe. That’s, sort of, that’s how I like to see it go, for sure.

Ray (10:32 - 10:52) - With the brands you work with right now, Rich, you know, there’s so many different filters you can make. It’s almost, if you can imagine, you can probably build it. And you mentioned, like, that bike brand, ‘cause I’ve seen that same result where you go to product page, you can see the bike in your space - for a brand that’s thinking about incorporating this, how do you steer them into what’s the right fit for them and what’s the right experience for their customers?

Rich (10:52 - 12:18) - Yeah, definitely. I think there’s not too much difference between how you come up with the idea for an AR creative than how you come up with a normal creative. So, it’s whatever pain it’s, you know, solving, whatever, sort of, experience, the emotion you want them to have, or to leave with, or the impression you want them to leave with. It follows the same route. But once you, sort of, know the mechanics of AR and what it’s capable of, it becomes a lot clearer as long as you have that first element in mind, how that will fit into a natural AR experience, and then what sort of action you want them to take because, you know, there’s multiple, different objectives you can use it for, as mentioned earlier - am I reaching someone, traffic and conversion, basically, you can also do those as well. Whether it’s just something you want people to share and engage with, or whether you actually want people to go through to a landing page, see a product, test it out, or even another AR experience or something like that, it’s the same method of devising effective creative, really, but yeah, as I said, at the moment, there’s certain limitations so you definitely need to take a look and see what sort of filters are already out there, what you can take inspiration from, and of course, SparkAR is Facebook’s AR platform where the filters are made - you can go into galleries and you can have a look at all the stuff that’s made with keywords, search for it, have a look…

Ray (12:18 - 12:19) - With the ads as well?

Rich (12:19 - 12:39) - And you can sort of see… No, this is the thing, there’s not really an easy way to find AR ads at the moment, only really from Meta’s actual case studies or people sharing them. Yeah, there’s not really anyone doing it apart from a handful of people so it’s quite difficult to find.

Scott (12:39 - 13:00) - Yeah, I don’t still, I don’t see a lot. I don’t get a lot in my feed. Otherwise, I’d be diving into them all the time just to see how they’re functioning ‘cause that’s the, I guess, the part from, I guess, from strategy standpoint is trying to figure out how it’s gonna work functionally and, I think smaller brands, especially, how to make it cost-effective.

13:02 - 15:45 - How much should smaller brands invest into starting an AR project/creative?
Scott (13:02 - 13:34) - Leading from that, where do you see it in terms of how effective is it comparably against, let’s just say, UGC or your typical creative that we’re making. What are we looking at, cost-wise? I know that’s a bit of how long’s a piece of string, you know, using helicopters and pyrotechnics… you know, for smaller brands, and let’s start with beauty, for example, if we’re making an AR filter for that? What’s the investment brands are looking at to, sort of, get started?

Rich (13:34 - 15:45) - It’s, sort of, comparable to what, you know, creative agencies are charging. It’s usually around the same, but as you pointed out, there’s also the complexity. Say if you were to wear, not wear, say if you were to create a wearable filter or something that improves your aesthetics, something you try on, if it’s quite a simple filter, then it’ll be around the same charge you would be paying for creatives to be made or the, sort of, popular UGC generation tolls. It’s very similar, sort of, ilk. When you start getting into quite complex filters, it can be much more expensive so, you know, within the SparkAR partners, you can expect to pay between, I believe, 15K to maybe 50K USD for a filter. Of course, they’re very established, they’ve been doing it a really long time, some of them are working with Netflix and things like that. There’s not that much competition at the moment so the prices can be dictated by them. What’s happening, and this is gonna help everybody make it much more accessible is, there’s a lot more investments in the creator and there’s people within the creator space trying to help creators build their own studios and things like that, rather than, you know, being outsourced. So it would become a lot more affordable, in my mind, it’s a lot easier to connect with people. But you do have this slight issue with creators being creators, they’re not marketers, you know? If you go to them with, “Hey, here’s our brand. Give us an AR filter,’ they’ll come with this really technical, beautiful filter which, it would just be completely go over people’s heads, they wouldn’t really know what they’re doing, their customers will just be like, ‘This is cool, but I don’t know what to do with this,’ you know? It’s just about bridging that gap and that’s really what I’m trying to do. I’m, you know, marketer and, sort of, a creative combined. I’m seeing this opportunity with AR ads and, sort of, how to bridge that gap, it’s, sort of, like a gap in the market, to be honest. I’m sure there’ll be more people coming, but for now, I’m sort of pioneering a little bit, I feel.

15:45 - 18:23 - Tracking the performance and effectivity of AR creative campaigns
Ray (15:45 - 16:05) - Is it difficult to track the usage of AR filters? I know, we have a brand that tested it, but we could see the viewership of the people, I’m sorry, not the viewership, but people actually using it. That’s about as far, but that’s going back a year or two. What is available today with the statistics and the tracking of them?

Rich (16:05 - 18:23) - Yeah. So the Facebook side of things, on Ads Manager, really specifically for AR, you can only really see the Instant Experience information, which is really useful, of course, ‘cause we know that we can use that for custom audiences and even lookalike audiences and things like that. SparkAR has its own metrics, which you can look at. They’re mainly reach, saves, opens; there’s even a metric on there when people open your filter in a video call and stuff like that. There’s a suite of different, they’re not integrated in Ads Manager at the moment, but you can see in the back-end of SparkAR. Whether or not they’ll become more combined or something in the future, I’m not really sure, but it’s really useful to see because you can see, basically, you can see the organic side of how the filter’s done on SparkAR and you can see the paid side of how it’s done in Ads Manager ‘cause it’s trying to make the ad effective and useful so it’s really good to compare those 2 because there’s a lot of organic reach, you know, the examples, we’ve had about 10x in that organic reach with AR experiences than they are with normal ads, and we will know that there’s not really any organic reach, unless you have a Facebook group within Facebook so this is something that’s really, really good. Of course, we know, it’s because Facebook would prefer people to stay on the platform and also share experiences and have a really awesome experience so I don’t know whether that’s gonna, you know, come down and, sort of, you know, plateau at some point, but at the moment, it’s incredible. I’ve seen some of the creatives posting their posts, especially one of the Chinese New Year, it was like, one point something billion reach, and it was a filter that wasn’t even used in paid ads, it was a gaming filter, that’s why, but yeah, just, the eyes you could get on your filter, your brands, absolutely incredible. Of course, these are being used by creators and people who, you know, they’re amazing at their craft, but it’s not necessarily giving people a call-to-action necessarily. So, if you imagine that being at your fingertips, it would be absolutely incredible for the amount of qualified prospects you get to your site.

18:24 - 21:30 - Which industry verticals are effectively using AR technology?
Scott (18:24 - 18:54) - Yeah, there really seems like there’s so much of that novelty effect at the moment because it’s a bit of an uncharted territory. What verticals are you seeing it most effective with at the moment because I think about fashion, for example, and I think there’s probably still some limitations in terms of being able to fit clothes to bodies really, really cleanly. What verticals do you see it working really well at the moment, and what are some that are, sort of, developing and improving the tech around it?

Rich (18:54 - 20:21) - Yeah, that’s a really good question. I honestly feel that if you have a product or service that sells a problem, you can have an AR ad for it - it can give the people the right experience and, you know, they can, you know, feel your brand over the competition, and it can cut through the noise as much as possible. For the use cases I’m seeing, and for the people that are much more likely to adopt this, it’s usually within the fashion space, cosmetics, home & garden, also technology as well, but part of my agenda for Augmented Hype is, like, work with as many people as possible in different areas so that we can, sort of, push the boat out a little bit and really show people what is capable with AR. I have seen car brands using it, I have seen hotels using it, I’ve seen airlines using it, and it’s all things you wouldn’t expect, but they all have a very positive effect. Actually, all the ones I just mentioned are part of Meta’s case studies so if you go and have a look at those, you’ll see, they all have a massive improvement on whatever the objective was, just from those. You can really imagine how it would work in that way. I think one area that’s really exciting for AR is real estate. I think it could absolutely be huge, just because in real estate, they’ve already moved into the 3D space a long time ago, they’ve been utilizing that for a long time so jumping into AR wouldn’t be that much of a big jump.

Scott (20:21 - 20:24) - Is it a virtual walkthrough for properties?

Rich (20:24 - 20:58) - Yes, exactly. Either that or, interestingly, I was gonna work with this project, like pop-up houses, where you buy a house, invest in it, and you can put it in a space, literally have this mini pop-up house, which you can put in your space, press the roof, almost like a dollhouse, have a look through it, sort of, imagine yourself living in that space and things like that. There’s this virtual walkthrough, virtual tour for, maybe, investors who are investing in houses in other countries and they can’t fly there, especially during COVID and things like that. It worked really well. So I can see that…

Scott (20:58 - 21:15) - Yeah, I’m thinking I can take, so we’re going through a rental for an investment property of ours, talking to architects at the moment, but trying to envision what our extension might look like - that would be perfect, that would be a really good tool for architects to get their designs across the line.

Rich (21:15 - 21:30) - Yeah, definitely. It’s just because, you know, with the 3D stuff, they’re definitely likely to jump on it. It’s just who’s gonna be the first, who is the first or the best to use it, and everyone else is, ‘Oh, I need to use it as well,’ so yeah, they’re gonna crush it.

21:31 - 30:42 - Measuring the impact and reach of AR creative campaigns
Ray (21:31 - 21:48) - Bridging the gap between marketing and measurable impact, and the AR filters or whatever version of AR that you’re using, how do you help brands bridge that gap between ‘Yeah, we got a lot of eyeballs or usage from this piece of AR,’ but then how do we actually measure the impact of it?

Rich (21:48 - 22:02) - Yeah, well, I guess it’s completely up to their objectives. All the filters we’ve done have all been, well, majority of them have been conversion-based. So, we’ve seen between a lift in conversion…

Ray (22:01 - 22:03) - From ads, Rich?

Rich (22:03 - 24:35) - From ads, yeah. From ads placed in the Facebook feed. The conversion lift has been, basically, between 20% and 58% for the stuff that we’ve been running. Really, that’s not the only thing, that was what we went into the engagement thinking that’s gonna be the main objective but it’s been really interesting that the average order value has been increased, also returns have been lowered. Not only that, the average video view time on some of the projects we’ve worked on was, say, between 15 and 20 seconds within the AR experience or the Instant Experience. It was up to about 40 or 50 so you’re getting a better quality of audience, you’re getting people engaged longer, and of course, they’re converting and paying for their products. So you have all these different sections where you can, sort of, see improvements, but it really depends on the offers, the products, and how the experience really calls people in to the ad and where they go from there. It’s actually really been incredible, the, sort of, side benefits of this, we’re expecting going into it. We, sort of, knew that AR ads will be cheaper because, you know, within the feed, no one else is running them so the auction competition is much lower. We thought that people are gonna convert because, you know, they can really experience the product, try on, really see what the aesthetic quality is like, how it seems, and things like that. But, yeah, there’s been all these, sort of, side benefits that have been absolutely amazing. In terms of measuring, I think, if you were to have a focus on the objective that you have, you know, in mind for what you want the AR ad to do, and so, to compare the 2, honestly, my practical example would be, if you actually run the AR ad in tandem within a campaign; this is for Facebook, specifically, run the AR ad within your campaign with a duplicated audience, with your best audience, with your best creative match, have a duplicate of that running with the AR ad, and then see the 2 - I wouldn’t necessarily have it as its own campaign because that wouldn’t necessarily give you the best, sort of, comparison, but that’s basically what we ran. A few times, we ran its own campaign, but we’re running it within one campaign and running a normal, commercial creative against the augmented reality creative. You can really see what the comparable metrics are.

Ray (24:35 - 24:53) - With that creative, Rich, are you giving them some kind of, for example, are you giving them a video to represent, ‘Hey, use our AR filter or your own piece of AR,’ or some kind of creative cues for them to also see, ‘Oh, this ad is automatically different ‘cause it’s prompting me to use AR.’

Rich (24:53 - 25:44) - Yeah, that’s a really good question, ‘cause I think that’s a bit overlooked when people, you know, wanna test this ad. So, the actual ad you’ll see, the creative you’ll see in the feed, is the same you would for any other, you know, Facebook ad in the feed. You can either have a video, you can have an image, and that has an overlay of, it says, ‘Try it on, try it in your space,’ and things like that; they all have a camera overlay on top of it so it will look a little bit different. What you really wanna do is you wanna have a video that explains what is going to happen in the experience because it can be quite alarming. You click on something and, suddenly, your face is there or your surroundings in the ad, especially with all this stuff going on with Facebook and privacy.

Scott (25:44 - 25:49) - I sent some samples to my mum, that was funny.

Rich (25:49 - 25:50) - Yeah, exactly.

Scott (25:50 - 25:59) - Dude, it’s just so foreign, especially, I think, to the older demos. They just can’t quite wrangle their heads around it so the how-to videos make a lot of sense.

Rich (25:59 - 27:52) - Yeah, definitely. That’s actually what we did is, if you can get the ideal customer profile of the person using it, so you have the UGC of the person who you’re aiming to target with it, using it, and an example of how it’s used or what you’re gonna get from it, that’s really what you wanna do in the feed. It will grab people’s attention because of the creative, and then they’ll see this slightly different overlay on top of it and, hopefully, they’ll read the copy but I don’t think people read copies now. That’s why Facebook is pushing us to lower copy at the moment. That’s, like, something to definitely have on there because if you’re having an AR experience, as I said, you just click it and it pops up your camera and you’re looking at yourself, it’s a little bit alarming. So, yeah, either UGC or a demo video of what’s going to happen, and then test it out, ‘cause you’ll see, there’s a novelty aspect to it. You’ll see a lot more people clicking into the ad. I’ve done a little bit of a presentation on this before. You can basically use AR as, like, a mini funnel; because you know more people are gonna engage with it, you know that you can basically retarget people based on, you know, if they engaged with an ad, if they spent time within the Instant Experience, things like that, and you can almost have a different AR experience for people who progressed further down this mini funnel, and then you can have something else to show them, an AR experience with a slightly more specific call-to-action or something like that, whereas that first one can just be people experiencing a brand, having some aesthetic that reminds them, gives them some, the brand experience or some building relationship, and then you can have something retargeting people who’ve had an experience with the first one with something more specific, where you can try things on, or you can see the best top picks in the range or something like that.

Scott (27:53 - 28:30) - You see many brands using, or building, I guess, this is where I see, like, where brands probably don’t build groups enough because if you’ve got a group around your brand, a community, it would be a really good space to be able to test this out for pushing it live, optimize, get that feedback in terms of the functionality, whether they’re finding use for it, and whether it’s right for your audience. There’s a cost in that as well, but, you know, if you’re concerned about pushing it live to a broader audience without it, being right for your brand. Do you see many brands taking that approach to try and function?

Rich (28:30 - 30:42) - No, I guess it could be effective in that way, with some sort of exclusivity of it, or just testing out to see what the engagement’s going to be. I think, actually, the best way to test it would be with influencers, not necessarily micro-, macro-influencers, and you can get them to test out your filter and share it with their audiences, and then they’ll test it out and have this massive compounding effect. That’s probably gonna give you the best impressions, as long as, obviously, the influencers are in line with your audience. I think that will really give you a good impression of how things are gonna go. So, if you’re looking to, you know, test it out in terms of engagement first before you go and test it out for actual conversions, things like that, that could be a really good way doing it. Of course, if you have a really big, broad audience of your own already, I think that could be a good test because you could have, basically, once you have the AR filter, you can have it at the link, and you can share the link in an email, you can share it through Messenger, you can put it in Groups. There’s a variety of ways you can , basically, get people in Instant Experience and test it out first. I think this is a really good thing to have, an exclusive element of it, because you can have competitions and things like that, you know, where you get people to try experiencing the experience and then share videos, share images with their friends and family and things like that, and then they could do the same thing. We’re just working with a brand in Austria and they’re doing a competition, so part of their experience is, basically, you look through this looking glass and you see this scene behind them. And you’re, basically, just trying to find this Easter egg within their experience. Once you find this Easter egg, you take an image and you share it with them, and that’s how you enter into the competition. So it’s like getting people to go into the experience for a, sort of, long time. If you imagine, based on a paid aspect of it, you have this in your paid ads, there’s always things around competitions and pushing people to do things to be careful with, but it could be a really good way of building that for competitions as well. There’s so many different strategies that you could use as well, not necessarily just, you know, pulling people through to landing pages.

30:42 - 34:23 - The technical requirements needed to build your brand’s AR experience
Ray (30:42 - 30:55) - With all the amazing opportunities that you can do with it, what’s, kind of, the obstacles to enter this, kind of, capability, like the technical requirements? Do they have to, like, have renders of their products and experiences ahead of time? What does that look like?

Rich (30:56 - 34:04) - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so you’ll need, like, a 3D rendering. I mean, it really depends on the filter so if you’re having a filter where, there’s, like, a physical augmented reality, elements of it, you’ll need to have a 3D rendering of it. So, you can have things like 2D logos, or writing which, you know, you could basically do, quite simply, but I think for most people, it’s just how they communicate their messages that they’re trying to get across in the ads into an AR experience and the strategy that comes along with that. I think that’s really the biggest thing for people because, you know, there’s a lot of freelancers, there’s a lot of creators out there which you can get to create your experience, but it’s about how to actually, like, what is it gonna look like? How is that gonna be, sort of, carried out? So I think the more people see use cases of this, and the more people see that there’s case studies and positive effects and, you know, especially within their verticals, I think they’ll be more likely to do it. But I think, for now, it’s the technical understanding, it’s the use cases, and also, there are limitations on the platform because the data can only be, I think it’s below 2 megabytes or something like that, maybe that’s a part of the data. So that means you’re, you can’t have a real estate walkthrough, you can’t have super, super detailed, you know, 3D renderings of a house, with cracks on the wall and cobwebs and stuff like that. It’s gotta be quite simple looking. With simple, sort of, aesthetic, you can be more, it forces you to be a bit more creative with it as well. But there are limitations at the moment with apparel, so this is probably one that most people ask me about. You know, can we use this for apparel? The body tracking isn’t quite there yet. Within where they are so, you know, things that you may have on the website, is much better because you can have a lot more data. With spa care, at the moment, the 2D tracking of apparel, basically, means that you have to, sort of, stand there, static, front on, and it will stay on your body. As soon as you turn, it sort of falls off because it can’t track, like, rotational tracking of your body, so that’s a little bit limited. Also, for, like, watch brands or anything you’re wearing on your wrist, it’s essentially the same story because it can’t track the rotational circumference of your wrist and things like that. The facial, sort of, tracking is really good, so if you’re a sunglasses brand, or an earring or things like that, I’ve seen filters with accessories and earrings and things, and the earring dangles down as you move your head around; it, sort of, naturally sort of, hangs and it looks real, it looks as real as you can sort of see it. Obviously, there’s always gonna be an element of, you know, if you move really fast, the tracking might fall off a little bit and it will just appear back again. There’s always that, I think it’s gonna get much better with time as well, but with sunglasses, it could be really effective, as long as you put a good creative that could make the mapping on point. There’s definitely limitations, but it’s really, as I said, it has to do with how you’re getting that experience across to them and what, sort of, action you want them to take. You can always achieve it with, sort of, yeah, like, limited data.

Scott (34:04 - 34:23) - Yeah, that was one of the really cool ones that we were looking at with you, with the sunglasses and you can really see the reflection in the lens of the glass. It’s, kinda, just those small, little touches that make it more realistic. I don’t think you even picked that up at the time until the team picked it up and pointed it out, it’s those little things.

34:25 - 46:17 - The Metaverse in 2022 and beyond & how to stay updated
Scott (34:25 - 36:15) - I’d like to pivot this a little bit. Thinking a bit more, you know, over the next 5 - 10 years, where Facebook and Meta is at right now, because it feels like the company is at a little bit of an inflection point. Anyone who’s worked with Facebook over the last 5 years probably understands the frustration - if most of us had other alternatives, in terms of a platform that was as effective, from a performance standpoint, but actually treated their customers a little bit better, people would’ve jumped earlier. That seems to be the case now. TikTok is presenting as that platform that’s coming up and providing an option, and you can start to see the impact that’s having on Facebook. Now, unless Facebook can somehow turn around their performance, and everyone comes back there just because the performance is far superior, after all the Apple rollout, that’s changed a lot - it isn’t as superior as what it once used to be. They’re trying to pivot, or they’re looking to pivot towards the Metaverse, so it feels like it’s a bit of a bet on what that looks like over the next 5 years, and it could be make or break for the company, depending on how quickly that evolves, what that looks like in terms of integration with advertising. Where do you see the whole Metaverse, Web 3 part tying in, I guess, from advertising, because they’re gonna create inventory out of this that they can sell to advertisers to convert, and it’s still, to me, a very gray area as to how it works from a mainstream perspective. You’re pretty deep in this space so where do you see it at the moment and how do you see it evolving over the next 3 - 5 years, and the impact that Meta plays in that as a company?

Rich (36:16 - 36:37) - Yeah, awesome question. Honestly, I feel like we’re in such an amazing time right now. We’re right at the beginning of something which is, like, a total, an idea, a concept. People speak about the Metaverse, I mean, it’s not even really a thing, is it? It’s, sort of, this idea, this concept…

Scott (36:37 - 36:45) - Like 2D blocks in a sandbox and… Buying pixelated yachts for $600,000, it’s insane!

Rich (36:40 - 37:41) - Yeah, exactly! Yeah, and because of the attention on it, it just led to this massive potential opportunity to people, but it’s also leading to a lot of people with a lot of doubts and they’re not really sure what’s gonna happen. I personally feel like it's inevitable, like where we’re going with the Metaverse, it’s going to be a very big part of people’s lives. I would not see myself as a Metaverse expert, I’m just a very avid fan and learner, but I do feel like it’s gonna dominate people’s time. I don’t know if it’s gonna be 10 years or 15 years or 20 years, but we will spend most of our time with VR headsets on, that’s honestly what I feel. I feel like we’re, I’m not saying, you know, real-life social situations are gonna disappear, I think that’s what’s scaring people the most. They think it’s gonna go from just, you know, this life to us being in a tiny pod of a room…

Scott (37:41 - 37:43) - It’s a dystopian view of it, right?

Rich (37:44 - 39:09) - Yeah, exactly. But it’s, and I think that’s completely reasonable, and it’s also good that these conversations are happening because we wanna hold people who are gonna control this space accountable, 100%. We don’t wanna just see it just happening and, again, I’m going through all the fears now. I think the other fear is that this is being forced upon us by companies. The Metaverse is a company idea and we’re having to do what they say and things like that, and I don’t think that’s true at all. I think it’s, obviously, there’s always parts that companies can take advantage of for profit and things like that, and that’s why we should hold them accountable, but this is, like, a natural leading from the human design. This is something we want, and I think people focus on the negative maybe a little bit too much so they don’t really focus on the positive things that can come out of this. We’ve already seen from where we were, say, 10, 15 years ago to where we are now - with social networking, we’ve been able to connect with people who are really like-minded like us, business opportunities across the world, things that we would never have been able to do, even with phones and being able to call people. We couldn’t do all that stuff before, and now we can. I believe that Metaverse is gonna be an amplification of that. You’re gonna find more, really specific things that other people are good at, and people enjoy, and people like to build, and you can do it together with them. That’s the element that people don’t focus on, I feel.

Scott (39:11 - 39:59) - Going back to the fear part, on the flip side of that, if you look at what’s happened, I guess, from the political division standpoint in the last 5 years, and the role social media has played in that, we haven’t really seen a time like this, or at least I haven’t, you know, seem to experience it. So the pros and cons, how do we, and this is getting into a hell of a lot of deeper societal discussion, but how do we navigate a society that, I guess, stops some of the division that it’s caused and the platforms and the way the algorithms worked and the echo chambers that it’s causing? It’s such a really deep rabbit hole to go down into what’s good and what’s bad.

Rich (39:58 - 40:43) - Yeah, 100%. I already really know, like, for AR, ‘cause I believe that AR’s gonna be the thing that bridges the gap between where we are now, where the Metaverse is gonna be, and AR’s permeate our lives a lot sooner. It will just take, you know, glasses or something; obviously, we’re all on our phones at the moment. Will that translate into glasses? Is that the way that augmented reality’s gonna be rolled out? Not really sure. But there is a project called Project Aria, which Facebook is either a part of or they’re running. Basically, the whole motivation behind Project Aria is to look at the ethics of AR and how AR can be used for education, how it can be used for medical uses, how it can be used to train employees in dangerous jobs, things like that - they’re all things that people don’t think about. People just think about…

Scott (40:44 - 40:46) - Simulation stuff makes a lot of sense, right?

Rich (40:47 - 41:55) - 100%, yeah. ‘Cause you can have, like, this is a practical example, I can’t remember where I was speaking, I was out in a pub, drinking, talking to someone about this, turned out to be very knowledgeable, but they were saying, like, you know, AR and Metaverse can be something where, you know, you have a lesson from Stephen Hawking in your classroom, you have, like, a music lesson from Beyoncé, you know, all of these things that can be this thing where you can really connect with something really, really powerful, and it can permeate everybody’s life in sort of that respect like that. That’s something that people aren’t really thinking of, of course, and it’s just, yeah, I think there’s a lot of positives from it, but there definitely should be, people should be, companies should be held accountable for, like, how this is gonna control people a little bit. So, yeah, I think that Project Aria, there needs to be more than that, but you know, I think that people really do dictate, for the most part, how things are gonna roll out. So, as long as we’re not just gonna be asleep and we’re outspoken about things like this, then we won’t get this dystopian thing everyone’s, sort of, fearing.

Ray (41:55 - 42:30) - With this space, I think this is the first time that I felt like it’s changing so fast that, to keep up with it, it’s a non-stop job, just reading. It’s just, like, so fast. Every time, there’s a new project out, there’s a new update, this company’s taking it on. I guess, the question I wanna ask you Rich is, how would you advise brands, or any eCommerce brand that listens to this podcast, that they stay up-to-date on AR and, also, ‘cause, like, sometimes you need to turn your eye and focus on 1 or 2 things or 1 or 2 sources of truth. What are the sources of truth?

Rich (42:30 - 43:33) - So I’m subscribed to 2 email lists, which I find really useful. One’s AR Insider, and then there’s another one, which I can’t remember the name. It’s called Meta-something. There’s a few high-profile, sort of, newsletters that are really useful getting the information from. There’s, honestly, not a lot out there in this, sort of, space at the moment. I think it’s good to look towards what the big brands are doing so, you know, like, Dolce & Gabbana just did an AR catwalk, like a gallery, basically. Look towards what they’re doing because I feel like that’s gonna be a potential norm in the future. Another thing, H&M did, there’s a concept idea for a Metaverse H&M store and things like that. You can, sort of, look, you know, LinkedIn is actually a really good place for this, Twitter, of course. If you’re into NFTs, Twitter is a gold mine, literally.

Scott (43:33 - 43:35) - Crypto Twitter, man.

Rich (43:35 - 44:35) - If you can get… yeah, exactly. If you can follow the right people, and there’s really not a lot of people in this space, then there’s a lot of juicy information. We post a lot of content about augmented reality, marketing specifically, so yeah, definitely follow us. We do a lot of what’s been done, what’s been done now, what has been done previously, and what has been done, we can see potentially happening in the future, based on the sort of data we’re seeing. Also, giving lots of examples and free tidbits for people to, like, run these things themselves and how to, sort of, get started and where to look for information. So, I think, honestly, I think the short answer, long story short would be, wherever you find information that inspires you and gives you a really give good impression of what’s happening in AR, I’d say, stick to it and look in that circumference of different people following them and things like that - Twitter, LinkedIn, and newsletters. They’re probably the best places for now.

Scott (44:35 - 45:04) - Rich, thanks so much for coming on, man! It’s just such an interesting space to be thinking about, and it’s gonna evolve so quickly over the coming years so I think we’d be able to revisit this pretty regularly and get some updates. You’ve got AdWorld coming up, you’ve got a lot of projects happening - if people wanna get in touch with you and learn a little bit more around what you guys do in terms of content creation and the AR space, or checking you out in AdWorld, what’s the best place to get in contact with you?

Rich (45:04 - 45:59) - Yeah, definitely, yeah. Check out AugmentedHype(dot)com, that’s our site. Attached to all our socials - Augmented Hype on Instagram, on Facebook. We also have Augmented Reality Ad Strategies, so AR Strategies on Facebook, that’s a free group you can join in now. That’s where we share, like, examples of AR ads, some sort of cheat sheets as well, we just shared for, if you wanna start your own ads and things like that, all the steps you need. I mean, I know, I like to talk about this stuff as you can tell, I’ve been talking a long time, but it’s amazing. If you’re interested in chatting, we can just chop it up on Messenger, I’m happy to do that. Yeah, later on in May, I’ve got AdWorld, which I’m speaking at. And also, in September, this has definitely been confirmed, I mean it has been confirmed, I guess, I’ll also be speaking at GeekOut in late September as well.

Scott (45:58 - 46:03) - Beautiful, nice! We’re big fans of GeekOut.

Rich (46:00 - 46:12) - Yeah, always awesome, both of those so I’m really excited about them. It’s been amazing. I really appreciate you guys having me on, it’s been really cool to talk to you guys.

Scott (46:12 - 46:16) - Our pleasure. Rich, thanks so much for coming on, man! Ray, we’ll see you next week.

Ray (46:16 - 46:17) - Yup.

Scott (46:16 - 46:17) - Thanks, guys!

46:18 - 47:13 - Episode Outro
Scott (46:18 - 47:13) - Thanks again for tuning to this episode of the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast. I hope you got a ton of value out of this episode and if you did, we’d love for you to leave us a review on your platform of choice and help us reach as many people as we can. Now, if you’re a brand founder, an eCommerce entrepreneur, or an in-house marketing manager looking to accelerate your growth this year, reach out to us at Right Hook Digital. We’re a performance branding agency and we specialize in partnering with eCommerce brands to help them hit their growth goals.

People on this episode

Ray Johnston

Host

Scott Seward

Host