In the Driver's Seat

It’s finally happened. Print and marketing firms are incorporating augmented reality (AR) into their marketing tool kits. Not just for fan engagement and brand building, but as a business problem-solving and revenue-driving solution. Far from AR competing with print, it’s driving it.

Take the example of PaperJax, an AR agency in Green Bay, Wis. PaperJax was started earlier this year by Jon Bootz, a seasoned salesman for Brown County Graphics (BCG), along with his wife, Jane. Bootz describes PaperJax, not as a marketing or print agency, but as an AR agency, because all of its services are wrapped around the unique solutions that AR brings.

Why Augmented Reality?

Having worked in the print industry for 28 years, 17 of them with Brown County Graphics, Bootz knows his clients well. He also knows where AR can bridge gaps and solve business pain points that print and digital marketing cannot do alone.

Bootz has been fascinated by AR for nearly a decade. For a long time, however, the software was clunky and difficult to use. The majority of implementations were by large companies for entertainment and brand building, not for direct revenue generation. Gradually, large companies like IKEA began adopting AR for in-home product visualization, but AR still required a heavy technical lift. It wasn’t ready to meet the needs of smaller companies like Bootz’s clients. Plus, robust AR was app-based, and users just didn’t want to download more apps.

“Then one day, one of my clients approached me. They said, ‘I know you’ve been chasing augmented reality for a long time. Did you ever get there?'’’ Bootz said. “At that time, Ricoh had just started partnering with RealityBLU through their Professional Services division. Brown County Graphics has been a long-time Ricoh customer, so that opened my eyes to a whole new way to approach augmented reality.”

The RealityBLU platform offered by Ricoh is not app-based. It is part of a larger market shift toward WebAR, or AR scenes accessed through a mobile browser. With WebAR, augmented reality scenes can be accessed by any user with a mobile phone via QR Code or hyperlink. Plus, WorldViewAR is easy enough for a smart start-up company with no technical AR experience to use. All they need is an iPhone, a 360º camera and a green screen.

Bootz was sold. He purchased a license and launched PaperJax earlier this year. Bootz handles the sales and business development. The graphic design and print work is handled by Brown County Graphics.

Building Out a Book of Business

To build his book of business, Bootz started with his BCG client base. He recognized common business pain points that could be addressed in similar ways using augmented reality. This allowed him to develop vertical market solutions and go to each client with a plan.

Take the example of Sonny’s Pizzeria. In the past, printed rack cards were an important part of Sonny’s business. With inflation around food prices, however, Sonny’s had stopped printing rack cards because of the continual fluctuation in pricing. Bootz suggested reprinting the cards, but saving the pricing to be viewed through an AR scene.

Now Sonny’s Pizzeria has a rack card that will, as Bootz likes to say, “knock people’s socks off.” On the front of the card is an QR Code (which Bootz calls an AR code) that allows them to place a holographic twin, or holotwin, of the owner, Jason Estes, in the room with them. After enabling camera permissions, the viewer anchors the holotwin on a flat surface in front of them (desk, floor). Estes’ holotwin then appears in front of them, pizza paddle in hand. He talks directly to his audience, putting a face and a personality on what would otherwise be any other pizza joint. Then, from within the experience, customers can click on a button that says, “See Our Award-Winning Menu.” If the pricing changes, PaperJax simply updates it on the back end in the AR scene.

The holotwin also includes three other buttons: “Call us,” “Order online” and “Directions,” which launches Google Maps from the user’s location to Sonny’s.

What a Website Alone Can’t Do

Couldn’t Sonny’s owner keep his pricing updated by sending people to the website? Yes, but the AR component adds functionality that a website can’t. It allows Sonny’s to add buttons so people can respond to the call to action from within the scene itself. This protects the shop from losing viewers when they go to look at pricing or place an order, and lets Estes track engagement and tie sales back to the experience. It also creates an emotional connection far more powerful than a still image, a video or a website can do.

This, Bootz says, is the key difference between AR codes and QR Codes that lead to video.

“First, it lets people see Jason’s personality,” Bootz said. “After engaging with the holotwin, they don’t just want pizza. They want pizza from this guy. Plus, because the holotwin includes buttons that take them right to the ordering pages, you don’t lose customers like you do when you put a layer between the customer and the ordering process (such as asking them to type in a URL or Google the name of the restaurant).”

Thanks to AR, Brown County Graphics is now printing orders of rack cards again, and they are burning through them quickly.

Bootz took a similar approach with another local restaurant, Buttercup’s Coffee Shop. In addition to creating a holotwin of the owner on the front of its rack cards, Bootz also suggested adding a virtual tour on the back. Potential customers scan the AR code, which takes them to an AR portal that they place, via their mobile phone, in the world in front of them. When they walk towards the door (as seen through their screens), it opens. They enter a virtual 360 tour of the coffee shop, where they can hear the sights and sounds of breakfast in the morning, with employees blending coffee and talking to customers. They can even turn around 360º as if they are actually there. On the screen is a button that says, “Order food.”

Livening Up the Funeral Home Business

Illustrating the appeal of AR to a wide variety of businesses, it is also winning the loyalty of a local funeral home. Malcore Funeral Homes was still printing its forms, business cards and price lists, but it had stopped producing its company brochure. Malcore did invest in a local television commercial, which is running on four local stations, but now Malcore wanted to maximize its investment by expanding its reach.

Bootz made an intriguing suggestion — distribute the television commercial from paper-based channels. Using WorldViewAR, Bootz created an AR holotwin of a television screen on a stand that appears in the room with the viewer. Once the TV stand is placed, Malcore’s commercial immediately starts playing on the screen. This allows viewers to play the ad from any printed material, including Malcore’s own business cards, flyers, brochures and sales sheets.

“The owner was amazed,” said Bootz. “Who has heard of playing a television ad off a printed piece? He loved it and ended up reprinting his brochures and its sales sheets to add the AR code.”

PaperJax has sold similar applications to other clients, including a robotic solutions company, a sports apparel company and an RV sales company.

The Power of Virtual Tours

Holotwins have been a significant business generator for PaperJax, and so have virtual tours. The power of walking into a location, place or time as if you are actually there creates an emotional connection that no other channel can replicate.

One PaperJax customer, Young Automotive, is using AR to challenge the idea of the traditional auto repair shop. First, it invites people to meet the owner, Fred Young, as a holotwin on the front of its rack card. On the back, it provides an AR code leading to a portal that allows them to “walk in” and see how clean and well organized the shop is.

“The experience is so realistic that people think it’s a live stream,” Bootz said. “In fact, one of Young Automotive’s customers kept coming back to the portal over and over to see if her car had been put up on the rack yet. She thought it was a live stream.”

Today, AR-fueled rack cards have become Young Automotive’s number-one source of new business referrals. PaperJax also has coffee shops and Airbnb clients using AR tours to stand out from their competitors on the same racks.

Once a client has created either a holotwin or a portal, it’s not unusual to cross-sell them on the other. Bootz has also created a holotwin for Young’s Automotive’s owner, Fred Young, for example, that he can now add to any of his print materials.

“This is driving business to him in a way that he hasn’t had before,” Bootz said. “Once people meet his holotwin, they think, ‘I like that guy. I like how he talks and presents,’ so there is a ‘schedule now’ button they can click, allowing them to schedule their own auto service right from within the AR experience.”

Young Automotive’s portal experience also includes a map button, which takes viewers right to Google Maps to make it easy for them to find the shop.

PaperJax seems to have found the sweet spot in its local market, and its book business is growing rapidly. This, Bootz insists, isn’t because of AR in itself, but because of the solutions AR enables.

“These are not AR campaigns,” Bootz said. “They are solutions. Augmented reality is simply a tool — a powerful tool, but a tool that allows us to do solutions-selling at its best.”