Augmented Reality: Five Ways to Connect Families Over the Holidays

This holiday season family and friends are in our thoughts more than ever. The global pandemic has revoked our holiday plans and traditional routines, but one thing that hasn’t changed is our universal desire to connect with friends and loved ones.

Geenee WebAR unlocks the potential of the spatial web to connect people at any distance, place, or time. The holiday season is about the magical spirit of companionship, love, altruism, and celebration. Here are five ways that WebAR, browser-based (no app download required) augmented reality, can make this holiday season positively memorable:

Image Credit: Catchoom

The tradition of giving greeting cards as a meaningful expression of personal affection for another person is deeply ingrained in our culture. In the span of just a couple of weeks, over 61% of the amount of cards sent throughout the entire year will make their way into a mailbox for the Christmas holidays. Written cards enable us to share messages in between the fold of beautiful images, witty prose, and a holiday greeting. Emails accomplish this too, but Americans still send over 2 billion paper Christmas cards each year, while only 500 million e-cards are sent (Hubspot). E-cards and tangible paper cards are sentimental expressions, but both forms of expression are constrained by a 2D surface.

Rather than try to replace cards, we can amplify the experience with WebAR — type a URL or scan an artistic code, then scan the card and launch an immersive personal 3D experience, musical score, and voice-over. Bring physical cards to life with a special holiday message, story, experience, or gift. WebAR can create stunning visual effects, fun surprises and bring unforgettable memories to loved ones this holiday season.

Image Credit: The Superboo

There are already some incredible toys and games on the market that make use of WebAR. Even if the concept of augmented reality is unfamiliar, many will recognize it from the success of Niantic’s Pokémon GO, a mobile AR game that in 2017, attracted 60 million monthly active users, 12 million of them who used the app on a daily basis.

Whether it’s a big get together or a quiet Christmas, WebAR makes it easy to share and play anywhere, and anytime. Release a WebAR expansion pack to your game or toys that will keep content fresh over the holidays and at the top of mind for kids as they enter the new year, swapping holiday stories with one another. Variable experiences can be launched in the morning, noon and evening, or even dynamically react to a user’s mood.

You might think that making a WebAR game or toy experience sounds like an impossible task to do just a few weeks out from December 25th, but check out this simple activation that our technology-powered for Star Wars, which is filled with new content, fun facts, movie trailers, quizzes and more:

When it comes to the holidays, a lot of things are spur of the moment and last minute. However, WebAR works perfectly in the holiday rush. There’s no need to download an app, and content can be accessed and shared via a simple URL.

For example, enable your audience to connect with one another by powering interactive gingerbread houses that come to life with special messages, effects, photos, and interactive opportunities that capture the moment. These multi-user experiences can connect people from all over the world in a flurry of excitement.

Alternatively, give the gift of virtual travel, and teleport your audience to scenic places around the world. Lancôme presents an incredible selection of holiday treasurers from the virtual advent calendar, holiday beauty boxes, and virtual try-ons, brought to you from Paris. With WebAR, connect your global audience with a single click.

Image Source: Lancôme

Photos capture memories that stay with us for a lifetime. Each image forever holds the feeling of that incredible moment. Just like the physical card, photographs are another medium that is dear to our culture and storytelling heritage.

Brands like Prynt have effortlessly bridged the gap between the physical and digital worlds by bringing photos to life and supporting unique crafting and scrapbooking across realities.

WebAR is an extension of this, using the phone as a portal, a looking glass into a moment with overlaid special features such as snow, lights, stars, flurries, snowmen, and reindeer that can prance around your friends and family.

This year, WebAR can bring a new dimension to photography, a medium that brings generations, young and old, together across time and space.

Last but not least, this Christmas, turn everything into a fun unwrapping experience with a surprise in each box. Transform objects into presents and unwrap the world with the joy of a holiday. Bring gift wrapping paper to life by animating colors and characters. Delight and surprise young audiences, enable them to discover incredible stories in the paper itself.

Christmas “rapping” wrapping paper!

Most importantly, we want to hear from you. What is your AR marketing strategy? How can we help you to enhance digital marketing campaigns with WebAR? How would you use AR to connect families this holiday season? You can reach the Geenee team at contact [at] geenee [dot]me.