Colgate AR Filter
CLIENT
AGENCY
CHALLENGE
Taking a concept provided by Red Fuse as a starting-off point, design and develop an Augmented Reality filter (Instagram and Facebook), offering platform users a delightful and shareable experience they will associate with the brand.
SOLUTION
To start, I gathered a team of top AR pros for development and to be a voice of options and opportunities. Together we considered competition, latest trends, and feasibility. It was clear there was value in exploring some quirky and playful concepts. These ideas (shown below) were presented to the Creative Director for consideration.
Filter Experience
Concept 1: Toony (Ridiculous)
Concept 2: Toony (Playful)
Concept 3: Pop Art
Concept 4: Deformation
Concept 5: Smile Rays
Concept 6: Aura
Concept 7: Synthwave
Concept 8: Movie Poster
Concept 9: Surfing
RESULTS
The agency reported great satisfaction with the creative and digital production.
About Spark AR
Snapchat initially popularized camera effects with the infamous puppy face effect and later the dancing hot dog world effect.
Spark AR is Facebook’s augmented reality creation platform. In August of 2019, Facebook moved out of the beta and released Spark AR to the public – so anyone could make effects and publish them on Instagram. Effects on Instagram receive remarkable engagement, and Instagram is currently prioritizing their promotion.
Augmented Reality is a fantastic way to engage customers and bring them into the experience of a campaign. User-generated content is a natural result of this type of work, and users can widely share a well-executed experience organically.
How Effects are Shared
Organic
When you publish an effect, it lives on your page in the “effects” tab (under the smiley icon). Every time an effect is shared, you see the name of the effect, followed by your profile handle.
Paid
Effects can also be promoted through AR Ads. Currently, these ads can only be run in the Facebook mobile newsfeed (so that when a user clicks on the ad, the AR experience can open the camera on their phone to try it out).
How Users Share Effects
Instagram users can share effects with friends in a few different ways. When they share a story using the effect, the effect name appears in that story (and is clickable).
If provided the preview link, the user can share the link anywhere as it’s a typical hyperlink that drives back to the IG effect directly.
Monitoring Engagement
The Spark AR Hub is where you can monitor how your effect is performing. This snapshot below shows a week’s worth of engagement for an example effect.
Impressions
The number of times an effect has appeared on screen – in stories or posts
Opens
The number of times users have opened an effect in the IG or Facebook camera
Captures
The number of times an effect was captured in a video or photo (does not include live)
Saves
The number of people who took a photo or video with an effect and saved it to their device
Shares
The amount of times an effect is used and shared via stories, posts, or messages
Generating Engagement
Effects can see a spike in usage for many reasons. The most common is when an account with a large following uses the effect in a story. This method works well with smaller accounts too. If many different people share an effect with their audiences, it has a good chance of being viewed by a larger audience.
There’s also the pay-to-play option. Facebook now offers an AR ad format to promote your effects directly in users’ mobile Facebook timelines.
Making a post about the effect on the same profile the effect is on is an effective way to point attention to it. Followers of that profile are already interested in the content on the page, so they’re the natural audience to use and share the effect (and posts last longer than 24 hours).
If there is an influencer marketing plan, you can request influencers include copy – either saying something specific aloud in a video story – or adding a text overlay in a photo/video story. If your effect, for example, prompts a donation every time it’s shared, it would be good to include that copy in a brief for influencers disseminating the experience.
Overview
Augmented reality is not a new medium, but with the limitations put on us with the “new normal” involving less travel and interaction, social AR and shareable immersive experiences are skyrocketing as a new way to express yourself and communicate.
AR is inherently personal. Users are either inserting their likeness or their personal space into the experience and creating deeper connections with the messages and effects.
Authentic UGC is a given because there is no AR effect without the user.