Magical moments for the festival of love — Christmas and AR
Tags: Christmas Ideas, Christmas, AR, Digitalization, Augmented Reality

Christmas Time: the days get shorter, you see the traces of your breath outside, the cities and towns are lit up with fairy lights, and Christmas decorations all around. And of course the highlight of the year is right ahead of us. Christmas, the festival of love. All you need to add some emotional and magical moments to this already emotional day is Augmented Reality.

Regardless of whether it’s for business or pleasure; AR can create festive experiences and add to the contemplative atmosphere of the holiday season in an innovative way.

Merry Augmented Christmas!

And although Christmas is celebrated largely in a traditional way, AR can add an extra magical touch to the moment you all share your gifts, complementing the traditional elements. For example, the nativity figures can be brought to life through AR. Filters that allow you to transform into Santa Claus himself, or take selfies next to him complete the Christmas flair.

What’s more, Christmas cards or Advent calenders can also be enhanced with personalized videos or adorable Christmas videos that are guaranteed to put a smile on the recipients’ faces. Analog, outdated Christmas Cards and postcards are now given a new life and an entirely new personality.

Christmas treasure hunt with AR

Indoor and outdoor spaces can be embellished at Christmas time with interactive “treasure hunts”. Participants can play along by searching the rooms or places for the interactive clues, and scanning them with their smartphones. For example, they can find santa’s missing elves, Christmas gifts, or other festive mascots in an Augmented Reality. After completing the treasure hunt, participants then receive their personal treasures in form of discount codes, or small gifts for example.

This way, brands can create unique experiences that are sure to leave a lasting impression on everyone involved.

Covent Garden London was transformed into one grand AR Christmas experience back in 2016. Over 140 restaurants and stores in Covent Garden joined together to create this unique experience. It was the largest showcase of Augmented Reality tech ever attempted in one place, and it was successful!

Shoppers had to hunt for Santa’s missing reindeer by scanning posters on store fronds and in participating stores. Once they found all the cute reindeer, they would win great prizes! 52% of participants completed the treasure hunt, 30% redeemed an offer, and 24% shared the experience on social media. It’s safe to say it was memorable for all!

Other companies making use of AR technology

The U.S. retail chain Target, for one, has developed an AR app that allows you to project Christmas trees into your own four walls.

When you open the app, an AR icon appears that, when tapped, displays a selection of virtual Christmas trees. Now you are to select a virtual, artificial Christmas tree and place it in the living room into the desired location using AR. This way, you can test in advance, whether the type, height, and width of the tree actually fit and save yourself unnecessary furniture moving if it doesn’t fit after all.

Although you can only test artificial Christmas trees in the Target app, it can also reduce stress for people that are to buy real ones. After all, you can easily imagine what a real tree with the same dimensions and decorations would look like, once you’ve seen the artificial one!

Coca-Cola has also made use of this tech in 2019. The cans of the classic Holiday Edition could be brought to life through Augmented Reality. All that was needed was scanning the can of said edition with the Coca-Cola app for iOs & Android, and a winter wonderland magically opened itself up to the viewer, completing it with Coca-Cola’s signature polar bears and, of course, Santa Claus in his red suit.

Aside from Coca-Cola, Starbucks also enchanted its users with a wintry AR application in 2019, just in time for Christmas.

Starbucks added Augmented Reality to their Holiday edition cups. To do so, they created an AR Instagram filter called “Holiyay”, which was available to try exclusively on Starbucks’ Instagram profile.

The filter is an image tracker that could be used to scan Starbucks’ Christmas cups. The filter could be applied to several differently sized and different looking Holiday edition cups, and opened the gates into a magical Christmas world: Christmas buildings of starbucks with Christmas decorations, lovely Christmas messages, dreamy falling snow or an interactive Christmas-themed game with bursting bubbles. All this and even more impressive features available to the user.

Augmented Reality at Christmas time

Last year, a study by the University of Federal Armed Forces in Munich showed that Augmented Reality applications deliver impressive results, especially at Christmas time, and that brands can benefit enormously from AR, particularly during Christmas Season.

“Augmented Reality is always particularly well suited when it comes to personal and emotional content. Christmas is certainly that kind of topic”, says Prof. Philipp Rauschnabel from the Chair of Digital Marketing and Media Innovation at the University of Federal Armed Forces in Munich. The vacation and Christmas seasons offer the perfect opportunity to get festive, have creative campaigns going. This time of the year, people really want to get into the holiday spirit and be enchanted.

We really can not wait for Christmas to finally get here! How about you?