- Another space that I think you're gonna'
wanna' watch is Augmented Reality.
Augmented Reality has
actually been around since
the 60s, it really only became popular,
God help us, when Pokemon
GO came on the scene.
Did anyone here play Pokemon GO? Come on.
Yeah, for like an hour,
right? Yeah, exactly.
Pokemon GO was enormous,
and this guy can't even
catch God-damn Zubat, like honestly,
those are the easiest things
to catch in the world.
Look at this idiot. Aww, it stopped.
I could have watched that
forever. Zubats, come on, buddy.
These things were incredibly popular,
the Pokemon GO apps, it was actually,
now we're gonna' find
out who the real nerds
in the audience are, okay,
did anyone actually play Ingress?
Oh, two people, yay, my people are here.
Ingress was the app that
Pokemon GO is based on.
It was a much better app,
and they just recently
re-skinned and made Pokemon GO.
But this had enormous impact, for those
of you who remember, during the 12 minutes
Pokemon GO was popular,
enormously popular,
so much so that I had to
put out an emergency email
to all of our shopping center
clients, with the headline
"HOLY CHRIST, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!"
Because all of a sudden
they were getting swarmed
with people playing Pokemon GO.
And about two weeks after I sent this out
the whole thing died.
But the interest in augmented
reality has stuck around.
And what Pokemon GO did
was introduce people to
using augmented reality
through their phones,
and is training a new shopping experience.
That spike there that
you see, the red line
is the previous interest
in augmented reality,
this is a search for the phrase on Google.
This spike is obviously Pokemon GO,
but you can see what happened, right?
Increased interest because of Pokemon GO.
And so, for your customers
in the retail sector
especially, there is an enormous amount
of interest around that, and spending.
This is what some marketers
think it'll look like.
Either through your phone or your glasses
it'll light up products
that your Facebook friends
have recommended, so if they've liked
a particular product, it'll
light that up for you.
It's got a shopping list, it'll ask you,
if it's connected to the
payment system, right,
whether you wanna' use the points
in your wallet, or so on.
These are actually getting
some real-world hybrids
that are connecting social to retail.
This is one of a handful
of gadgets where if you go,
and you've liked the
brand's page on Facebook,
it has a direct connection to this actual,
physical box, that will
change the number to 8673.
And not just for
store-wide, but this level
of influence is being built
through to the product level.
These hangers have Facebook Like counts
for the individual products.
If someone goes on the
Facebook page and clicks
"I like this jacket.", the
hanger will know popularity.
So, when, you don't even
need to rely on your
friends now, what would
be a better experience
than rely the advice of strangers?
Well apparently it can happen now.
Some of these attempts will be misguided.
This is Lowe's' attempt at it.
And this isn't even augmented reality,
this is virtual reality, right.
So they decided to put these holo-rooms
in two of their Toronto stores last year,
they're putting them in 19 of their stores
down in the U.S. this year.
But the problem with this is
it's a lot of floor space,
it's expensive technology,
it requires a Lowe's
representative to be there with someone,
and the graphics are not very good either,
I mean, Pokemon GO has better graphics.
So what you'll begin to see, and probably
have already begun to see, is this shift
away from these big sort of installations,
that are more for PR than
anything, and more into
the buyer's own tablets,
the buyer's own phones.
In the future your customers,
your customers that is,
the retailers at least,
will be focusing less on
bringing people into
their stores, and more on
bring the store to their customers.
This is a great example,
a product called Wayfair.
It uses augmented reality,
right, the difference
in augmented and virtual
is, virtual, it designs
everything for you, augmented is,
it shows you something inside your world,
so it uses the camera, and
it does this, you know,
so you can walk around and see it.
My favorite example is the
sofa, which they're gonna'
do in just a moment.
They basically point it
at the floor where they
want the sofa to be, they
drag it out onto the floor,
and it opens, like a shipping box would.
And then you spin it around.
And of course one tap
and you've bought it.
Once someone finds something they like,
they're gonna' wanna' find
an easy way to pay for it.
The Gap has been experimenting
with this as well.
Alright, in this case, you
have to tell it your body size,
and then you, basically
it's like a catalog.
Just like any other catalog
inside of the real world,
right, you go and you pick
what you want it to be,
and then you can walk around,
and this is done on stage,
so, you know, you're kinda' able to see
a bit of the guy that's doing it.
But he can get right down and turn around
and look at the back,
and look at the front,
and get right up and see the
weave pattern if he wants to.
And this is not just augmented reality,
it's happening already,
some of you may know the
Sephora app, which I tried last week,
much to the confusion of our renovators.
Like, why is Tod trying on
virtual lipstick? Right?
So it's augmented reality again, in fact,
this is kinda' a brilliant
application for it,
It's really the same technology that
Snapchat uses for it's
stickers, I like that one a lot.
Come on, it was pretty, made
me look like a pretty girl.
And some marketers are using
AR as an ad delivery vehicle,
not all with great results,
you know here is just like
hold up the dollar bill in front of you.
So, good brand presence,
good awareness I suppose,
you know, not a lot of
conversion going on there.
And finally, we should talk
about The Internet of Things.
