Esquire goes Interactive with Augmented Reality in latest Issue

Esquire Magazine just came out with an AR-featured (Augmented Reality) issue. David Granger, Editor-in-chief at Esquire, appears in the video above to explain how the technology works. This is an innovative and exciting option for print magazines, because (like I mentioned in the last post) today more than ever, people are getting their information online. So a print magazine can immediately become interactive when you point the QR code to your webcam on your computer. It takes a second or two to recognize the code, and then a world of additional multimedia content is unveiled.

There has been a lot of talk about the interactive advertising initiative. It’s a great idea, and not just because it got a lot of people talking about it and buying the magazine to discover it. It’s mainly cool because that form of traditional media is dieing right now, and they are scrambling to figure out ways to adapt to today’s digital environment. That being said, I see it more as an advertising campaign that includes several viral videos similar to this first one rather than an “enhanced editorial plan.”

The aspect that amazes me the most is the amazing job they’ve done building content with celebrities — who doesn’t love Robert Downey Jr?? Seriously the guy is an incredible actor and has a great personality to build a campaign around. This is the real added value of the initiative and possibly the hardest thing to replicate for other publications and creative agencies.

Tags: Advertising Campaign, Creative Agency

This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Advertising Campaign, Interactive, Social Media, Technology, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.