The new Healthy Choice “Bite Box” campaign is fully integrated across TV, Print and Web, and the purpose is to encourage trial-use of their new Frozen Meals and Fresh Mixers. This campaign continues to play off of the concept that Julia Louis Dreyfus’ agent is trying to convince her to be the spokesperson for Healthy Choice and he’s always coming up with new “clever” ideas that she thinks are stupid. Yada, yada, you check out the site, download a coupon, and give Healthy Choice a try. The augmented-reality (AR) section can be launched from the bottom-right tab (“Fly Your Own Balloon”) and it requires that you download a one-page document with a special image that activates the experience. Screenshots are also included below.

This particular application of AR has been slowly making its way into the limelight lately. The United States Post Office (yes, you read that right) recently released a new AR box simulator that is actually quite useful in determining a shipping box’s dimensions before you buy one. And just last week Samsung presented AR technology at the IFA conference in Berlin to show potential customers how the new LED 7000 series television would look in their home (video here and here).

We wanted to learn a little more about the challenges and opportunities ahead for this type advertising, so we reached out to Adam Hollander, one of the minds behind the Healthy-Choice campaign and Sr. Producer of Agency Operations in Sapient’s New York office. Adam told us that:

“At Sapient, we’re seeing more and more of our consumer brand clients request concepts that incorporate Augmented Reality. The challenges we currently face in AR development are bandwidth and processing power of the end-user’s actual device. Our designers and developers are constantly pushing the boundaries to balance production quality with performance and accessibility.

As the novelty of the technology fades, a successful AR concept will need to be truly relevant to both the brand and audience. Sapient is well positioned for this future demand and stands out from other agencies with smart creative + strong technology.”

The “creative + strong technology” remark is in line with what the firm’s Chief Creative Officer, Gaston Legorburu, has been saying lately about the need for an agency to respond to the evolving needs of large advertisers by combining creative, marketing, and technology under one roof to generate the most possible value for clients while reducing costs significantly. Sapient’s acquisition of Nitro this summer is certainly adding some more seasoning to that value proposition in the form of SapientNitro.

Before augmented-reality scenario:

With augmented-reality:

Tweet

One recent example is Yelp’s new iPhone app, in which a view of a crowded New York street is combined with restaurant reviews. Another example is the upstart company Layar, which mashes up several sources of web-based data with the grid of the “real world”.

There’s a problem though… For consumers, the augmented-reality experiences is explicitly linked to iPhones and Android phones. This really limits the experience to a small subset of individuals, most of whom are early adopters.

But there are a few people working to break augmented reality outside the phone. MIT’s Media Lab is working diligently to bring a better device to market and the project leader, Patti Maes, shared the capabilities at a recent TED conference. “Sixth Sense” is a real-life prototype of augmented reality. This approach uses off-the-shelf items (phone, projector, mirror, and camera) and has some very interesting implications. Imagine going to a book store and while you are perusing through a book, the augmented reality device projects a book review from Amazon to aid in the purchasing decision.

Another potential direction for tech-enhanced reality comes from Jonny Chung Lee at Carnegie Mellon University, and he shares it via a YouTube video that has been viewed over seven-million times. His approach generates a full-3D experience and involves only a few tweaks to a stock Nintendo Wii. Not sure why Nintendo hasn’t picked up on this yet. To be fair, Lee’s idea lives more within the virtual-reality (VR) space, but it would be fascinating to see a mash up of VR and AR.

Update: A team of engineers has brought augmented reality to the game of pool (as well as a pool-playing robot):

Tweet