Wellington Zoo – Augmented Reality

30 May 2010, Posted by admin in Featured, Portfolio, 0 Comments

MOBILE – PRINT

Description:
Wellington Zoo wanted to publicise their ‘Close Encounters’ tours that let you get even closer to the animals. With a limited budget they wanted to do something novel that would generate PR. The solution was to use augmented reality technology for the first time commercially. This technology made it possible to view a three-dimensional zoo animal on a print ad  simply by using the live camera feed on a mobile phone.

Users were invited to download software to their mobile and when the phone’s camera was placed over the print ad, the software rendered a 3D image of a bear, giraffe or cheetah on the user’s mobile screen. The user could view the 3D animal from all angles simply by moving their mobile phone around the marker image in the print ad.

The ads, placed in a major newspaper, reached 750,000 people, leading to a 32% growth in visitors at Wellington Zoo.

Role:
As the lead producer I was in charge of organising the Auckland creative and print production team and liaising with the Wellington Accounts team. I also managed two suppliers.

Challenges:
With 11 days only before the first print ad was booked it was a very compressed timeline to pull of a world first on a commercial basis. To complicate matters the client and account management team were in a different city to me and I had two suppliers to organise – with occasional language problems thrown in as well as one of them being in yet another city. 11 days, 3 apps (one for each animal), 3 cities, 2 spoken languages, 2 suppliers, limited budget..now that’s a challenge for a producer.

AWARDS:

New Zealand Direct and Interactive Marketing Awards 2007
Gold – Innovation
AWARD 2007
Bronze – Mobile Marketing
Buzz Awards 2007
Print award
Cannes 2007
Finalist