The evolution of augmented video

In a recent meeting with a creative agency about a big high street bank that are a client of mine, the agency presented their plans for the bank's enhanced Youtube page. The plans included something that they called 'augmented video'.

I've been familiar with Augmented Reality for a while as I have with stop motion or interactive video. The plans are kind of a mix of the two (but more of an evolution of stop motion video.) I'll be taking a look at this process of evolution in the CSM digital share Club on Friday but thought I'd pen this as a warm-up.

The first video of this kind that I saw was this one from tipp-ex about 2 years ago...

Brilliant. Interactive video that's fun and integrates the product seemlessly. It isn't, however a perfect user experience as it navigates away from Youtube to deliver the functionality but brilliant none-the-less. They also followed it up this year with this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQtai7HMbuQ

The next time I saw a similar kind of experience was this from Only (click through)

You can stop the video in motion, select the clothes that you like the look of and gain more info about them, as well as being able to click through and buy them, of course. There's also some great functionality in the video in which you are prompted to create some actions, like doing up someone's flies (naughty!) and aiding their get-away. This creates a genuinely interactive stop-motion video. Again, the products are integrated seemlessly and the video has enough production value and a tells a good enough story, to keep you watching to the end.The only problem is that it's hosted on a micro-site and isn't very social.

The next evolution was to build the above into Youtube. The first time that I saw this done was by Nike as part of their 'My Time Is Now' Campaign earlier this Summer. This is the online execution of their TVC that aired during Euro 2012. The video is a Digital Sports Marketers wet dream - ambassadors, a brilliant video, product integration, cross-sport promotion and stop-motion functionality to deliver additional content. The clip has delivered 143m views (click to view)

 

The final video that I saw this week, came from the always entertaining, Terry Crews - 'Mr Old Spice'. This video is great. You can interact with the video using your keyboard and they have backed it up with some campaign promotion on their Facebook page (see image below)

Old Spice Muscle Music from Terry Crews on Vimeo.

And so to our high street bank. The plan is to create a Nike-style stop motion video, but when the player or ambassador steps out of the video (as Pep does when clicked on in Nike's vid) further interactive elements will be delivered such as their Twitter feed, additional elements of our digital campaign and options to view archive video content of the player in action. All of this populates as the player addresses the viewer.Sounds awesome. Watch this space for the next phase in the evolution of augmented video...

Let me know if you've seen other cool examples of augmented or stop motion video that I've not mentioned.