Long have marketing, public relations and advertising campaigns looked to marry content with real world interactions. It’s just that the potential for this to happen has rapidly increased since the dawn of mass-membership social networks, user generated content and portable and wearable technologies.
In recent times we have seen some stunning examples whereby brands have combined physical actions with digital platforms. High end lifestyle magazine International EXcellence pointed us in the direction of Volkswagen’s latest innovation, an augmented reality car manual. By holding a tablet up like a viewfinder we’re treated to an inside look at VW products, and it even works in real time as the vehicle is being fixed (when there’s something that needs to be fixed). Here’s an example…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2l3VzrkmRY
This, of course, comes after several other AR-based concepts have secured space on our blog. Lest we forget the ‘half-naked app’ U.S. clothing store Moosejaw launched a few years back, allowing people a cheeky peek at its catalogue models in their underwear; a campaign that came around the same time as Webcam Social Shopper cropped up. We’ll let this video explain a bit more about that…

Bringing things bang up to date and Blippar’s self-concocted definition hits the nail on the head:
“Blipp v. & n. blipp-ed, blipp-ing: the action of instantaneously converting anything in the real world into an interactive wow experience.“
There’s a growing demand for such services, which only represents one aspect of this kind of marketing mix- wherein content and the real world feed directly into one another. Take Budweiser’s Christmas campaign for example. Arguably the most crucial season for the drinks industry, this time round the American beer brand is linking Twitter to a knitting machine, which has been modified with a chip to react to tweets using #jumpers4des –  a hashtag relating to ‘designated drivers’, with the firm’s overall message being for people to designate someone to drive home after any festivities.
The more mentions the more jumpers the ‘Knitbot’ will produce, each sporting snowflakes and Budweiser’s classic Clydesdale horses, and these ‘exclusive’ items of clothing can then be won via a Facebook competition. It’s certainly a clever, comprehensive concept for a seasonal marketing push and again evidences our overall point. Which, if still unclear, is that as we approach the end of 2013, and begin looking to the future, it’s only a matter of time before we forget about the difference between what’s on-screen and what’s in front of our eyes. And that’s before anyone even mentions Google Glass, or a brand new invention by a Michigan company called Avegant, which will see images projected directly onto our retinas. Take a look…