Has it ever occurred to you that visually communicating to an audience is a joy and the results are almost close to magic?

Last week, Philippine telco giant Globe's Augmented Reality (AR) Christmas ad ran in major broadsheets with a colourful 5-part 'Parol' (Christmas lantern) depicting how Filipinos celebrate Christmas in diversity.

The interactive ad allowed the audience to make their own Christmas "parol" and provided instant access for them to share it with their friends in social media. All you need to do is log on to globegetsme.globe.com.ph. Once you're there, look for the AR icon made of three small lanterns located at the lower left corner.

Augmented Reality is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment in which elements are intensified by computer-generated sensory input (like sound, video or graphics). It involves layering of computer-generated imageries of the real world as seen through the camera of a smartphone or tablet computer.

To jumpstart the use of AR in its marketing campaigns, Globe used the technology on its Christmas campaign entitled "Globe Gets Me".

To see how it works, simply follow these simple steps:

1. Look for "Globe Gets Me" print ad in any publication
2. Go to this site: www.globe.com.ph/globegtesme
3. Allow the app to access your webcam
4. Point the black-and-white image code (found at the lower corner of the ad) at your webcam and wait for the image to appear

Tip: Don't point the image too close. You can place the ad on your table and point the webcam down to face the image code so you can rotate it easily.

For digital campaigns, Globe AR is amazing. It can drive visual communicators to various social media freeways via the smoothest, most fascinating visual rendezvous ever.

For those who are using redemption-led strategies like couponing for promotion efforts, Globe AR is a tremendous traffic booster, a fact validated by ABI Research forecast: that market for Augmented Reality will reach US$350 million by 2014, in the United States alone.

At the recently concluded Philippine Advertising Congress, Singapore Press Holdings general manager Geoff Tan observed that the use of AR is already prevalent and widely accepted by the Singapore market.

AR is typically seen and used in events, exhibitions and roadshows, point-of-sale programs, interactive installation, website and digital marketing, and mobile marketing and m-commerce solutions.

With AR, Globe hopes to establish a "more personal engagement and intimate affiliations with brands, immersing them through different senses and forge a more robust interaction with its products and services," said Yoly Crisanto, Head of Globe Corporate Communications.

"Indeed, this is  taking technology a notch higher and we are happy that we have made this milestone in the Philippine advertising industry," she said.

By Roger Pe