INDE's Mobile AR Experience Proves That Business Cards Can Be Still Viable Marketing Tools
Published: July 26, 2019
Even though swimming is one of the most popular sports in the world, it doesn't get much media attention in between Olympics. The athletes have their own challenges too: there are no regular seasons, revenue distribution or social guarantees, not to mention that they enjoy hardly any media or sponsorship exposure. That's where the International Swimming League come into play: their goal is to create a commercially successful team-based competition by introducing a media-friendly format, growing a global audience and attracting sponsors while ensuring fair distribution among athletes, coaches, clubs, federations and the league.
Such an ambitious new initiative requires out-of-the-box marketing assets that push the boundaries of creativity, including business cards. ISL reached out to UK Augmented Reality company INDE, who are no strangers to combining AR with print elements, including product labels or books. The logo on the back of the business card is a marker, that "triggers" a 3D content - a swimmer jumping from the logo into the water - to appear once a user points their mobile device at it.
"From a technical perspective, it was a pretty straightforward project." - told Márton Helényi, Unity Developer of INDE. - "We have chosen Vuforia - an augmented reality software development kit - for marker recognition and we rewrote the logic what happens when the app founds or lost the marker. The most challenging part was to set up the model, the water and all the particles with post-processing effects. Of course, the trickiest part was the water - in AR, where the background is a camera feed, a very few shaders showed us a satisfying result."
"It’s great to have the opportunity to think creatively about how we can help a dynamic new mover in the sports industry. We’re delighted to have been selected by ISL to work with them, and are very happy with the project output" - added Alex Alanson, INDE's COO.