Converse with Augmented Reality

Augmented reality truly took the world by storm almost overnight by Pokémon Go and now is a popular trend in digital marketing especially in the fashion and retail industry. Augmented reality has been introduced by fashion brands such as Converse as well as fashion retailers such as Topshop in a very similar way. The technology used within the augmented reality is often introduced through their own branded apps that are free to the consumer.

Converse, through their official app, allows their audience to use their phone and camera to project the converse shoes onto their feet showing how they would look with the shoes on. The ability to save the photos and also share them gives great benefits to the consumer when in their buying process as they can compare how the shoes look better than ever before without actually trying them all on. The technology is revolutionary to the consumer and their behaviour when buying fashion and retail and therefore has been exploited by many brands.

The main benefits to Converse are not all obvious making the use of the technology extremely clever. Consumers using this technology have to download the converse app which is the first benefit to the brand. The app being increasingly downloaded by consumers allows converse to give push notifications directly to their phones creating the most personal and direct marketing tool currently in the industry. The use of the app creates Converse their own personal database giving them fine detail into how their potential customers are shopping for their shoes, what they are interested in and looking at and therefore are all useful in launching further integrated marketing approaches.

Topshop therefore are very similar in their approach in introducing augmented reality as they have created their own AR dressing room. Consumers can try on clothes with just the use of the camera in-store and can see whether products and styles suit them at just the click of a button and therefore access both the same benefits for the consumers and the retailer. It will be interesting to see how augmented reality can be developed even further as the speed of advancement within this field of technology is incredible.