Classic lack of end user understanding here from Weet Bix.
A marketing campaign using augmented reality aimed at early teenagers fell at the first hurdle owing to the myopic vision of those who designed the campaign.
Young All Black fans were supposed to hold a card from their cereal packet up to their webcam to experience their favourite player on screen in 3D. .. all good in theory,
…in practice the promotion involved a lengthy signup, third party app. download and installation plus a browser restart, etc. etc.
Hardly the recipe for a campaign designed to spread by word of mouth.
Trent from Optimal sums it up nicely when he poses the question “did they ever sit down with a 10 year-old and get them to use it?”
Ben Gracewood runs through the ‘experience’ through the eyes of a 10 year old on his blog
… so, why couldn’t the marketing team see it this way?
Design teams make assumptions about their audience, project their own goals and needs onto the project and become too close to their products, losing sight of the big picture.
Usability testing with the target market at an early stage would have identified signup and installation barriers and very likely forced the team to rethink the way the campaign was rolled out. … before it was rolled out. Products are significantly cheaper to correct at prototype stage than post-launch with egg on your face.
Something tells me here that the campaign was pushed through despite its clunky user experience simply because the marketing team were so in love with the concept of augmented reality.
A shame their target market don’t share the love.
