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Pepsi Max Shocks and Delights Londoners With Augmented Reality Stunt

Authors: Jessica Gioglio Jessica Gioglio
Posted Under: Social Media
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Picture this: you’re waiting for the bus and in the middle of a busy London street and a tiger walks right up to the bus stop window and stares you down. What would you do?

You’d probably start to panic, right? Maybe consider making a run for it?

Then, just as quickly as the tiger approached you, it turns to enter the bus stop and quickly disappears. Just as you start to breathe a sigh of relief, you realize that you’ve been “punked.”

What happened?

The experience is the result of a new augmented reality campaign from Pepsi Max. Leveraging stunt-like experiences like a prowling tiger, a meteor crashing, an alien tentacle grabbing people on the street, the bus stop window serves as a scarily realistic screen to bring these scenarios to life.

Branded by Pepsi Max as the “Unbelievable Bus Shelter,” the video was shared on YouTube on March 20th and now has over 3 million views. The initiative is part of Pepsi Max’s Unbelievable #LiveForNow campaign, where the company aims to bring its fans the unbelievable through various feats and experiences.

As seen in the YouTube video, the experiences were intended to be brief and many resulted in a positive reaction after the viewer realized what had happened. While this campaign was temporary, the video serves as the perfect vehicle for Pepsi Max to share the story and spirit of how people react to the seemingly unbelievable occurrences. The success also indicates that Pepsi could potentially take this campaign on the road to other cities and countries.

The campaign also serves as a reminder to companies that augmented reality can be successfully used both creatively and practically to add an experiential component to their marketing program, whether its in-store, at an event, or through out-of-home advertising.

One good example is LEGO’s “Digital Box,” which used augmented reality to showcase a 3-D model of the LEGO set by scanning the box, with the goal of making purchase decisions easier. Forever 21 also notably created an augmented reality billboard in Times Square with agency Space150 staring a model snapping photos of shoppers outside of the store in real-time and even virtually picking people up out of the crowd to capture shoppers attention.

Have you seen any good examples of companies using augmented reality? Share them in a comment below!

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