My fascination with virtual reality dates back to the day that I saw 'The Lawnmower Man'. With technology going forward leaps and bounds and bringing the virtual world to our palms (instead of neon lit, super cooled rooms with suspension gear and shiny wired wetsuits and helmets) augmented reality has taken the digital scene by storm.

Of course, companies are focussing on monetization of content and applying the technology with either smart information like London Underground information, or they are using this as an extension to consumer engagement allowing them to interact with brand mascots.

However, there seems to be a little bit more that can be done with some intelligent planning of campaigns. In order to do this, I think creative application designers need to take a structured approach to information management to unlock the true potential of such a technology.

Consider some of the dimensions of information available to you - Geo and spatial information, the cellular phone is as good as your identity (a lot of companies are specializing in integrating payment systems which will reflect on your telephone bill), an accelerometer, and finally, content. A good campaign will start with what the objective of the campaign really is, and how the target segment is expected to behave or interact with the AR elements.

So let’s take the case of an inspired young woman, inspired by the new SATC release (The author needs to declare at this point that his knowledge about SATC is, if anything, very limited, except he's noticed some of his female friends go on an impulsive shopping spree right after they watched the movie, each time they saw it!) roaming the streets of London, trying to find vintage clothes. She gets to select a genre or period of fashion from her iPhone app and voila, fashion labels specializing in that particular genre or period pop up along Portobello Road, showing her the best places to shop based on her selection.

Let’s take this even 1 step further - let’s say there’s a movie that featured a certain bag that the lead protagonist was carrying. How about we give that bag a barcode so that iPhone users can scan it and save it in an AR wish list. You, the foxy fashionista, get a reminder when you're anywhere close to an aggregation of fashion labels, that the bag is available somewhere near and then you use an app to track the bag down.

So the possibilities are endless for using AR constructively, but I guess information management and cataloguing consumer goods will take a while and it might be expensive. But there's ways around that too - if you're certain your brand will generate enough conversations and interest - let information be crowd sourced and let consumers do the tagging.

As for the boys - I'm already thinking - how about we spot a vintage sports car, get a shot of it, and decide on which beast to go after and from which year. Then let our iPhones do the searching for the sweet rides!

We at Brandmovers are working with such ideas to help brands engage with today's prosumers - if you're interested to find out more about how your brand could use these technologies, then please give us a shout!