When someone hands you a business card, what do you do with it? Do you jot a quick unintelligible note about where you met that person? Do you have a side pocket you put all the cards in together? What would you do with that card if you could point your phone at it, anytime, and the card would come to life? Or tell you a story? How many people would you show? How many times would you pull that card out to engage?

The answer, is a lot. And if there were on-screen options after you watched that video or heard that story, your chances of pushing those buttons is massive too, especially in that moment where your imagination and interest are fully engaged in such a fun way.

Augmented Reality Comes to Life

We’ve been hearing about Augmented Reality for awhile now, and for much of that time, while it sounded fun and futuristic, the real-life applications just weren’t there, not for everyday people anyway. Michelle Calloway started as a graphic designer but when she saw AR, the possibilities ignited her. Today she is the founder and CEO of Revealio a marketing company using augmented reality as a marketing tool for small businesses, authors, creators anyone wanting to tell a deeper story or make a bigger connection.

What is AR?

Let’s break down the basics first. Revealio’s Augmented Reality is image based recognition where they have trained software to recognize that image and and overlay virtual content over top of it when viewing through an augmented reality lens. In the case of Revealio, the lens is a smartphone, because everybody has one.

What Exactly Can Be Transformed?

Business logos, business cards, a design, recent headshots, book covers… the image options are endless, as are the options for augmenting virtual content attached to those images. Whether you want a video, a story, a schematic, again, there are so many options. I can only imagine if I had this technology to demo new product designs or prototypes. The engagement would have been unbelievable.

Organic Conversions Are Hard to Come By

We’ve talked about all the noise out there, in terms of online, and business competition. Everyone is fighting for your time. And the thing about grabbing people’s interest in this way is that it’s organic and it’s a conversation piece, and that alone is very valuable. High-rate conversion happens when people are captivated. You’ve created a window of engagement, influencing them, and then instantly directing them in the moment they want to know more.

This Isn’t Google or Apple

I loved interviewing Michelle Calloway because she isn’t in some space age building on a campus housing 3+million square feet of office space. This is a team of people, passionate about creating a new and seemingly magical way for people to stay connected, feel loved, and express themselves. By marrying the physical world to the virtual world of endless digital content.

Barriers to Entry

Can you imagine a world where you can get information and content on a product, right then and there, just by pointing your phone at it? What could have been a far-fetched fantasy 20-years ago is now possible. Which means there’s an entire market to educate, which Michelle says has been the toughest barrier. I can totally see this, because, even I was a skeptic, until I experienced AR firsthand at a tech conference.

Welcome to the Future

As cheesy as it sounds, a lot of what we once dreamed about, is now happening. What we have here is a marketing tool that taps into all 4 dominant learning styles, engages and converts people at high volume, and leaves them with a story they actually want to share with others, without sacrificing that heartfelt connection that is oftentimes missing from technology. The future of marketing is so cool, thanks to apps like Revealio and the opportunities in Augmented Reality.