Ford promotes Grand C-MAX with augmented reality outdoor campaign

Paul Milligan, February 21, 2011

Ford of Britain has launched an augmented reality campaign at selected shopping centres nationwide featuring the 7-seat Grand C-MAX car on JCDecaux Innovate’s mall six-sheet screens. The campaign allows people to handle and explore miniaturised 3D ‘virtual’ models of the cars on screen and in the palm of their hand.

Ford is promoting the new Grand C-MAX with an augmented reality outdoor campaign

The campaign, created by Ogilvy & Mather in London and digital production company Grand Visual, allows users to interact with the car by holding their hands up to the screen. Virtual buttons allow the user to choose the colour of the car, open doors, fold the seats flat, turn the car 360 degrees and select demos of the car’s key features such as Active Park Assist.

Rather than using a printed marker or symbol as a point of reference for interaction, the user interface is based on natural movement and hand gestures allowing any passerby to immediately start interacting with the screen content. A Panasonic D-Imager camera measures the users real-time spatial depth output and Inition’s augmented reality software merges this real life footage with the 3D photo-real Grand C-MAX on screen.

The campaign was planned and booked by Mindshare and Kinetic and will run for two weeks at Bluewater, Greenhithe; Bullring, Birmingham; Metrocentre, Gateshead; St David’s, Cardiff; Princess, East Kilbride and in Westfield, Derby.  This campaign from Ford follows on from their SMAX ‘Ice Climber’ activity last year which also eschewed traditional billboards in favour of more immersive technologies which allow consumers to interact more intimately with the brand.

Mark Simpson at Ford said: “Using live interactive outdoor campaigns is a great way to really engage with the audience in a way that is not possible with static posters. This has enabled us to create a targeted and tactical campaign that is relevant and fun to use.”