We continue our preview of the finalists in each of the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards categories today with a look at the Most Effective Mobile Augmented Reality Campaign/Solution.

The first nominee is Auto Trader and We Love Mobile for their Goodwood Festival of Speed campaign. This focused on an Augmented Reality (AR) racing game created for the event, as part of Auto Trader’s official Goodwood Festival of Speed app.

The game used stunning 3D graphics to bring the famous Goodwood hill climb to life in glorious detail and allowed up to four players to compete against each other at the same time. It included three Lotus cars, which offered great exposure to the Lotus brand, which was the event sponsor this year.

There were some ambitious targets for the app in terms of the number of app downloads, app dwell times, games opened and games played, all of which were exceeded.

Next up is La Redoute for its Street Shopping app. This used geo-location, along with AR  functionality, to bring virtual shops to the 10 biggest French cities, as well as treasure hunts, with more than 370 gifts from the retailer’s new collection up for grabs in 56 cities around France. Users could win prizes by finding hidden virtual objects, or browse products in an AR environment, while in those locations.

The campaign created a real buzz among La Redoute’s customer base, with more than a third of social media conversations around the brand during the campaign focusing on Street Shopping.

Also nominated in this category are Samsung Mobile, Cheil and Mobile 5 for the Samsung: Take Part 2012 app. This was released to support Samsung’s involvement in the London Olympics and combines Olympic-themed Augmented Reality (AR) games with an interactive map of the main Olympic venues, all beautifully realised.

The games included Leaderboards for individuals and for the countries they played for, in order to capture the spirit of “Everyone’s Olympics”. Users could also challenge their friends, and with the app available in eight languages, a rich media ad campaign using over 1,000 different banners was deployed to attracts users from around the globe.

There were some ambitious targets set for the app, including 500,000 downloads, 2m app engagements; gaining 250,000 new Facebook fans, and increasing visits to Samsung’s gigital properties by 50 per cent. All of these were smashed, with more than double the targeted number for each KPI – a tremendous achievement.

Free magazine Stylist and image recognition firm Blippar are nominated for the Stylist Olympics Issue. Published on 25 July 2012, the magazine featured 22 pages of interactive content, accessed via the Blippar app. The cover featured a photo of Team GB’s synchronised swimming team, which turned into a video when the image was ‘blipped’. Other AR treatments included an updating Olympics medal leader board; the opportunity to wear and share outfits from a fashion shoot and try out different hair looks; recipes to download; the opportunity to vote on the opinions expressed by columnist Lucy Mangan; and a number of items that readers could click to buy using the Blippar app.

In the seven days post publication, more than 28,500 unique users – 7 per cent of the magazine’s total readership – used Blippar to unlock the pages. On average, each person blipped 5.8 times each, which equates to 166,000 blipps in total.

The next contender in this category is Volkswagen and Agence .V.  for the Virtual Golf Cabriolet app. The app serves up an AR experience of the Golf Cabriolet, which is delivered both to iPads in dealer showrooms, and to users’ phones and tablets, triggered by a marker used on print advertisements and other marketing materials.

Via the AR experience, users can rotate the vehicle, and change the colour of the bodywork and the style of the wheel rims. They can also take a photo of the vehicle, and share it via email or social media. At the time of entry, the app had been downloaded more than 22,000 times.

The final contender in this category is XS2TheWorld and McCann Erickson for their Discover Hong Kong AR app. This offers and interactive, AR-powered guide to this most vibrant of cities. Users can explore the city and its attractions simply by holding their phone in front of them. The app includes over 7,000 hotspots, and to avoid data roaming charges, all the app content is available offline. The application has been downloaded more than 80,000 times in its first year.

Another very strong category then. The winner will be unveiled at the Awards Ceremony, which takes place on 29 November at the London Film Museum on the site of County Hall on South Bank, a stones throw from the London Eye.

To book your place at the event, contact Lisa Slavin by email or telephone +44 (0) 20 7183 5285. Individual seats cost £250; a table of 10 costs £2,150.

The 2012 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards are sponsored by  Openmarket, 7Digital, Celtra and Propel. To find out more about how to get your business or brand involved, contact John Owen by email or telephone on +44 (0) 77696 74824.