Back in March, Asda partnered with Zappar for an in-store AR (Augmented Reality) Easter Egg Hunt.

The retail-tainment campaign put a floormat at the entrance of stores which, when scanned with the Asda apps AR functionality, triggered an animated Easter Bunny, with whom users could take a photo, and introduced a challenge.

Shoppers were encouraged to find and scan shelf barkers around the store, giving motivation to visit different areas of the store, and exposing them to more products. These triggered another animation, which gave users a letter towards a password, Easter. Once the user had enough letters, they could go to the front of the store and be rewarded with a mask – which itself could be scanned to display a virtual rabbit mask.

“AR is a great immersive technology, but you have to use it in a way that adds value – in this case, for the kids going shopping with their parents – in a way that you couldnt achieve with a non-AR app,” said Zappar platform director Connell Gauld, speaking today at the AR Summit in London. 

In this case, Asda was aiming to add magic to the shopping experience. In such a competitive industry, its vital for supermarkets to find a point of differentiation, and the idea is that by providing a more compelling experience to customers, theyre more likely to come back to an Asda over one of its rivals.

Talking results

“This campaign had a high barrier to entry,” Gauld acknowledged. “The user has to be in store, theyve got to have downloaded the app, and be connected to Asdas wi-fi.”

Nevertheless, the campaign saw good engagement over its single-day run – on hectic Thursday, the last day before the Easter bank holiday. Asda saw 15,000 customers engaging with the app, with 32,000 total interactions – meaning that on average users scanned two markers – with an average engagement time of 90 seconds per interaction.

As for how successful it was at giving customers that magic feeling… Gauld admitted it was a difficult thing to measure. He pointed to consumers sharing their experience on social networks as a good metric, though he didnt share any specific figures.

Overall though, Asda was apparently sufficiently pleased with the results that it will be working together with Zappar on more AR campaigns in the future.