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Below is a short interview with Fred Steube – Digital Innovation Manager, Cox Target Media/Valpak. I watched him speak on an interesting panel about Augmented Reality at the DMA2010 conference.

What’s your experience with AR?

Our experience with AR includes a Martha Stewart promotion we did with our Valpak coupon envelope that allowed consumers to see if they won a daily prize and to see daily previews for the Martha Stewart show by holding up the envelope to their webcams.  Additionally, we did a B2B ad campaign in Ad Age and DMNews that showed Marketers what our product offerings are by holding up a AR marker to a webcam and viewing in 3D.

What are your favorite examples of AR?

Favorite AR experience has to be the Toyota example we showed at DMA and the Coke Zero and McDonald’s Avatar promotions. Also the Mini AR campaign.  Anything by Total Immersion (an AR technology developer) is typically very high caliber.

Virtual reality never lived up to consumer’s expectations. Is AR heading in that direction?

AR appears to continue to gain traction along with QR codes, particularly with mobile.  The key there is the location based benefit of seeing content that geographically relevant and relevant to what they are looking for.

The word innovative is overused. What is truly innovative?

Innovative is anything that transcends a current way of doing something by being new.  It should add value to a key stakeholder. It should break molds and be out of the box; something new and impactful. This can be a product or process.