When you're creating a marketing strategy for your products, do you ever wish you could bring a flashy digital media campaign right to your customers as they're shopping in stores? With the right augmented reality labels, you can make this ambitious concept a reality.

Augmented reality labels are designed to present digital content to shoppers. They accomplish this feat by using customers' smart devices. Whether through a specialized app or a simple web link accessed via a QR code, AR labels deliver photos, videos, animations or extra reading materials.

All this added information can add context, appeal and excitement to your products, delivering far more content than you can print on a two-dimensional label. The concept of AR labeling has already started catching on, and your brand could be the next to climb aboard.

What's the State of the Augmented Reality Label Market?

Forays into AR label design have largely been taken on by beverage brands. Australian wine producer 19 Crimes won early media attention for its use of a living label app to bring its augmented reality wine label series to life and tell stories from history. After that, Jones Soda Co. put AR labels on its soft drinks to promote artists, athletes and others who exemplified the brand's values.

The blog of tech company Aircards listed a few more recent examples: A beer brand that animated its lightning-themed can, another that saluted the Dodgers after they won the World Series, a whiskey distillery that allowed customers to access functional maps and compasses when scanning its labels. Across these diverse types of label features, there's one common thread: the AR features make the labels more interesting than they would be without them.

Therein lies the true value of augmented reality labels. When you're selling a product in a busy market segment such as wine, beer or spirits, you need a way to make your company stand out from the pack through wine labels, beer cans or spirits bottles.

AR packaging fits that theme. The Aircards blog pointed out that not only does an animated beer label attract eyes in stores, but it can even become a talking point after purchase: A consumer may be more likely to bring a product to a party if it has an AR label as a built-in talking point.

What Are Your Options for Augmented Reality Label Features?

When it comes time to design AR promotional labels for your brand, you have several choices to make, both about how you want users to access the extra content, and the form that content will take. As with all decisions regarding label design, the right choices will reflect your brand identity and influence ideal outcomes.

For your access method of choice, you can use:

• Your own AR app: This custom app lets users interact directly with your product labels. With the app open, they can view your product labels through a smartphone camera and see extra content, such as animations that make the design look like it's moving. While the need to download a specific app limits your audience, the rich content you can create is exciting for users.
• Web AR through a QR code: This method takes users to a website that provides extra content via a scannable QR code. While it may be less impactful immediately than seeing animations in a custom app, it has an advantage: Smartphones today can read QR codes without any extra downloads.

As for the types of content you can offer with these codes, you can choose from options such as:

• Animated label content
• Promotional videos
• Games and activities
• Extra information such as brand stories and recipes
• Links to the company website
• … and much more

What Makes an Ideal Augmented Reality Label Printing Partner?

When choosing a label printing company to produce your brand's augmented reality labels, you need a partner that can match high-quality custom labels with advanced AR technology. This is why Lighting Labels is the ideal match for your brand's AR label strategy.

Lightning Labels has spent over two decades helping companies with their custom product labels, and has recently added augmented reality technology capabilities to ensure businesses have all the high-tech assistance they need to stay relevant to their audiences.

Working with Lightning Labels on AR labels means you get all the hallmarks of digital printing — fast turnaround times, flexible order sizes and crisp visual quality — mixed with the infinite potential of AR content.

Request a free quote today to see what these labels can accomplish for your brand.