Blend Market Launch – Creating AR effects at Scale | Blend Media

Last week we hosted an event to celebrate the launch of Blend Market at LADBible’s Whitechapel offices.  

We invited along Joe Williams, Immersive Lead at LADBible Group, Francesca Gaymor, Firepit Technology, Warner Music Group and Marc Wakefield, professional AR Creator to discuss using AR Effects for marketing chaired by our very own Damian Collier.

As well as sharing some examples of the immersive projects they have been working on recently, there were two dominant themes from the evening:

The current analytics offered by Snap when creating AR Marketing campaigns provide more insight into users’ engagement compared to Instagram. Joe Williams talked about how LADBible Group considers AR effects as a new way to tell stories from an editorial point of view.  The success of campaigns such as Extinct on Snap has meant they are now speaking to their commercial partners about branded AR experiences.

 However in developing more complex branded AR effects, they would be keen to see Facebook offer greater analytics for them to be able to measure the success of these experiences by including metrics such a dwell time.

Joe also touched upon the power of immersive experiences to bring joy, not just for those in a headset but for the viewers of that content. Their most recent campaign for Three using VR artist in residence Sean Rodrigo was their most well received piece of branded content ever in terms of positive sentiment.

Marc Wakefield, an influential and in-demand AR Creator on the Blend Market platform discussed how branded AR experiences on Instagram and Snap has increased dramatically over the past 6-9 months.  He cautioned brands in jumping in on ‘novelty trends’ such as the current randomiser AR trend but talked about the huge capacity for creativity on the platforms. 

However as with any branded content there’s always a discussion to be had around adding a clients logo to AR effects. He quoted another notable AR creator Dan Moller in saying ‘Filters should be a gift to the users’ so the less brand presence, the better. 

Marc has worked on a number of branded campaigns across Instagram and Snap and spoke about how important it is to get the content right for each platform.

He shared the Slipknot example he worked on recently with WMG where users could select which mask they wanted to wear within the filter. They launched on Instagram and facebook which was perfect for the Slipknot fans.

Francesca at Warner Music Group shared some of her most recent AR filters for artists including Stormzy and Lizzo.

The most successful filters they have created are ones where they have the buy in from the artists themselves who are happy to promote and share the filters. Given the artists are accustomed to using these social platforms anyway, it’s the perfect place to further engage with their fans and give them some social currency. Fans now expect to get even closer to their favourite artists and using AR effects is a great way they can do this.

Francesca also said they are very keen on extending their AR campaigns on TikTok. Currently you can’t publish AR effects on the platform in the UK but you can share them, so as soon as that changes they will definitely be trying it out!

Feeling inspired? If you want to discuss creating an AR branded filter for social platforms, please get in touch at hello@blend.media or visit Blend Market to post your brief.