Pokémon Go introduced millions to AR on smartphones, and retailers raced to experiment: Lowe's built expensive holo-rooms, Wayfair created furniture-placement apps, Sephora added virtual try-on lipstick. The future is AR on personal devices that brings the store to you.
Another space that I think you're going to want to watch is augmented reality. Augmented reality has actually been around since the '60s. It really only became popular— God help us— when Pokémon Go came on the scene. Did anyone here play Pokémon Go? Come on! Yeah, for like an hour, right? Yeah, exactly. Pokémon Go was enormously— and this guy can't even catch a goddamn Zubat. Like, honestly, those are the easiest things to catch in the world. Look at this idiot. Oh, it stopped. I could have watched that forever. Zubats, come on, buddy. These things were incredibly popular. The Pokémon Go apps— it was actually— now we're going to find out who the real nerds in the audience are, okay? Did anyone actually play Ingress? Oh, 2 people. Yay, my people are here. Ingress was the app that Pokémon Go was based on. It was a much better app, and they just basically reskinned it to make Pokémon Go. But this had enormous impact. For those of you who remember during the 12 minutes Pokémon Go was popular, Enormously popular. So much so that I had to put out an emergency email to all of our shopping center clients with the headline, "Holy Christ, what the hell is going on?" Because all of a sudden they were getting swarmed with people playing Pokémon Go. And about 2 weeks after I sent this out, the whole thing died. But the interest in augmented reality has stuck around. And what Pokémon Go did was introduce people to using it through their— to using augmented reality through their phones and is training a new shopping experience. That spike there that you see, the red line is the previous interest in augmented reality. This is a search for the phrase on Google. The spike is obviously Pokémon Go, but you can see what happened, right? Increased interest because of Pokémon Go. And so for your customers in the retail sector especially, There is an enormous amount of interest around that, and spending. This is what some marketers think it'll look like. Either through your phone or glasses, it'll light up products that your Facebook friends have recommended. So if they've liked a particular product, it'll light that up for you. It's got a shopping list. It'll ask you if it's connected to the payment system right, whether you want to use the points in your wallet or so on. These are actually some real-world hybrids that are connecting social to retail. This is one of a handful of gadgets where if you go and you like the brand's page on Facebook,— it has a direct connection to this actual physical box that will change the number to 8673. And not just for store-wide, but this level of influence is being built through to the product level. These hangers have Facebook like counts for the individual products. If someone goes on the Facebook page and click "I like this jacket," The hanger will note popularity. So when— you don't even need to rely on your friends now. What would be a better experience than rely on the advice of strangers? Well, apparently it can happen now. Some of these attempts will be misguided. This is Lowe's attempt at it. And this isn't even augmented reality. This is virtual reality, right? So they decided to put these holo-rooms in 2 of their Toronto stores last year. They're putting them in 19 of their stores down in the US this year. But the problem with this is it's a lot of floor space, it's expensive technology, it requires a Lowe's representative to be there with someone, and the graphics are not very good either. I mean, Pokémon Go has better graphics. So what you'll begin to see, and probably have already begun to see, is this shift away from these big sort of installations that are more for PR than anything, and more into the buyer's own tablets, the buyer's own phones. In the future, your customers— your customers, that is, the retailers at least— will will be focusing less on bringing people into their stores and more on bringing the store to their customers. This is a great example of a product called Wayfair. Uses augmented reality, right? The difference between augmented and virtual is virtual designs everything for you. Augmented is it shows you something inside your world. So it uses the camera. And it does this, you know, so you can walk around and see it. My favorite example is the sofa, which they're going to do in just a moment. They basically point it at the floor where they want the sofa to be. They drag it out onto the floor and it opens like a bo— like a shipping box would. And then you spin it around. And of course, one tap and you've bought it. Once someone finds something they like, they're going to want to find an easy way to pay for it. The Gap has been experimenting with this as well. Right? In this case, you have to tell it your body size. And then you basically— it's like a catalog. It's just like any other catalog in sort of the real world, right? You go and you pick which— what you want it to be. And then you can walk around. Now, this is done on stage. So, you know, you're able to kind of see a bit of the guy that's doing it. But he can get right down and turn around and look at the back and look at the front and get right up and see the weave pattern if he wants to. And this is not just augmented reality, it's happening already. Some of you may know the Sephora app, which I tried last week, much to the confusion of our renovators. Like, "Why is Tod trying on virtual lipstick?" Right? So it's augmented reality again. And in fact, this is kind of a brilliant application for it. It's really the same technology that Snapchat uses for its stickers. I like that one a lot. Come on, it was pretty. Made me look like a— Pretty girl. And some marketers are using AR as an ad delivery vehicle. Not all with great results. You know, here it's just like, hold up the dollar bill in front of you. So good brand presence, good awareness, I suppose. You know, not a lot of conversion going on there. And finally, we should talk about the Internet of Things.
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