The Pokémon Go craze of 2016 saw kids around the world use mobile phones to find cartoon characters in their real world neighbourhoods.
It was one of the first widespread uses of augmented reality (AR). If a child successfully found a Pokémon then a computerised animation of the creature would appear on their handset’s screen, superimposed on top of the actual view through the phone’s camera.
It proved irresistible to millions and millions of young users. But are adults equally impressed by the use of AR?
Since Pokémon Go’s success, a growing number of consumer brands are continuing to embrace AR, such as Coca-Cola and US whiskey Jack Daniels. You use your phone camera to scan a QR code on the can or bottle label, and an animation or video pops up on your screen.
Does this use of AR remain a novelty, a gimmick that most people ignore, or does it actually increase consumer engagement and sales?
In 2021, US soft drink firm Jones Soda introduced its first AR campaign, which it called Reel Labels. If you scan an image on the bottle labels then it transforms into a short video.
Image source, Jones Soda
Image caption, Scan the label on Jones Soda bottles and the photo turns into a video
To create the videos the firm partnered with an initial 15 so-called influencers, including a skateboarder, a break-dancer, and a BMX bike rider. Since then the firm’s customers have been able to send in their own videos to be featured.
And last year Jones Soda worked with music labels Sub Pop and Hardly Art to promote videos from more than a dozen new bands.
“A brand’s packaging is so much more than a container for a product,” says Bohb Blair, Jones Soda’s chief marketing officer. “It’s now an opportunity to make a consumer’s moment with your product special.
“Content is a great way to do that, and AR is a fun and convenient distribution vehicle.”
Another drinks business that has used AR to connect with the music industry is Estonian milk brand Tere Piim. In 2019 it joined with the Eurovision Song Contest to enable customers to see mini digital animations of that year’s entrants perform on their kitchen counters and tables. All they had to do was scan a label on the milk cartons.
Image source, Overly
Image caption, Estonian drink firm introduced an AR function to show Eurovision entrants
The AR technology was provided by Latvian software firm Overly. “Although you may doubt the compatibility at first glance, milk and a song contest make a good cross-marketing duo,” says Overly’s chief executive Ainars Klavins.
“In this instance, a traditional milk carton became a new medium for broadcasting Eurovision songs. It inspired consumers who may not be existing viewers to explore the contestant line-up and choose their favourites.”
He adds that consumers, especially younger ones, are ready to engage with brands “in the augmented reality realm”.
While you’d expect those involved in helping firms create AR to sing its praises, what do independent experts think?
Stuart Duff is a leading business psychologist, who studies how firms can best connect with consumers. He says that AR can help products seem more “interesting, engaging and memorable”.
“Research has highlighted that using AR not only captures our attention more quickly but also increases the likelihood of committing information to memory. So while AR may seem like a gimmick, it offers a genuine alternative approach to lodging brands in our psyche.”
Image source, Overly
Image caption,Ainars Klavins says AR only works if the content is interesting
Jenny Stanley is managing director of Appetite Creative, a Madrid-based tech and marketing firm that helps consumer businesses create AR labels.
She says that a product’s label is already an example of “extremely targeted marketing”, whose effectiveness only increases further when AR content is added.
“It’s not only impactful, but also cost effective. The average cost per digital advertising click is £1.50, whereas a click or scan on packaging is technically free, giving brands a compelling reason to use connected packaging.”
Yet, as Mr Klavins of Overly cautions, content is key. And by that he means that what the AR offers has to be interesting and engaging.
“The key point here is that quality content for augmented reality is vital. I always say that AR content should either inspire, educate or entertain. It has to do at least one of those things to transform from a novelty tech into a strategic tool that drives business value.”
Feature Image Credit: Getty Images. The Pokémon Go craze introduced AR to millions
Government agencies and private security companies in the U.S. have found a cost-effective way to engage in warrantless surveillance of individuals, groups and places: a pay-for-access web tool called Fog Reveal.
The tool enables law enforcement officers to see “patterns of life” – where and when people work and live, with whom they associate and what places they visit. The tool’s maker, Fog Data Science, claims to have billions of data points from over 250 million U.S. mobile devices.
Fog Reveal came to light when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit that advocates for online civil liberties, was investigating location data brokers and uncovered the program through a Freedom of Information Act request. EFF’s investigation found that Fog Reveal enables law enforcement and private companies to identify and track people and monitor specific places and events, like rallies, protests, places of worship and health care clinics. The Associated Press found that nearly two dozen government agencies across the country have contracted with Fog Data Science to use the tool.
Government use of Fog Reveal highlights a problematic difference between data privacy law and electronic surveillance law in the U.S. It is a difference that creates a sort of loophole, permitting enormous quantities of personal data to be collected, aggregated and used in ways that are not transparent to most persons. That difference is far more important in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which revoked the constitutional right to an abortion. Dobbs puts the privacy of reproductive health information and related data points, including relevant location data, in significant jeopardy.
The trove of personal data Fog Data Science is selling, and government agencies are buying, exists because ever-advancing technologies in smart devices collect increasingly vast amounts of intimate data. Without meaningful choice or control on the user’s part, smart device and app makers collect, use and sell that data. It is a technological and legal dilemma that threatens individual privacy and liberty, and it is a problem I have worked on for years as a practicing lawyer, researcher and law professor.
Government surveillance
U.S. intelligence agencies have long used technology to engage in surveillance programs like PRISM, collecting data about individuals from tech companies like Google, particularly since 9/11 – ostensibly for national security reasons. These programs typically are authorized by and subject to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act. While there is critical debate about the merits and abuses of these laws and programs, they operate under a modicum of court and congressional oversight.
Domestic law enforcement agencies also use technology for surveillance, but generally with greater restrictions. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, and federal electronic surveillance law require domestic law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before tracking someone’s location using a GPS device or cell site location information.
Fog Reveal is something else entirely. The tool – made possible by smart device technology and that difference between data privacy and electronic surveillance law protections – allows domestic law enforcement and private entities to buy access to compiled data about most U.S. mobile phones, including location data. It enables tracking and monitoring of people on a massive scale without court oversight or public transparency. The company has made few public comments, but details of its technology have come out through the referenced EFF and AP investigations.
Fog Reveal’s data
Every smartphone has an advertising ID – a series of numbers that uniquely identifies the device. Supposedly, advertising IDs are anonymous and not linked directly to the subscriber’s name. In reality, that may not be the case.
Private companies and apps harness smartphones’ GPS capabilities, which provide detailed location data, and advertising IDs, so that wherever a smartphone goes and any time a user downloads an app or visits a website, it creates a trail. Fog Data Science says it obtains this “commercially available data” from data brokers, permitting the tool to follow devices through their advertising IDs. While these numbers do not contain the name of the phone’s user, they can easily be traced to homes and workplaces to help police identify the user and establish pattern-of-life analyses.
Fog Reveal allows users to see that a specific mobile phone was at a specific place at a specific time.Electronic Frontier Foundation, CC BY
Law enforcement use of Fog Reveal puts a spotlight on that loophole between U.S. data privacy law and electronic surveillance law. The hole is so large that – despite Supreme Court rulings requiring a warrant for law enforcement to use GPS and cell site data to track persons – it is not clear whether law enforcement use of Fog Reveal is unlawful.
Electronic surveillance vs. data privacy
Electronic surveillance law protections and data privacy mean two very different things in the U.S. There are robust federal electronic surveillance laws governing domestic surveillance. The Electronic Communications Privacy Actregulates when and how domestic law enforcement and private entities can “wiretap,” i.e., intercept a person’s communications, or track a person’s location.
Coupled with Fourth Amendment protections, ECPA generally requires law enforcement agencies to get a warrant based on probable cause to intercept someone’s communications or track someone’s location using GPS and cell site location information. Also, ECPA permits an officer to get a warrant only when the officer is investigating certain crimes, so the law limits its own authority to permit surveillance of only serious crimes. Violation of ECPA is a crime.
The vast majority of states have laws that mirror ECPA, although some states, like Maryland, afford citizens more protections from unwanted surveillance.
The Fog Reveal tool raises enormous privacy and civil liberties concerns, yet what it is selling – the ability to track most persons at all times – may be permissible because the U.S. lacks a comprehensive federal data privacy law. ECPA permits interceptions and electronic surveillance when a person consents to that surveillance.
With little in the way of federal data privacy laws, once someone clicks “I agree” on a pop-up box, there are few limitations on private entities’ collection, use and aggregation of user data, including location data. This is the loophole between data privacy and electronic surveillance law protections, and it creates the framework that underpins the massive U.S. data sharing market.
AP investigative journalist Garance Burke explains how she and her colleagues uncovered law enforcement use of Fog Reveal.
The need for data privacy law
Without robust federal data privacy safeguards, smart device manufacturers, app makers and data brokers will continue, unfettered, to utilize smart devices’ sophisticated sensing technologies and GPS capabilities to collect and commercially aggregate vast quantities of intimate and revealing data. As it stands, that data trove may not be protected from law enforcement agencies. But the permitted commercial use of advertising IDs to track devices and users without meaningful notice and consent could change if the American Data Privacy Protection Act, approved by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce by a vote of 53-2 on July 20, 2022, passes.
ADPPA’s future is uncertain. The app industry is strongly resisting any curtailment of its data collection practices, and some states are resisting ADPPA’s federal preemption provision, which could minimize the protections afforded via state data privacy laws. For example, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, has said lawmakers will need to address concerns from California that the bill overrides the state’s stronger protections before she will call for a vote on ADPPA.
The stakes are high. Recent law enforcement investigations highlight the real-world consequences that flow from the lack of robust data privacy protection. Given the Dobbs ruling, these situations will proliferate absent congressional action.
What Microsoft feared nearly a decade ago has come true. The mobile market has become a two-horse race, with just some extras on the sidelines. With only Android and iOS really to choose from, who do you think has more loyal users? Apple is often cited for having fiercely loyal fans but, surprisingly enough, for the first time, Android loyalty has exceeded iOS 91% to 88%, respectively. But before either camp brings out the champagne or the pitchforks, one really has to ask: does it matter at all?
What happened?
To be clear, nothing really happened. The Consumer Intelligence Research Partners’ (CIRP) study shows that customer loyalty to either Android or iOS has been steadily on the rise. Except for a dip in iOS retention in late 2014. Perhaps if not for that temporary decline, iOS would have overtaken Android with that exact same growth rate.
And before Android users celebrate, CIRP co-founder Josh Lowitz has some insights that put that victory in a less impressive light. There are more Android users than iOS ones, that much is a fact. But to keep the iOS line growing stead, that would require an influx of more Android users switching to iOS. In contrast, Android needs less iOS refugees to keep its rate up. In other words, Android may have the higher numbers, but it may also have more people moving to iOS than the other way around.
For businesses
So what is all this Android vs iOS loyalty all about and does it even matter. For the businesses running or banking on Android or iOS, that’s a resounding yes. That means a big yes for Google, Apple, Samsung, and other Android OEMs. Brand loyalty means that people will keep using their products longer. That means, in a sense, locking them a lot longer into your services. That ultimately means making more money, or at least a steady influx of money.
Brand loyalty and customer retention are why companies work so hard to not only keep their current customers happy but to also convince those from the other side to jump ship. That last part is what sometimes causes tension, confusion, and sometimes even lawsuits, when companies fight and sometimes defame each other in order to pull their customers from other their grasp. In the Android versus iOS context, that usually involves things like saying how insecure one platform is or how closed off the other is.
For users
For users, however, brand loyalty is really nothing more than a badge, pretty much like sports team loyalty. Sometimes just as passionate, zealous, or even violent. It gives a sense of belonging or kinship to a group with similar interests and experiences. In practical terms, however, it matters very little.
iOS users are loyal to the iPhone because they don’t exactly have any other hardware to choose from. If someone else starts making iOS phones, especially better than Apple, you’ll see that iPhone loyalty wane instantly. Likewise, not all Android users are loyal to Android because of Android. Often they’re loyal to Pixels, Samsungs, LGs, Xiaomis, and the like. Often they might even be loyal to the brand of Android they only know from their OEM, not realizing how different Android might be from other OEMs.
Of course, there are those that are loyal to iOS or Android for the very platforms themselves. They agree with this or that way of doing things, of presenting things, of designing things. But then comes along a new version of iOS or Android that turns things around or yanks out those favorite features. Then you hear gnashing and weeping and the door slamming on the way out.
And then there are those who couldn’t care less about iOS or Android or Windows or Mac. It just so happens that the app they fell in love with or grew up with is only available in one particular OS. And when some of those become available in other operating systems, then the operating system becomes even less relevant. Then again, they might have become loyal to the app in the same way.
Blind loyalty
So what does brand loyalty bring? In this particular context, nothing relevant to users other than bragging rights. Indirectly, they do bring benefits, since consumer retention helps companies, which, in turn, retains or improves services that benefit users.
But not all those services are ultimately tied to those two platforms anyway. Brand loyalty, in fact, can actually become more harmful in some cases when they force users into a box of their own making. Some may never consider or use this or that app because it’s not made by this or that brand. Some won’t try out other phones because they’re too set in the ways of their old brands. Some would even go as far as admit that this or that OS is better but they’re not going to use it because it’s not iOS or Android.
Wrap-up: Breaking down barriers
We live in a world where the Internet has made the world a smaller place, where development happens at breakneck speeds, where features come and go, almost with no complete assurance they’ll be there in the next version. We live in an age that sticking to a brand just because of that brand no longer makes a lot of sense.
Of course, there will be the argument that so and so brand is synonymous with quality. As can be proven so many times, that is only true for so long. There’s no denying the fact that one brand, one platform, one app, will have better features and aspects than the others. But to equate those features to a brand and equate it for the long-term? Not exactly a sensible outlook.
Brand loyalty and customer retention are important for the companies that make these products, so hooray to the Googles, the Apples, and the Samsungs of the world. Those numbers, however, aren’t always representative of the actual quality of their products. More of then than not, it’s more representative of how good their marketing is.
