Augmented Reality: Our Next Level Marketing Journey
November 14, 2022
Nominated for two years running! GreenSeal’s Augmented Reality (AR) Cannabis Marketing Campaigns
For the second year in a row, the GreenSeal team is celebrating the nomination of our Augmented Reality (AR) Poster for the coveted AdCann Award for 2022 Canadian Marketing Campaign of the Year!
Before we go any further… click here to vote, and make sure you vote for us everyday (the first round ends on December 1, 2022, and voting for the shortlisted candidates goes until December 31, 2022)!
After other marketing professionals check out the poster, the first question we’re always asked is:
Who made this for you?!?
The answer: Like everything else at GreenSeal, we didn’t wait for someone else to make this happen for us.
Inspired and empowered by the spirit of innovation that permeates our one-of-a-kind cultivation facility, our in-house marketing team took on the challenge of creating an Augmented Reality poster from scratch.
Here’s How We Did It
Way back in 2020 – deep in the darkest depths of the lockdown – we asked ourselves how we could educate budtenders and cannabis store customers about GreenSeal’s cutting-edge production techniques without actually having them visit our facility.
Having just learned about the exciting marketing potential of Augmented Reality, one of our team members suggested creating a poster-based AR experience.
To make that happen, we first hopped on a scissor lift and took a fantastic pic of our multilevel flower room from the perspective of the roof looking down for the print poster’s base image.
Then, we shot some spectacular video footage from the grow itself and cut it together with some splashy special effects to maximize the already jaw-dropping visual splendor of our grow system.
From there, we set GreenSeal up with a web-based AR platform that linked our grow room footage to a special code on the poster. Anyone pointing their phone camera at the poster would see it spring to life, as if they’ve stepped right into our grow space.
We printed it in both full-sized wall poster and shelf-sized plaque formats and started giving them out to stores carrying GreenSeal.
The result was an immediate hit!
Soon budtenders and customers at cannabis retailers across the country were being wowed by the AR experience of a “behind the scenes” tour of GreenSeal.
Next thing we knew, our little lockdown project was nominated for the 2021 AdCann award for Cannabis Marketing Campaign of the Year!
(We didn’t win last year, but like they always say, “It was an honour to just be nominated!”).
KIND of a big deal
The next chapter in GreenSeal’s adventures in AR marketing (or is it mARketing?) happened when our Brand Ambassador attended the KIND Winter Fair in December 2021.
The KIND magazine team was gifted one of the AR poster plaques, and we also put together a demo where we took the current KIND issue’s holiday cover and added an Augmented Reality animation.
The result made such a stir at KIND that they asked us to give the same treatment to their next issue!
In a classic demonstration of how creative collaboration among Canadian cannabis industry players can create win-win scenarios, KIND magazine readers were invited to experience the first AR cover in Canadian print media history, as well as enjoy the GreenSeal AR tour experience within the pages of the mag.
Building on the success of the Spring 2022 issue, we did it all over again with the Summer 2022 issue!
This time we animated the cover with a dynamic Pride-themed rainbow KIND logo, appearing slightly raised over the Tegan and Sara photo.
GreenSeal dropped some exciting new cultivars and formats this past summer, so we took the opportunity to create a completely new product-oriented AR experience for our full-page ad in that issue.
People’s stoned eyeballs continued to pop out of their heads as KIND readers across Canada once again experienced the unlikely combination of traditional print media with cutting-edge digital tech.
GreenSeal’s ongoing adventures in AR
In an unexpected and unprecedented development, GreenSeal’s AR poster campaign got nominated for Best Canadian Cannabis Marketing Campaign for the second year in a row!
Never content to rest on our laurels, back in the fall we’d already set out to create new fun and interactive AR experiences for cannabis customers to engage with the GreenSeal brand.
Using a completely different Augmented Reality technique (known as “Image Placement”), we created the GreenSeal AR Photobooth, where attendees of our events or pop-ups can get their photo taken with a giant GreenSeal doobie!
If you need any confirmation on the fun factor GreenSeal’s Giant Doobie Photobooth brings to events, check out the smile on Sian (owner of Budssmoke Cannabis) who jumped in for a shot during the recent Retail Cannabis Council of Ontario (RCCO) convention.
It turns out it’s even more hilarious to get your giant doobie photo taken with friends (as the fun-loving team from Toke Cannabis demonstrate here).
Taking cannabis marketing to the next level
As our 6-level flower room (and the killer bud that comes out of it!) attests, GreenSeal’s grow team has continually pushed the limits of high-quality cannabis cultivation.
Embracing that spirit of innovation, our in-house marketing team has achieved comparable disruptive effects in the Canadian cannabis marketing space.
Don’t forget to vote for the GreenSeal AR Poster for this year’s AdCann Awards (here’s that voting link again if you didn’t vote when you started reading!).
And keep an eye out for the Giant Doobie Photobooth, the AR Poster, and more fun and interactive Augmented Reality cannabis marketing applications coming out of GreenSeal in 2023!