We have democratized the creation of Augmented Reality experiences: Prasanna Raman

At the recent India Brand Conclave, Prasanna Raman, Business Expansion Lead, Snapchat India, delivered a keynote on—’Augmented Reality - The New Business Reality’.  

During his keynote, Raman underlined how brands are discovering impactful ways to connect with their customers and develop authentic immersive experiences to drive their business objectives.

“Camera marketing has the power of cutting through and building experiences and not just ad exposures. In India currently, we have over 100 Mn users on a monthly active basis. Unlike other apps that open to feed, Snapchat opens to the camera, which is the heart and soul of a Snapchat experience and this is where people communicate visually in a world where 5 billion Snaps are shared each day,” said Raman.

Speaking about the full Snapchat experience from a consumer perspective and giving a single slide tour of various immersive features like Map, Chat, Stories and Spotlight, he added, “Camera is the center of Snapchat and you can do fun stuff like Dinosaur walking on the road in Mumbai or flowers blooming etc. But that is not all that Snapchat does. It can also be used to inspire Snapchatters to try and buy whether it is shoes, bags, clothes, makeup, jewellery or interior design. With Snapchat AR you can shorten the gap between virtual and real life experiences. This makes shopping super easy, better and absolutely customised and personal.”

He further added, “To democratise the creation of Augmented Reality experiences, we have two solutions between Lens Studio and Lens Web Builder. These are our Augmented Reality development tools and we are taking to the hands of anybody who wants to create an Augmented Reality experience. The Lens Web Builder is incredibly easy to use. Brands and agencies can build branded AR experiences with pre-populated templates and no coding experience is necessary. You can use from a library of hundreds of 3D objects and animations in terms of effects to build your own custom branded AR experience. You can also upload your own 2D assets, such as Logos and images, to further customise the AR experince.”

Raman also explained the features of the Lens Studio. “While we built Lens Studio for a much more advanced lens creation, it does not make it any more difficult to start with. It also has built-in features including templates and advanced tracking technology –the possibilities are just endless. In fact we have seen creators churn out lenses in less than 15 min, so creating a Augmented Reality experience is not rocket science anymore because Snapchat has democratised the creation of Augmented Reality lenses using these two tools. When it comes to production, these are a range of complexities based on your brand's needs and budget, if you have a campaign coming in two weeks, the level of complexity we can achieve and the lens is limited. However, when you are talking about a campaign coming in the next quarter or a month from now, you can do a more complex build of Augmented Reality.”

Sharing his thoughts on ‘Can Snap AR drive business results for brands’, he said, “Now that you understand how AR has been democratised and de-mystified, I want to share why AR is important for brands. AR is a daily habit on Snapchat. For Snapchatters it's part of their life and it does not feel like a forced innovation. You can have animals playing on your shoulders or you can light up the night sky; almost around 1.5 million lenses have been created using Lens Studio. AR helps your brand build experiences and not just exposure. When it comes to Augmented Reality, the experiences are such that they manage to capture two times the consumer attention than all other communication formats. “

He further added, “Around two years ago, we used to talk about using AR to make your brand future ready or trying out some innovation. But a study done in India shows that AR is here and now. Interacting with products that have an AR experience results in 94 percent higher conversion rate than all other forms of communication.”

According to Raman, Snapchat ads are not just about AR. “Our advertising products mirror the Snapchat user behaviour or the consumer behaviour. When consuming content, Snapchatters are served Snap ads or commercial ads between the user stories or while watching content which is premium in nature. Snapchatters can also choose to consume content on the story section which helps in longer story telling”, he explained.

Speaking about the camera side of things, according to Raman, it's possible for brands to have sponsored lenses and these lenses are AR experiences and can be used by brands to build engagement and make it more shareable AR.

“Similarly, filters are creative overlays and can be used to add context, humour or to just creatively elevate the Snap and these can be branded filters and are easy on production and can deliver great brand awareness for your campaign.”

Speaking about AR as an advertising solution, he said, “It’s true that AR is just one part of the strategy, but it’s an incredible way of increasing the impact of your ad campaign. Campaigns that add AR to their videos increase the reach of their campaign by around 31 percent. It also results in two time’s higher effectiveness of the campaign. We recommend that you always deploy different ad formats while running an always on or a seasonal campaign. As per a study by Kantar, different ad formats together deliver stronger brand results than just having a video or a still ad format.”

“Specifically when you talk about lenses, there is 58 percent higher ad awareness when AR is introduced into the mix because the relevancy across the campaign itself shoots up the moment you add AR. The most powerful combination of the ad products is leveraging the camera and the consumption products together in tandem at every stage of your campaign”, shared Raman.

Explaining the amplification process of AR, Raman said, “Brands are able to pay for impressions directly to the camera with Snapchat. So when you are paying for an impression, it is an actual play of your branded lens straight into the camera. Promoting a lens need not be an expensive affair; it can be done with a small budget as well.”

“We fundamentally believe that every business needs a camera strategy. We don't just want to be your advertising partners, we want to transform the way you use cameras for your business to solve real problems”, he added.