HyperFactory wins award for augmented reality mobile advertising

New Zealand company The Hyperfactory beat thousands of interactive advertising entrants to win the Best Print award at the Adweek Buzz international awards for an all-NZ campaign for Wellington Zoo.

The Hyperfactory joined forces with Christchurch tech interface specialist Hitlab NZ and Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington to create the Wellington Zoo campaign, introducing Hitlab’s technology, Augmented Reality, to mobile phones. This made it possible to view a three-dimensional zoo animal on a print ad simply by using the live camera feed on a mobile smartphone.

Users were invited to download software to their mobile and when the phone’s camera was placed over the print ad, the software rendered a 3D image of a bear, giraffe or cheetah on the user’s mobile screen. The user could view the 3D animal from all angles simply by moving their mobile phone around the marker image in the print ad.

Hyperfactory is based in Auckland, with offices in the U.S., China and India.