Pokemon Go - the future of Digital Marketing

I recently returned from a 3 week stay at Pittsburgh, home to many student campuses thanks to the 2 big universities – University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Apart from the beautiful architecture, rivers and natural scenery, what stayed with me was this new worldwide phenomenon called Pokemon Go.

Imagine walking on the streets one evening just to notice a bunch of young people on lawns and sidewalks flicking their fingers on their smartphones and moving unsteadily in patterns people usually opt for when drunk. 

I later came to know they were trying to catch Pokemons. For those who still don’t know what the game is all about (shame on you!), it is a location-based augmented reality mobile game which mainly uses your smartphone camera and GPS. You see virtual creatures (called Pokemon) in the real world through the camera screen according to your GPS co-ordinates. You can capture, battle and train these Pokemon by visiting assigned buildings as well. What struck me was how a simple game had achieved a new level of consumer engagement in such a short period of time. With the latest hoopla about the advent of VR changing the ad industry, I believe that AR has enormous potential of revolutionising digital marketing in the coming times – Pokemon Go just being a starting example of that.

Here are 5 major themes that will define the shift of digital marketing in the coming future (I will take the liberty of incorporating all of them in Pokemon Go only to justify the title of this blog) -

1. From Intrusive to Interactive Ads

Instead of annoying irrelevant pop-ups on mobile apps, the focus in on increasing user interaction by providing contextual ads which actually pique the user’s interest and require user interaction – take for example, a Getorade refuelling station in Pokemon Go.

2. From Traditional and VR to AR

AR, unlike VR, doesn’t detach the user from the real world. It connects both – the physical and the virtual world by providing engaging content. This helps the user get immersed in it, while staying in touch with the physical world – again, Pokemon Go.

3. From Standardised to Personalised content

You may have read this one before, but here is an example anyway – Imagine travelling on a highway and seeing ads on billboards tailored only to your interests and hobbies, the person behind you sees a completely different set of ads on the same billboard. Personalised content can increase brand retention drastically. Imagine a sports fan like me walking into a Nike store just because my Pokemon Go app suggested that those co-ordinates will help me buy armour for my Pokemon.

4. From SMS to location targeting

Ads will change according to your location – if you’re in front of a Nike store, you will receive messages from Adidas and Puma informing you of their 50% off sales and of course, access to Pokemon training facilities while you shop.

5. Gaming, crowdsourcing and other engagement marketing

With all kinds of such games and relevant engaging content these days, advertising is getting more integrated into people’s lives than be just something you see, skip and then maybe consider later. Crowdsourcing is already a rage and can be leveraged to a great extent with the mainstream advent of technologies like AR into smartphone games. People can start contributing content to the game – which can actually be considered a huge advertisement for Pokemon, the gaming company and any merchandise related to Pokemon.