Bringing The Flavour Of AR To Brazil

Meet RA Brasil, a Certified Blippar Partner doing some exciting work to help spread the reach of AR in Brazil.

With over 15 years' experience leading innovative projects in retail, banking, logistics, and e-commerce, Adriano Emiliozzi is RA Brasil's Operations Manager. He shows prospects and customers the potential of Blippar to transform branding and business, and to achieve exceptional results.

What is the use of augmented reality like in Brazil? Why did you want to use it in your work?
Augmented reality is in its first stages in Brazil, and is usually used for technical projects related to the automotive or engineering sectors. To use AR for branding and commercial campaigns is still new, leaving a lot to be explored. Brazilians absolutely love their smartphones and using apps, and the country has a young population who are entering the consumer market while using their mobiles as the main channel for internet access. Brazil is also in the midst of a social and economic transition, which is changing the way consumers interact with brands, and which allows AR to grow and complement existing e-commerce and mobile commerce structures.

How have you been incorporating AR into your projects?
We’ve been discussing AR and Blippar across lots of different markets and prospects, showing its uses, benefits, and potential. We’ve explored the use of AR for marketing, publishing (specifically with the publishing group Ed. Abril), and point of sales applications. The printing and pharmaceutical industries are also starting to get interested in how they might be able to use AR, to help customers identify their products and to establish a new communication channel with consumers.

How has the Brazilian market responded to your work with Ed. Abril?
The response has been great—the launch of AR in VEJA (the number one magazine in Brazil and second magazine globally) was a breakthrough innovation. We then expanded to including AR in 13 other titles, which had a subsequent impact on the use of this technology in the market. One of the best moments thus far was when we had special content related to the 2016 Olympic games in Rio, including special ads and 360 videos that viewers could look at with headsets; this experience brought high visibility to both Ed. Abril and RA Brasil as innovation leaders in the Brazilian market.

It seems like Brazil is really enthusiastic about new types of technology—do you have any insights as to why this might be?
Brazil is in the middle of a major transformation, and while there are lots of changes still occurring, it’s one of the world’s biggest economies and has an unrevealed potential. Foreign investments in infrastructure, coupled with more and more people joining the consumer market, means that Brazilians are very open-minded when it comes to new trends, and fully embrace new technologies; once released, for example, Pokémon Go was massively popular across Brazil in only a matter of days. Smartphones, social apps, e-commerce, AR, and VR are receiving lots of attention at the moment, while beauty and consumer goods are two areas of great expansion. The whole environment must be considered when discussing tech’s success in Brazil. Brazilian people are always connected and always willing to learn more about new things; we’re also very social, and love new ways to interact with each other.

How do you see augmented reality having an effect on your work in future?
We’re looking into using AR for office activities, including interacting with colleagues while at work. I think we’ll also see more sophisticated applications for healthcare and distance learning in the near future. There will be a vast market for a ‘click to buy’ use of AR, where you can point your camera to any product and get immediate integrations with other platforms, like e-commerce or IoT-derivative applications. In this way, AR can be the front end that will let us connect with different devices and services.

What has been the most valuable part of joining the Blippar Partner Network and becoming a Certified Partner?
We are definitely happy with our Blippar partnership. Support is offered for any AR topic, and there are exclusive webinars to attend, case studies to review, and beta test initiatives to take part in for new products. The credibility associated with Blippar has helped us a lot with new customers and prospects while developing the Brazilian AR market.

How do you see the partnership evolving in the future?
It’s been so successful in Brazil that while we still have lots of projects and work to do there, we’re looking into expanding into other parts of Latin America where we’ve had interest from different groups and requests for campaigns.

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