Lebron James, also known as King James to his dedicated fans, is expanding his area of prominence ahead of basketball and into the world of augmented reality (AR).
In his position as Nike’s pitchman, the NBA superstar is the point of attraction for a fresh in-store AR advertisement for Snapchat, at the store named House of Hoops by Foot Locker; in Los Angeles’ Hollywood and Highland Centre.
According to a Snap spokesperson, a video of the augmented reality experience shared by James on Twitter acquired over 1.25 million views via his tweet itself.
The AR experience can be activated by Foot Locker customers in LA using Snapchat to scan the Snapcode, which will bring a digital doppelganger of LeBron James in front of the camera. The player will appear to be jumping out of the advertisement and dunking a virtual basket. You can try it by scanning the Snapcode and pointing your camera at the illustration of Lebron James.
Images by Keith Stoeckeler/Twitter
Fisherman Labs, a digital agency created the experience using the marker-based tech of Snapchat, available via the Lens Studio platform.
Augmented reality has become a prevalent technology for the NBA and the teams. The NBA AR application is one of the first ARKit apps to reach the App Store. Since then, the league has included more features in the app and ported it to Android using the ARCore toolkit. Also, the Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Clippers and the Dallas Mavericks have launched their own augmented reality experiences.
Former NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal has surfaced as the actual godfather of basketball AR, helping the Magic Leap and NBA introduce the app for Magic Leap One and submerging himself on and in-air augmented reality animation through his role as talking head for the NBA coverage by TNT.
Snapchat has incorporated immersive technology like AR in its app and is taking advantage of the trend to enhance their reach. Additionally, Snap has discovered a new opening in its Snapchat AR offerings for firms by combining digital and conventional tactics of advertising in a captivating experience. Recently, the agency displayed how different brands could power the approach with an augmented reality billboard (no more than a distance of 3 miles from the Foot Locker store starring Lebron James) to publicise a Snap Original series featuring entertainer Bhad Bhabie.
Snap has been able to halt the pouring out of users from the Snapchat app. The agency’s newest quarterly financial results indicate that companies are likely to find rejuvenated trust on Snapchat. This can help the brands in deciding whether they want to spend their advertising money in the app or not.
The first choice is more likely to be considered as investing in this app brings forth a range of promotional advantages. It can help different brands in availing the wide number of benefits offered by Snapchat’s large variety of augmented reality experiences on mobile devices.
