Calvin Klein Underwear and GQ tie-up for AR Ads

Calvin Klein Underwear and GQ magazine have tied up to for an Augmented Reality (AR) advertising. Calvin Klein Underwear will be one of the first fashion companies to run AR advertising and 12 editions of GQ will run these ads. The ads will be appearing exclusively in the April

issues of GQ in India, the United States, China, Korea, Australia, Mexico and Taiwan, and in the May issues of British GQ as well as France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Jamie Bill, Publishing Director for British GQ, says “This initiative from Calvin Klein Underwear perfectly harnesses the media muscle of the worldwide GQ brand, and the AR element ensures total engagement with our readership of fashion loving and digitally aware consumers.”

 

The AR print ads are one element of the campaign, in support of its latest men’s launch, Calvin Klein X Underwear. GQ’s website will also run ads that will link directly to xmarkyourspot.com, a new branded destination for consumers to access all materials and videos featuring the campaign. “GQ is the perfect partner for this exciting initiative and our first foray into AR,” said Tom Murray, President and CEO, Calvin Klein, Inc. “Calvin Klein X Underwear is a very important launch for the company, and we wanted to make a powerful statement with the creative – but it was also imperative that it was executed boldly. The resulting campaign is provocative, engaging, and fun.”

Consumers with webcams will be able to view the AR films by visiting the brands’ dedicated microsite. Once in the augmented ‘X’ section of the site, visitors can either hold up the ad from the magazine or a print-out of the AR code in front of their webcam. A 3D box will then appear which allows visitors to select from four short films created exclusively for the GQ AR program.

While the campaign sounds impressive, the most important part is whether this campaign will work for India, “GQ targets a very specific kind of audience, for this particular campaign may be the brand’s target group fits the bill. However, it’s a global campaign and India is just a part of it so we can’t really say if it will work for Indian readers or not. As far as the brand goes although the numbers may be small it helps to garner better reach to a niche target group, as such innovative ads helps in gaining high consumer engagement,” says Mona Jain, strategic investments India head, India Media Exchange.

According to Pratap Bose, COO, Mudra, “AR as a concept is quite new and technology driven, so it depends on how it is used. Hence, for the novelty it might attract digitally savvy readers. AR is done mainly for a niche audience, and has got great novelty value. As long as it is creatively done and manages to engage the consumers this concept will do well in India as well.”