2/3 - Second part of our interview with Antoine Vu, in which the co-founder of the start-up Atomic Digital Design explains why augmented reality has definitely "proved its value for brands, during the health crisis".

By Ludmilla Intravaia

Le Boudoir Numérique : In the first part of your interview (read here), you pointed out the empathetic nature of augmented reality. In this sense, does it represent, for brands, an effective lever of action to arouse the interest of young people, fond of immersive and interactive experiences?

Antoine Vu, co-founder of Atomic Digital Design : Clearly. The younger you are, the more digital is omnipresent in your life, the more natural it is to move from one content to another very quickly. Young people do not have the same perception of advertising as previous generations. They are in search of meaning. We have to be able to emotionally capture these generations of millennials and digital natives. When virtual elements appear around you in your own environment, you are bound to be more touched by their proximity, especially if they are interactive. The immersion provided by augmented reality makes it possible to reinforce this emotional dimension, necessary for the conservation of more attention time.

Augmented reality also has the merit of being uninhibiting when you want to try on sneakers, scarves and other accessories virtually, rather than pushing the door of an intimidating store ...

Today, we are able to go quite far with the technologies of virtual try-on of accessories or make-up. It's very close to real life. As the renderings are very realistic, you are more comfortable trying out virtual items at home, in your cocoon, rather than doing it in a physical store. It's uninhibiting but also fun because you can share this experience with your friends on social networks.

Has the pandemic played a role in the rise of augmented reality?

Digital has exploded with the health crisis, as has augmented reality. We could no longer go to the store, we could no longer see things, so we brought this experience back to the heart of the device that we use every day, the smartphone that allowed us, in part in any case, to go through this crisis and stay in communication with each other. While everything was done locally, we were able to discover and explore content on the other side of the planet, in a more immersive way than on a website, for example. This is when brands realized that augmented reality was the right way to reach consumers directly.

However, augmented reality already existed, before the pandemic ...

Yes, augmented reality is not new, its concept has been known for over a hundred years. It has developed on social networks since 2017-2018 but it was often accused of being a gadget, some considering that its rendering was not realistic enough. During the health crisis, this technology proved its value for brands, because it has shown that it makes perfect sense when you need to send an emotional message. Especially if, and I obviously do not hope so, another crisis were to block us again, augmented reality could allow brands to continue to effectively circulate information about their products.

So, in your opinion, is augmented reality a technology to bet on in the future?

Absolutely. It will become more and more popular, in parallel with the digital boom. According to a Snapchat study, carried out this year on a panel of several thousand people (Snap Consummer AR, global report 2021, AN), by 2025, almost all smartphone owners will use augmented reality. This is why our startup Atomic Digital Design, founded in 2012, refocused exclusively on augmented reality three years ago.

* Read the last part of Antoine Vu's interview on Le Boudoir Numérique : "In the short term, virual try-on will become a formality".

* Read the first part of Antoine Vu's interview on Le Boudoir Numérique: "Augmented reality creates an illusion anchored in realness".