Brand Innovation Challenge: Boots Picks AR Agency, Rock Paper Reality To Help Personalisation Drive
1 September 2023
Boots is really stepping up its personalisation drive. In the past couple of years it has launched a series of initiatives and investments designed to enhance the customer’s in-store experience via personalisation. This July they tasked start-ups to create an engaging omnichannel experience for customers seeking pharmaceutical and healthcare advice.
Boots’ Head of Media Planning and Strategy, (and Brand Challenge judge), Stephanie Taylor said of the challenge: “Given the change in customer behaviour post pandemic, we’re looking for a tool or partner who can help us to provide Boots customers with a personalised journey. We want to reach customers in a way that's really convenient for them. So it could be through a personal consultation over the phone with a doctor or pharmacist or equally could be going into one of our stores. Essentially, how do we reach them at the right place and at the right time.”
Rock Paper Reality, an immersive / AR services agency who specialise in providing brands advice and strategy for immersive, won the day with an engaging, exciting, and ultimately winning pitch.
Their Global Business Development Lead, Joseph Killoran, outlined Rock Paper Reality's solution for Boots: “Augmented Reality is omnichannel native, you are able to meet the consumer where they are across all those different touchpoints whether it's online or offline, through email,l through your CRM strategy through a website…So it's very, very easy that way, you're able to target it through all those different channels.”
Elaborating on what that means for Boots, Killoran explained that they would be able to create an extension that brings Boots’ products to life and make them more engaging to the customer. “This could be through being a spokesperson being a brand ambassador, being able to talk about the product, being able to show what the product is made off, being able to provide instructions, provide more information. You can create very rich content and also be able to back that up with all the data analytics.”
Boot’s Taylor said of the winning pitch: “The world of AR is really, really exciting. And I really loved Rock Paper Reality’s approach around it not being just one channel specific. It can be across multiple channels. That’s really important. It seems like a really exciting proposition for us!”
To find out more about Rock Paper Reality’s winning solution, and how it has already worked for brands like Ben & Jerry’s and Jackson Family Wines, watch the full pitch here.
You can watch all the MAD//Fest London action including the PITCH//IT sessions from on our YouTube channel. Just select the ‘House of Innovation’ playlist for each day to catch all of the pitches.