Tripadvisor uses augmented reality to entice tourists

Welcome to April. And the start of Q2. Hope you’re ready to take your Q1 learnings and run with them. Let’s get into some marketing news.

Tripadvisor’s Immersive Murals Take Viewers to Sunny San Diego

Tripadvisor's in-house creative and content studio Wanderlab partnered with the San Diego Tourism Authority and The Shipyard Agency to create an “immersive art campaign” to entice those in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to visit San Diego. To accomplish this, San Diego artists have painted murals throughout each city and included QR codes which will treat observers to a “complementary augmented reality filter celebrating San Diego.”

Entitled “The Sunny Side of Things,” this campaign is San Diego’s crafty way of attracting tourists as summer approaches and more and more people are engaging in revenge travel. Plus, it’s meeting a new generation of travelers where they’re at: around town, on their phones.

Augmented reality is a great way to immerse consumers in a destination or product without breaking the bank. If you’re doubting the popularity of augmented reality, just recall the storm Pokémon GO created back in 2016—and AR has come much further since then.

ByteDance’s Contingency App: Lemon8

While TikTok still faces a possible ban in the U.S., its parent company ByteDance has a contingency plan. ByteDance launched the Lemon8 app, and people are downloading. It’s already reached the top 10 in overall app downloads across various app stores. Although it technically launched in 2020 and has done well in Asian markets, Lemon8 is new to U.S. audiences.

An Instagram-esque photo app described as “a place for young creatives to share a diversity of content,” Lemon8 seems to focus on lifestyle products, specifically. These products span industries like fashion, makeup, food, and travel. And last month, Insider reported ByteDance has been paying creators to post to the platform to help it gain traction.

While Lemon8 may seem like a TikTok failsafe, there’s no certainty the new app won’t fall under the same scrutiny as the old—after all, ByteDance is still the parent company. That being said, it’s worthwhile to explore since it seems like a marketer’s dream: a product-focused Instagram-like app not owned by Mark Zuckerberg.

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Are you considering augmented reality for a marketing campaign? Reply and let us know about any activations planned for your brand!

Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you Thursday!