Motive Brings Jazz Alive with Augmented Reality

Xerox has taken the world-renowned Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival to a new level of interactivity for the 187,000 festival attendees with an augmented reality (AR) mobile application.

  

Motive, a New York/Dublin-based digital agency, produced the campaign in collaboration with Xerox and one of Xerox’s approved marketing agencies, Roberts Communications. Xerox's commitment to developing services designed to capture, communicate and move information through all channels was the hallmark of the app's development and functionality.

 

View a video of the AR here: http://bit.ly/SVMZmD

 

The AR experience centred on a series of jazz genre posters placed throughout the city during the nine-day festival. Scanning any poster with the iPhone or Android ‘JazzFinder’ app made it easier for the attendees to explore, save and share everything that the festival had to offer through smartphone technology. Among the app's many functions, it allowed access to historical music genre information, sampling from the 110 festival artists and tracking musicians' set times. The social element was underlined by the ease of taking photos with an artist’s augmented reality avatar, then sharing with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

 

"As creative technologists, we are inspired by the immense contribution Xerox continues to make to the computer-science revolution," states Motive CEO Brian McSweeney. “Partnering with Roberts Communications to create an aesthetically engaging digital campaign was a tremendous experience for our entire team. Our AR expertise is unparalleled, and pushes the envelope of how brands interact with their customers. The festival’s mobile AR app showcased Xerox’s on-going commitment to associating its brand with the latest in digital innovation.”

 

Motive CCO Chris Valentino adds, “This is by far one of our favorite AR experiences. The app was a true add-on for the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival  attendees, as it offered entertainment and information at their fingertips. Imagine having your own personal jazz guide in your pocket. At Motive, we always look to create that unique consumer connection with context. When consumers are offered something of value, they are more likely to engage, discuss and share that experience with others."

 

Motive has recently completed compelling AR experiences for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, via Moroch, and for Mazda via Mindshare. The latter won Gold at the Nokia Digital Media Awards in Europe earlier this year. Motive, and its staff of brand strategists, designers, creative technologists, and programmers with AR software expertise, is uniquely positioned to produce interactive experiences for major brands, and is currently in production on additional AR campaigns for other Fortune 500 companies in the months ahead.