Ford of Britain will this week, at selected shopping centres nationwide, launch an augmented reality campaign featuring the new 7 seat Grand C-MAX car on JCDecaux Innovate’s mall six-sheet screens.

The campaign, created by Ogilvy & Mather in London and digital production company Grand Visual, allows people to handle and explore miniaturised 3D ‘virtual’ models of the cars on screen and in the palm of their hand.  Virtual buttons allow the user to choose the colour of the car, open doors, fold the seats flat, turn the car 360 degrees and select demos of the vehicle’s key features.

This is the first outdoor augmented reality campaign to use 3D depth imaging technology in the UK. Rather than using a printed marker or symbol as a point of reference for interaction, the user interface is based on natural movement and hand gestures allowing any passerby to immediately start interacting with the screen content. A Panasonic D-Imager camera measures the users real-time spatial depth output and Inition’s augmented reality software merges this real life footage with the 3D photo-real Grand C-MAX on screen.

The campaign was planned and booked by Mindshare and Kinetic and will run for two weeks at Bluewater, Greenhithe; Bullring, Birmingham; Metrocentre, Gateshead; St David’s, Cardiff; Princess, East Kilbride and in Westfield, Derby.