Today, brands have every oppor­tu­ni­ty to launch inno­v­a­tive cam­paigns that uti­lize the best of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to enhance user expe­ri­ences. 2014 has seen the roll­out of iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy to tie togeth­er online/offline pur­chase jour­neys, and the launch of new con­cept stores from the likes of Argos, and Thomas Cook have giv­en us a glimpse of the role retail shop­ping can ful­fill when approached with a dig­i­tal mind­set.

Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion has also extend­ed to con­tent mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives that enhance the research and con­sid­er­a­tion stages of con­sumer pur­chase fun­nels.

Slate Cos­met­ics have launched a new mobile opti­mized site that allows users to sam­ple dif­fer­ent make­up and cos­met­ics prod­ucts on an uploaded pho­to of them­selves. The new site is pow­ered by Look­ing Glass, a tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped by Mod­i­face, that pro­vides an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty lay­er that shows a pre­view of a prod­uct on touch, or on hov­er, when users are view­ing an image on a web­site or app.

Rather than using an app, Slate Cos­met­ics have made the deci­sion to imple­ment the inter­ac­tive con­tent on a high­ly mobile opti­mized web­site, which will be launched in a cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing cam­paign tied togeth­er close­ly with social media and organ­ic search.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Slate is the first cos­met­ics brand to imple­ment a 100 per­cent dig­i­tal launch, with dis­tri­b­u­tion only through ecom­merce chan­nels. It means that cre­at­ing a aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence for users to try and sam­ple prod­ucts vir­tu­al­ly even more impor­tant.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Proc­ter & Gam­ble’s Cov­er­Girl test­ed an ear­ly ver­sion of Mod­i­face’s Look­ing Glass tech­nol­o­gy on Cosmopolitan.com. L’O­re­al Gar­nier also imple­ment the tech­nol­o­gy as part of their con­tin­ued dri­ve to progress inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies. Suc­cess­ful make­up and beau­ty retail­er Sepho­ra is also using the tech­nol­o­gy at in-store kiosks in cer­tain Euro­pean stores.

And the tech­nol­o­gy does have one cru­cial ben­e­fit in addi­tion to ful­fill­ing a touch­point in user expe­ri­ences. As Slate Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor Gen­try Ford point­ed out:

“[When] going to Sepho­ra and hav­ing to try on a make­up that’s been used by count­less oth­er peo­ple. Who knows where those hands have been? We’re hop­ing to elim­i­nate pink­eye all togeth­er.”

Digital Makeup Counters

A “soft launch” of Slate’s ini­tia­tive is under­way on social media, but this will soon be fol­lowed up by paid and native adver­tis­ing in the peak of the cru­cial win­ter shop­ping peri­od.

The inter­ac­tive con­tent ini­tia­tive is a bold move from Slate, and the com­ing months will deter­mine whether the abil­i­ty to sam­ple prod­ucts dig­i­tal­ly will meet con­sumer demands, and the tried and test­ed expe­ri­ence of using make­up coun­ters in depart­ment stores.

How­ev­er, the tech­nol­o­gy cer­tain­ly has great poten­tial. When con­sumers reg­is­ter with Mod­i­face, they upload an image of their pho­to to the Look­ing Glass appli­ca­tion. Assum­ing they leave their cook­ies intact, future imple­men­ta­tions of the tech­nol­o­gy could see users see­ing dis­play adver­tise­ments fea­tur­ing them­selves as mod­els, effec­tive­ly bridg­ing togeth­er make­up coun­ters and mag­a­zines seam­less­ly with­in the online con­sumers expe­ri­ence.

While Slate’s exam­ple is spe­cif­ic to the cos­met­ics niche, the ini­tia­tive fits into a much wider trend among dig­i­tal mar­keters: per­son­al­ized adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing efforts. This tech­nol­o­gy will be worth watch­ing if con­sumers find it gen­uine­ly use­ful in aid­ing their pur­chase deci­sions.