Vital Farms’ pasture-raised chickens run off the egg carton and roam freely outside. The Lego Digital Box shows what users can build using the blocks inside each package. With a wave to the first rule of creative writing: “Show, don’t tell,’” early adopters of augmented reality in product packaging are taking their message beyond the written word and into demonstration mode.
Augmented reality (AR) has been around since at least the 1990s, but trended hard and fast in 2016 with Pokémon Go — and its more than $1 billion in revenue — and is now beginning to impact modern product packaging. Early adopters to augmented reality are using the technology to make their product stand out from the rest, by offering additional content or emphasizing their brand’s unique qualities.
