December 5, 2013
By Evan Buxton
With Apple releasing its latest version of the iPad – one that will make it even easier to generate excitement for your projects – it is becoming increasingly clear that visual storytelling for a brand is essential for forward-thinking marketers.
Even three years after its release, an iPad in a customer's hands elicits excitement and a desire to explore. This latest edition is taking this marketing revolution even further and here is how.
1. It is putting the marketing center in your briefcase. Impactful, beautiful marketing presentations, once relegated to high-end desktops or large-screen televisions in a showroom, are now being outclassed by a handheld computer that weighs as much as a Venti Latte.
And having what you need when you need it – whether you are presenting one-on-one on a tradeshow floor or your customer is sitting in her home with the iPad – the platform is making the experience more interactive and consumer-driven.
The new iPad Air will make it even easier and more convenient to have a marketing center in your briefcase as it is now the lightest tablet in the world.
2. It is making the apps more powerful. Since the inception of applications, a browser search has become secondary for many brands because an iPad app delivers a product or service right to the palm of a customer’s hand.
Using an iPad app as a marketing tool has become increasing popular among real estate developers, as well as architects. But it has to be done well.
A hallmark of a well-designed app is quick, fingertip-access to contextualize important information.
An app can show developments from hundreds of angles and views – from 30,000 feet in the air, to the nearest street corner.
Immersing a user in a project, such as a mixed-use development brings her right into the property, like she is walking down the street.
Through virtualized tours and information at the touch of a finger, the app created a conversational leasing presentation highlighting the building’s amenities and created an overall brand for the building.
With the iPad retina display on the new iPad mini, this will help make the branding and mobile experience even more realistic and appealing.
3. It is transitioning the physical marketing center to a mobile experience. One of the new features of iOS7, Apple’s latest operating system, is iBeacon, a sensor that alerts mobile devices that they are near certain places or objects.
For example, a homebuyer might walk past a listing in a real estate office window. If that buyer stands there long enough, iBeacon can issue an alert asking if he or she would like to watch a short fly-through animation, or view a 360-degree panorama from the penthouse.
In addition, walking through a gallery of 3D illustrations, the app offers to send all of the images in an email. This takes the physical marketing center and it prolongs its life into a virtual and mobile experience.
WITH THE iPAD and the use of apps, the marketing center is now a physical and virtual experience that is being marketed through visualization. And Apple is making it increasingly easier to do so.
Evan Buxton is associate principal at Neoscape, Boston. Reach him at evan.buxton@neoscape.com.
Share your thoughts. Click here
