Bzenia, a family-owned and operated luxury organic winemaker from the Czech city of Bzenec, recently teamed up with design agency Little Greta to add a bit of Augmented Reality flair to the company’s bottles.

As part of a project to refresh the label of Bzenia wine, Little Greta made use of Layar’s technology to enhance the label with interactive AR elements. Nicknamed “your personal sommelier” or the “genie in the bottle,” the added AR content allows customers to view a short video showing the winery owners sharing interesting trivia about each bottle’s unique contents.

To access the content, customers need only to scan the bottle’s label with the free Layar App, available for iOS and Android.

“The AR features have been commended by many of Bzenia’s customers, even to the point where Bzenia’s very own clientele requested AR to be featured on the bottles Bzenia produced exclusively for them as Christmas gifts,” said Little Greta. “Thanks to Layar, Bzenia was able to boost their sales and enhance its reputation as a technology pioneer among Czech wineries.”

To try it yourself, head on over to our client examples page and scan the bottle with the Layar App!

In September we told you about House of Fraser, one of the UK’s largest department store chains, and how it was using the Layar SDK to bring Augmented Reality to its customer retail experience. The store allowed customers to browse its online store from a print catalogue by scanning with the Layar SDK-powered House of Fraser mobile app.

With the Layar SDK, you can quickly and easily embed our Augmented Reality technology into your existing mobile app, giving you the ability to create a custom AR experience for your users within your app.

Now, HoF is back again with more great interactive content – this time in the form of shoppable windows for this year’s Black Friday promotions. The windows will launch on Wednesday, November 25th in stores across the UK and Ireland and will feature instructions for customers to download the House of Fraser app to access the shoppable windows journey.

A “Scan to Explore” feature on the House of Fraser iOS mobile app is triggered by scanning the window displays, which will allow customers to shop the best Black Friday deals in just a few taps, avoiding the busy queues inside the stores. A “Scan to win” feature will also be available so that customers can be in entered into a competition to win a £250 House of Fraser gift card.

To help guide customers and highlight the new technology, Black Friday “angels” will be on hand on November 27th in the top 14 stores across the UK and Ireland demonstrating to customers just how easy it is to scan the displays and to interact with the immersive content on the House of Fraser app.

“The event is a natural next step for House of Fraser on the path of setting trends in digital retail following previous trials of their app’s Augmented Reality features earlier this year,” said Hsio Ling Hee, Head of Custom Solutions at Layar/Blippar. “The new HoF app, powered by the Layar SDK, has a lot more to offer in the future and we are confident they will continue being one of the leaders of innovation for digital and Augmented Reality retail.”

Shoppers in the UK and Ireland can download the House of Fraser app for iOS here.

The trend of Augmented Reality greeting cards is continuing to gain speed as print and mail services company Hammer Direct – based in Minneapolis, Minnesota – has released Popcards, a greeting card creation app powered by Layar.

Popcards allows users to quickly and easily create a greeting card that literally pops with a video message. Users can personalize their Popcards with pre-designed templates to quickly make a great looking card.

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Albron, a Dutch food services company, has teamed up with communications agency de Toekomst to bring Layar’s Augmented Reality technology to its restaurant menus. Albron, which operates Grand Café-style restaurants at Center Parcs Holiday Villages across western Europe, commissioned de Toekomst to produce interactive menus that resemble newspapers.

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Toy manufacturer Mattel is turning to Layar’s Augmented Reality technology to promote one of the world’s most iconic and famous toys: Barbie®.

During the busy holiday shopping season, Mattel partnered with Toys“R”Us Canada, one of the world’s largest toy stores, to promote Barbie®. The promotion objective is to engage with young girls and parents at home, in-store and online and runs in store into Summer 2015.

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