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!

Leading paper and packaging industry association TAPPI has joined a growing list of publishers, printers and industry associations signing on with Layar for augmented reality and interactive print solutions. The Atlanta, Georgia-based company, an industry staple for nearly a century, announced the partnership at the 2013 Paper Con Conference earlier this week.

“TAPPI is excited about our partnership with Layar and the opportunity it provides our members and the industry to enhance print products with digital content,” notes Larry N. Montague, TAPPI president and CEO. “Layar allows anyone to easily and quickly add digital content to print and tap into the explosion in online information consumption. It allows users to communicate in new and interactive ways and makes print products more effective and engaging.”

TAPPI promoted this new partnership at Paper Con with posters, banners and a full page ad (see below) in the event’s program. This partnership is another in a trend of industry leaders backing Layar as the interactive print provider of choice. It reaffirms the print industry’s belief in the future of interactive print, and in Layar as the leading provider for all augmented reality needs.

TAPPI’s commitment to Layar is also a sign of growing adoption of Layar in the United States. American publishers Fry Communications and publications like Publishing Executive and Publishers Weekly have already begun using Layar’s interactive print. TAPPI adds to this momentum in the U.S. where use the Layar App tops 7 million downloads.

Are you ready to join the industry leaders and begin taking advantage of what interactive print can add to your business? Get started today!

Often here on the blog we share examples from magazines, newspapers and other print products that bring their pages alive with interactive print. But interactive print goes beyond just “print” in the traditional sense.

Maza, makers of mediterranean delicacies like falafel and houmous, are the latest in a growing group of brands using Layar to enhance the packaging of its products. And what’s even more impressive is that the do-it-yourself nature of the Layar Creator allowed Maza to quickly create a really terrific user experience all on their own.

By scanning the packaging of Maza’s products, customers can get links to recipes built around specifically around those items. As you can see from the photos below (click to see larger versions), Maza produced a great looking, unique campaign for its customers without any development work needed.

We caught up with Maza’s Roberto Oberegger, who put the campaign together, to get a closer look at how Maza used Layar to bring interactivity to its product packaging.

How did your hear of Layar, and how did you decide to use it on your products?
I think I read about Layar long ago and then I saw some advertisements. We started using the Layar App on some of our own advertisements because we have a lot to explain about our products (especially in the Dutch market) and what is possible to do with them. When we started to redesign our packaging, Layar was part of it from the very start.

What inspired this campaign?
We wanted to be among the first in the food industry to use Layar on packaging. We also wanted to add some more info to our products that we can change every season or every month.

What are the challenges for interactive packaging?
I think the majority of smartphone or tablet users don’t think about a houmous cup being “Layared,” but we are still convinced that this is the future of on-package communication.

Interactive print continues to grow in popularity and it’s incredible to see these kinds of campaigns - campaigns which would have previously required weeks of planning and AR development - quickly launched with ease. It’s a testament to the ease and versatility of the Layar Creator.

As for Maza, the company says it will be enhancing all of their product packaging with Layar going forward.

We received a special (and delicious) delivery here at the Layar office: chocolate! But not just any chocolate, this is chocolate from CHOCSTAR.nl - a Dutch site that lets you create your own custom chocolate bar.

But what’s really cool about CHOCSTAR is now every shipment comes in packaging which has been enhanced with the Layar Creator. Annefrid Imenkamp, CHOCSTAR’s CECM (Chief Executive Chocolate Maker… A.K.A. best job ever!) saw a demonstration of the Creator by very own Claire Boonstra just a few weeks ago. And now, their packaging is coming to life with digital content.

Here’s what she had to say about the experience:

“A couple of weeks ago I attended a network event where Claire Boonstra gave a presentation about Layar and the new Layar Creator. At that time we were in the process of updating the packaging of our chocolate and I was instantly inspired. The following day we got to work with the Layar Creator right away and were very pleased by the user friendliness and the easiness in which you can activate print with digital content.

At CHOCSTAR fun, interactivity, innovation and graphical design are of great importance and it’s these values in which Layar perfectly provides and significantly exceeds the QR code (which we previously used on our packaging). I also really like the fact that you have the possibility to change and improve the campaign whilst it is already published.

By means of the Layar creator, start-ups and smaller companies like CHOCSTAR which do not have big budgets or aren’t backed by wealthy investors are given the opportunity to provide added value (by means of information, interactivity and fun) to their customers and simultaneously distinguish it selves from competitors.

We are very enthusiastic about Layar and definitely thinking about other ways in which we can use the technology!”

Try it out yourself! You can either order some chocolate from CHOCSTAR, or click the image below and view it with Layar to experience the activated product packaging!