Pokémon Go: Or How Millennials Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Augmented Reality

Have we finally found a proper use case for AR? Can small businesses harness this power? Will Ash finally get a haircut?

I haven’t played it yet.

Sorry.

I sat around a table with Abhi Agarwal and Julie Pan and listened to three adults — one grown, two still in undergrad talk about the training camp in Washington Square Park. As of my time writing this I’ve seen more friends talk about this on social media than the Tim Duncan retirement and more people in obscure public spaces than ever before.

If you were born in the 80’s or 90’s you probably loved Pokémon at some point, whether it was collecting the physical cards or playing the video game. The original incarnations of Pokémon came in these two forms and a slew of video games continued to be produced as newer systems (eg. Nintendo DS and Wii) continued to make their way in the console market. The series was, and still is, highly adaptable so it was only a matter of time that catching them all made its way to your smartphone. Yet somehow, I don’t think most people would have expected it to converge with augmented reality in such a creative way.

So just a quick primer in case you’ve never heard of the term, augmented reality is slightly different than virtual reality. AR involved seeing the real/physical world but through a lens that incorporates computer generated imagery — in the case of Pokémon Go, the app provides that imagery based on a geo-targeted location. Your phone allows you to interact with this CG imagery (in this case the pokémon) which lends itself to a highly interactive experience.

Why should you care?

Well, for a while marketers were trying to make sense of how we can use augmented reality. The key issue is how do you make people download yet another app for the sake of something experiential. Imagine this scenario: you’re at a music festival, an image appears on screen, and the emcee tells everyone to download this app at this moment to experience something cool on your phone. You download this app, hopefully before the image disappears, you see this cool CG imagery via your app and in 10–15 minutes it’s over. After that you have no real use for the app. That’s a bit of work for something that doesn’t necessary guarantee you anything.

The Pokémon Go app has seemingly solved that issue by bridging it with a beloved franchise and zeroing in on key demographics. Older millennials love it because of the retro junk factor, younger millennials love it because it’s highly engaging and represents the evolution of a beloved franchise and Z Generation kids have yet another way to socialize with their phones. Whereas with the festival example you have no incentive to have caught the on-screen experience, with Pokémon Go you have the incentive of catching them all.

With people seemingly congregating in various public locations, it appears that the app does something that only Black Friday can do: drive foot traffic.

Yes the greatest buzz phrase that touches the hearts of retail managers everywhere should be inclined to know that Pokémon Go makes people go outside — people of varying ages that is.

So here’s some food for thought…

1. The audience that plays Pokémon Go is pretty vocal on social media
2. Maybe there’s a way for small businesses and Nintendo to capitalize off of this? Maybe there’s a way to turn your little espresso brewery into a place for kids (or adults) to meet and interact — not just sip lattes and read the latest Gladwell book.
3. Imagine you as a small business could become a Pokémon Go partner where people could capture exclusive characters at the potential cost of simply ordering some coffee. Or if you’re a comic book store, maybe holding a Pokémon Go meetup that in someway generates social traction.
4. At the very least, maybe spaces in the public domain — eg libraries, museums — may want to consider a way to draw more foot traffic.
5. Uniqlo needs to hold a collect-and-shop — collect pokémon while you shop for clothes.