Our Investment in Camera IQ
This week, we announced our most recent investment in Camera IQ, the world’s first augmented reality platform for camera marketing. I remember my interest was immediately piqued from the first time I encountered their impressive deck at the beginning of the year — I was already familiar with the ever-evolving (and usually entertaining) world of AR camera filters from my own social media use, and I knew that demand for the technology as a brand engagement tool was starting to take off. When you see 50-something-year-old tech executives on your Twitter feed eagerly superimposing themselves into Drake’s video for Toosie Slide, for instance, you know the thing has officially gone mainstream.
Building a new AR experience (ARE) is no joke, though. Trained 3D modelers are in relatively short supply in the US, so many brands lack the in-house talent to design their own AREs from start to finish. Brands can opt to use the AR creation tools made available by the major social networks — namely Facebook’s Spark AR and Snapchat’s Lens Studio — but AREs created with these tools are not cross-compatible, meaning that a brand will need to create a new campaign from scratch for each social media platform on which they intend to advertise. This can be time-consuming and quite expensive; with this route, brands are looking at many hours of development time and approximately $20K in development fees per campaign, per platform. Another alternative would be to enlist the help of a third-party marketing agency to design and publish a bespoke ARE campaign. The process of working with an agency typically involves 600+ hours of expensive labor. This process can be cost-prohibitive for many companies and precludes brands from releasing AREs as a timely response to a current event.
Enter Camera IQ, which is building a no-code platform for brands to create AREs that instantly integrate with multiple social media platforms. Their tool is simple enough for any marketer to use; users simply drag and drop visual assets into Camera IQ’s platform, choose from a selection of pre-built AR effects, and click to publish across their desired social media networks. Customers pay a flat annual subscription fee for access, and can theoretically design + publish AREs in a matter of hours rather than weeks. This opens up the potential for brands to create AREs in response to topical pop culture happenings. You can imagine a cosmetics brand creating a try-on filter for a bold makeup look recently flaunted by an A-List celebrity. Or maybe a political campaign crafting an experience around a witty soundbite from their candidate during the most recent debate.
The end products are very cool. You’ve probably encountered some of them on social media without even realizing. Recently, Discovery Channel used Camera IQ to promote their coverage of the SpaceX launch; Katy Perry shared the filter with her fans. MAC Cosmetics allows its followers to try on various makeup shades with the Camera IQ filters deployed on its Instagram account. You can see a wider array of examples featured on Camera IQ’s site.
Despite the economic unrest posed by the pandemic, 2020 has proven to be a banner year for both Camera IQ and the AR space at large. Research shows that AREs have double the engagement rate of other advertising formats (i.e. video and photo). Using an ARE, brands can increase their audience reach by 34X as compared to a traditional social media story post. Now, with a huge portion of the population completely reliant on their smartphones and computers to work and learn, people are spending more time interacting with cameras than ever before. This has only served to further the appeal of AR camera marketing. Time spent on social media and consumption of AREs has increased dramatically throughout the year, as evidenced by Camera IQ’s research below. In terms of market timing…it probably couldn’t have worked out any better, right?
It’s been a pleasure working with the Camera IQ team, which is led by a particularly impressive duo of cofounders: Allison Wood and Sonia Tsao. I’ve felt truly inspired by their leadership and execution ability — the company’s rapid growth is particularly remarkable given the challenging economic climate. As a new woman in VC, I came into my role acutely aware of the disproportionate obstacles women face in this industry, and I’ve held the express intent of seeking out impressive female founders to support. This is the second of two deals featuring female CEOs that I’ve sourced and co-led during my first year at Grand Ventures (the first being Manatee), and I hope there will be many more to come.
Wishing an excellent rest of 2020 to Camera IQ from the whole Grand Ventures team. Congratulations!
