Building AR Marketing Partnerships for Hardware & Software AR_VR Products
The augmented reality market is growing rapidly. It was valued at 14.7 billion in 2020, and is projected to surpass 88 billion by 2026. Some of the key drivers for the augmented reality market include uses for healthcare, devices, marketing, retail, and e-commerce, to name a few. In particular, it can be used to give people experiences and interactions they couldn’t have otherwise. For example, augmented reality apps give the user a near life-like experience from their home. Some can provide a 3-D educational adventure that immerses students into a time period or event. Similarly, augmented reality apps can also launch adults into a similar kind of experience. Or, they can offer an immersive, fun experience of something totally different. This technology is highly in demand and users love the experience of augmented reality technology.
The following videos and transcript show how to build AR marketing partnerships.
Transcript
Cassie: It’s an amazing technology that is going to open up massive opportunities for the immersive technology landscape. And without further ado I’m going to have these guys introduce who they are and give us a little background on where you come from and maybe what, what brought you to this project? That is so special. So I think we’ll kick things off with Daniel.
Daniel: Okay. Okay, so I am Daniel, Daniel Greenberg. I lead the project together with a wonderful team. The professional and the executive team. I’ve been developing technology for the last over 40 years. Starting in computer vision and then artificial intelligence complex, the logic systems embedded systems and for the last 12 years. I’m focusing on augmented reality glasses or more precisely how to integrate virtual information and contents of all kinds into the real world. And what we are doing like everywhere, but everybody else is trying to create the right glasses. Besides that I’m a professional musician, which gives me, for me, a very important additional perception of what we are doing. Because actually creating music is in many ways, creating a reality. And that’s about me.
Cassie: Good. I love that. Like the music is creating reality too, I agree. I believe that 100%. Well, let’s bring it on over to Mike, Mike share a little bit more about you and your background and maybe your favorite drink.
Mike: Okay. Now you’re talking. Okay. So I’m Mike Meyer, the Director of Business Development for Element. My history is like, over 40 years in the mailing, a software industry. Started coding back when computers were paper tape and 8K of core was a lot of memory and I progressed from there, drifted into the business side of the software business, mainly worked for international companies. I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow description. My last 9 to 5 I was corporate vice president of SAP and after a while I kind of got sick of the corporate life. So I took early retirement and started working with startups of various capacities as an angel investor, as a mentor advisor. Daniel, I know for a few years now and one day he called me. He said, I’ve seen is great technology to University, and you show me the technology and on the spot. I decided to retire from my retirement and joined the company as the business development person. And yes, my favorite drink as you alluded to is beer, but hey, it’s not a story.
Cassie: So I heard from the scientists that they kind of got started and how they won a competition and that’s kind of how people started to see about what they have been building in the lab. And then we’ve heard how might kind of got started in here. Daniel, I still haven’t heard and I’m eager to hear. How did you find out about what these guys were doing in the lab? Walk us through that?
Daniel: Well, actually they called me on the phone and they told me, please come and see and this was the way you know that the connection was made. I mean simply as that.
Cassie: We think like an immediate like wow, this is amazing.
Daniel: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, eventually what they are doing is they are solving the most difficult, you know, the most difficult issue that we are dealing with in their hub. Well of AR glasses, the biggest restriction, which is the cultural restrictions. People don’t want, you know, ridiculous devices on the face and a simple like that. Okay. So because you walk in the street, you, you know, this is part of your personality and allowing to create, I mean, to make any kind of glasses as I wear, Mike and you. And those to come are capable. This is something that it’s extraordinary. I mean it’s you know, it’s what we were waiting for that for many years.
Cassie: So yes, I was really excited. Yeah, immediately after meeting you and seeing what the solution was like, this is revolutionary and I really loved, not only just the technology, but also this sort of, this like business model. Whereas everybody else that’s building these glasses, they’re building every single part of it every hit, like they’re building out the product as a whole piece. And essentially, what we are allowing is any type of glasses maker retailer to be able to build that augmented reality. Now, that is how you actually push an industry forward. So that’s why I got super excited. Now, here are going to be something like a little bit more diving, deep into some of the challenges that we are currently seeing you with taking the product out of the lab and into the engineering Integrations because we’re going to be meeting so many partners, so I guess maybe both of you can can jump in here. What are some of the challenges that we see now and maybe some of the challenges we may be seeing in the future and what are some of the ways that we can start to overcome those?
Daniel: Mike, do you want to answer?
Mike: Look. We are now working, really, with some of the major brand names in the world. We have really done no marketing. Somehow they’ve heard about us and they have no contact with us and someone actually coming to visit us next month in Israel. Like any project, to take technology and a lab into mass production is a challenge. Okay, no doubt about it. We are talking with some metal surface manufacturers and we hope that in the next two or three months, we can prove that they can produce in the laboratory on a small scale.
We can also produce on an industrial scale. Okay. So that’s from the front of the Hardware point of view. Now, if you look at the AR market today, it’s like twenty billion dollars. Okay? And it’s projected to grow to like 80 billion dollars in five years. There’s like a thirty percent growth rate and there’s some really great applications out there, but they’re all 90% of them are based on your smartphone, retail education, and repair maintenance medical. Okay. So what we want to do is once we have seed units available, and we’re looking at a 12-15 month window to approach a lot of the software developers and get them to transform their application from phone into the glasses and I’m sure that they can think of applications which we haven’t thought of. And wow, the effect will be just amazing through your most sensitive organ. Okay, your eyes, you can see things that you want to see when you want to see it in a natural way and not having to pick up your phone and stick your face in the phone. So that’s really the way we see it.
Daniel: I think I see three different challenges to overcome. The first challenge, is the technology as Mike said, it’s always a challenge to bring technology from the lab to the mass production facilities. But I’m not concerned about that. We know how to do that. And I think that this is not our main concern. The second component is the use case and the contents you need to have, you know, enough contents and enough services for people to, you know, to start using it from the very beginning and behave. Efficient enough new Gadget with New new possibilities, the third component, which is the real hard component is the cultural acceptance. Because eventually, what we are doing is modifying the way people see the real world because we are super imposing, new contents, new information, and it sounds like, you know, okay, so what about it, but, eventually this is, I think, the main challenge. For people to do to get, you know you want to use this, to be able to understand this new reality. It has something to do also, you know, with music because 100 years ago, you could hear music only if you had a radio and your house and 200 years ago, you could hear music only if you had an instrument to play or somebody playing for you? And about 50 years ago. There was a new technology allowing you to put on headphones and walk in the street with music, carrying the music with you. And this was extremely innovative and a short story. A couple of years ago, just before the corona crisis started, I was traveling in the Sahara desert in Morocco and I met these people, you know, living in the desert. And an eye for the first time to one of them we had. I mean, they spoke some French. And so for the first time I put headphones in his ears and played rock and roll and he was so shocked. He threw it away and just ran away and came back, just the next day.
So this is, this is Something that we take for granted, but it’s not, it’s nothing for granted shooting glasses to people and letting them see a new kind of reality integrating digital information into the real world. It’s not, it’s not for granted. I mean this, this is, I think this is the main barrier, the cultural barrier, the cognitive barriers of the psychology biomerieux.
Cassie: You know, the culture also comes along with the other questions of you know, like protection data protection. Privacy, like a lot of that, actually comes into play too. So that lumps under that cultural exception acceptance as well. Very interesting.
Daniel: I just want to add something under it. And that the glasses will be, you know, as the glasses as, you know, already the next son’s new. I mean, because this is part of the, of the obstacle, you know, having something in your face that you, you know, how to put it, you know, how to cover. If you know how to use it. This is extremely important.
Cassie: Yeah, like I have a pair of these massive Hardware glasses that I’ve been trying to play with for the past week. Keeps falling off my face and heavy and I always think like at what time will we get to that point? When somebody is walking around saying, where are my glasses? And we’ll be able to say, hey, they’re on your head because they’re so lightweight, you know, like, freaked out when I lose my phone. I’m like, where’s my phone? And it’s like in my hand, so I think when we get to that point when people start doing that. We would, that’s our like,
Tipping Point. We know we’ve done our good job. Absolutely.
Building Partnerships
Cassie: How about a little bit talking about Partnerships? Because that’s essentially like our entire business is Partnerships and along with other startups that are building now in immersive technology. You do need to rely heavily on Partnerships and going that route, and it’s not always clear cut on how to go about them and how to structure those Partnerships. So, the question I have for you, maybe I’ll start with Mike, is what are some of the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen with either startups? Because you’ve mentored startups before, and you are an angel investor when they approached Partnerships, what are maybe some of the different mentalities that need to be thought about in a different way in terms of going towards making a partnership with a larger corporation.
Mike: Okay. Well, first of all, there’s the issue of a small company startup usually working with a very large organization such as a mismatch as a tension there right away, but you have to put content into the word partnership. I think a lot of people make mistakes and I enter into a partnership. That’s not really a partnership. Okay. It’s a supplier-buy type of relationship. Okay. And that’s what is always problematic. Because if I can sell to somebody else for a better profit. Okay, then I’ll do that. Okay. So partnership has to be a partnership with both sides.
Have a commitment, both sides to make a clear, win-win strategy. Okay? To make that particular product or service and our success. So, and so, I think the most important thing from my perspective is to look at it as a partnership and not as a supplier- customer type of relationship. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve. And we’re doing this on three levels. One is the manufacturer of the meta Services. You people want to be up a part, and not just a supplier. We’re also talking to an ODM to produce Electronics. Okay, and we’re talking to AR retailers or integrators, who will be integrating into the eyeglasses and selling them. Okay. So will you Looking for Partnerships of three levels from the manufacturing of the product type of you. Okay, but if we now go into what Daniel said about the the software, okay, there we have a new partnership by allowing the software software producers to see the business opportunity for them to produce software for our devices.
Cassie: I love it, Daniel. Do you want to add to that? Because I don’t think we even mentioned what software that we have. We’ve mainly been talking about the glasses. So maybe you can introduce some of the software that will be complemented into the hardware that we are building with all these partners.
Daniel: Yeah, one of the question that people ask when we start talking with them, you know, potentially partners. Or developers. Okay. So eventually how a museum manager will place contents on the, you know, on the picture. So, you know, also any kind of. So, this is a good question. So our approach is that virtual contents of all kinds integrating into the real world should be managed and distributed in such a way that everybody can, you know, like, like, it’s like picking from a physical object, and put it in in, in the southern place in the street, or in a room or whatever. Simple as that. And from the other side, people using this content are through such an application. They want to use it in their own personal way. I mean, if I see such a tourist, some information in the Eiffel Tour in Paris, so possibly, I will prefer to read it in Hebrew because it is my language. And you, Casey, will prefer to have it in English because this is your language. And if I’m a doctor in a hospital, a surgeon, the relevant information for me will be different than the information that the nurse which is taking care of, you know, of the patient will have. So we are creating, we already created a concept. A very clear concept of such a software content management platform, allowing any content provider to place and distribute virtual contents anywhere in the globe. Again in, you know, in the streets, in the classroom, in whatever museum. And to any user to use through a very simple application. So I don’t need to as a user. I will, I don’t need to download each time. I visit the place of a new application, or a certain application. Everything should be very simple, very friendly, also, for content providers, and also, for Content users. So we are developing such a platform which will allow you know, simple use and simple and friendly use for everybody.
Cassie: I love that. I think that’s really exciting, especially if there’s any developers out there who are thinking about, you know, what are some of those? What is the direction? We could take our company into the future in the next two years in the next three years. I think there’s a massive opportunity. And so with that to kind of close out our session with you Daniel and Mike, what, you know from your perspective, what kind of opportunities do you see for other companies or startups to work with us, in this sort of capacity? What would you like to see? What are you open to? And what some of those may be like crazy ideas that you haven’t told anybody yet?
Mike: You know, we are open for partnership, that’s a general statement. I think that I’m sure that some of our potential Partners, especially in the software field and applications which we haven’t thought of, okay, so we are extremely open, we welcome them to contact us to talk about it. Okay, and we’ll certainly listen and, and move forward with them.
Cassie: Daniel, do you have anything to add there?
Daniel: No, not really because, you know, we have so many thoughts and so many ideas, but to conclude I can say that you know, sometimes I think what are the technologies that influence humanity the most because there are so many Technologies, you know, traveling in a car, flying in an airplane, talking on a smartphone from the street, so many things that actually changed things. And, For me, of course, the electric guitar is a huge technology changing culture. But I’m quite sure that AR glasses will be the most significant. Cultural change. Because actually it changes the way you see. Reality, I mean it everything changes. You know, how you your perception of everything? And so many. So many things to do, I mean not just allowing you to say, you know contents or get services in their ankle to the real world. But also helping you to get decisions. Go left, go, right you prefer to to see this. I mean actually what I think is that eventually AR glasses will change our life, the way and navigation, applications changed. The way we get from one place to another. Making it much, much more simple, you know, and much more efficient. Time consuming, which is a huge thing today, time-consuming. How I use my time. So I think that we are, you know, it’s a huge challenge, but this is a technology that will change everything.
Cassie: I agree 100% that. I’m so excited to be on this journey. Gentlemen. Thank you so much. I think that this is a really fantastic session and I hope all the developers know the founders with developing agencies. Do reach out to us in the future because there’s some amazing stuff.
Thank you again gentlemen. Thank you.
Augmented reality is an exciting way to experience something new. Whether learning about past history, or making memories from another time, augmented reality apps offer a unique experience. There are many more developments in augmented reality that are being developed, and we are on top of the next technology. Reach out to us regarding questions about AR marketing and partnership strategies and move into the future.
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