Boston-based Clown Shoes Beer has built its brand on wacky, creative, fully fleshed out design concepts. All of that is now turned up, past 11, with the addition of augmented reality to cans of Space Cake.“We want our customers to have more of an experience when they are purchasing and drinking Space Cake. We’ve always been about more than just the beer in the can and this is a new way to explore new experiences with our fans,” says Sean Geary, Clown Shoes’ brand & sales director.
Designed in partnership with Australia-based augmented reality app Swigr, Hoka Shoes the augmented reality label for Clown Shoes Space Cake Double IPA offers five different settings to toggle through – the first being a lifelike animation of the beloved characters featured on the label.
“We’ll continuously push out new content through the AR app and will use social media to let folks know about that, but the real joy will be continuously scanning the can to see what’s new from Clown Shoes that week—the platform serves as a new way to interact with fans,” Geary tells us. “Since this is a totally new concept we’ll be implementing POS callouts in retail accounts to build awareness for the Swigr app and the fact that Space Cake cans have the ability to come to life.
Users can also get the latest updates on special events and announcements from Clown Shoes, get a recommendation on what beer they should try next, and play a retro-style “Beer Invaders” game using the can.
All of that is pretty rad, and it might just be scratching the surface of what AR can do for a beer brands.
“This is the future! People want to interact with brands they are purchasing and peel back the curtain to know more about the brand,” Geary says. “Without a physical brewery in every market we sell in it’s been tough to get our real story across with ease. Our “pages” within the AR app can be constantly updated and can go live everywhere the beer is sold within seconds so we’re able to get our story across with ease in a cool new way.”
You can obviously expect Clown Shoes team to keep playing with the tech, and explore stuff like contests, Q&A sessions with the brewer, live events, competitions, and more – all possible no matter where the person scanning the can is located.