With most augmented reality campaigns you either find out they running too late, or they take place in another country so you don’t get the opportunity to rush out and buy the cereal box. If you are in the UK, I recommend you get yourself down to the local newsagents and pick up a copy of the latest edition of NME (12/5/10).

The Gorillaz new album, Plastic Beach is out and to launch the album as well as promote the forth coming ‘Escape to the Plastic Beach’ tour with some fanfare, a rather tasty augmented reality campaign has been created.

The latest edition of NME comes complete with an A5 sized passport which contains a short manga style story,  a competition to win exclusive Gorillaz content, tickets, signed merchandise, and a free download of a Gorillaz track. Buried inside the passport (which has been put together really well by the way) is an augmented reality marker which you can either use with your iPhone courtesy of the Plastic Beach iPhone application, or with your webcam.

On the iPhone, as well as news about the band and the ability to buy tickets, when you snap the AR marker you’re presented with the 3D plastic beach that you can move around with your fingers. If you hold the passport up to the webcam then you get the same beach which you can navigate by adjusting the marker.

To keep users engaged with the campaign and coming back for more, the augmented reality content will change on a regular basis. Holding up the passport to your webcam or iPhone next week will give you different 3D content.

As a marketing tool this campaign has been thought-out and put together really well.  It not a campaign that uses augmented reality just for the sake of it, it genuinely adds some value and fits in with the printed passport theme very nicely. I hope we see more of these carefully crafted campaigns in the future.

In the meantime, if you’re a Gorillaz fan it goes without saying that you should get hold of a copy of NME and experience the world of augmented reality (for the first time) for yourself. UK augmented reality fans should get hold of a copy of NME to give the campaign a go. If your in distant parts of the world, you can still print a marker from gorillaz.com/passport and try the campaign for yourself.

Just as I was typing, the Gorillaz advert came on tv, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.

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