The Ben & Jerry’s Scoop of Happiness iPhone application is officially the first standalone natural feature tracking application to be released for the iPhone. It also has the honour of being the first natural feature tracking application to be used by a major brand.

Ben & Jerry’s new application features Moo Vision. A feature specially created to exploit the new iOS4 camera APIs that granted developers the ability to gain access directly to the live camera feed. With Moo Vision consumers can use their iPhone camera (with the latest OS) to interact with the product packaging for a range of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. For example, by pointing the iPhone camera at the packaging for the New York Super Fudge Chunk flavour you’ll be taken on a virtual tour of New York. You can share your adventures as you discover new flavours and special augmented reality content with your friends via Facebook and Twitter. As you discover new content you’ll unlock special features like new iPhone wallpaper. Moo Vision also helps you find Scoop Shops in your nearby area, and invite your friends to meet you there.

With natural feature tracking, advertisers are able to build campaigns around products that are already in shops, and without the need for adding any special content to the packaging. Natural feature tracking enables a device such as an iPhone or Android to recognise the product package directly. Once the package has been recognised, unique content can be sent to the device to enable consumers to interact with the product.

Moo Vision was created by Edelman Digital in partnership with Circ. Us on behalf of Ben & Jerry’s and it’s good to see that an engaging experience was created. Only a year ago the extent of many augmented reality campaigns was showing a marker to the webcam to see 3D image with a sever lacking of any kind of user engagement. Advertisers are now starting to build compelling content to entice consumers to interact and buy the product.

Moo Vision is no doubt the first of many augmented reality applications that will use natural feature tracking to allow consumers to interact with product packaging. I can see in the not too distant future we’ll be able to use smartphones to get product choice information on any product as we do our weekly grocery shop. Everything from nutritional information to recipes will be unlocked just by pointing your smartphone camera at a products packaging. It will come, but until then, Moo Vision is a must try for ice cream fans. (iTunes link)

Moo Vision

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