The worlds top Belgian beer; Stella Artois has launched an augmented-reality bar guide application called “Le Bar Guide”. “Le Bar Guide” is a free 3D Augmented-Reality iPhone application that lets consumers search using geo-tracking for bars nearby via ZIP, Postal code, country or user rating. The simple premise of the new application is to enable Stella Artois to promote all bars that serve Stella Artois.
Le Bar Guide fuses the real-world view of the consumer’s immediate surroundings in augmented reality, providing a guide to bar locations. When the iPhone is held vertically, Le Bar Guide shows profiles of bars in the consumer’s immediate vicinity. The profiles are overlaid on the street view from their location. Consumers can hold the phone with the camera pointing at the ground and the application will show arrows pointing the consumer in the direction of nearby bars.
The application currently has more than 50,000 bars listed worldwide. Bar data comes from a Stella Artois Web service that provides geo-location information on all the bars that serve Stella in the U.S. and worldwide.
The Le Bar Guide’S handy “Le Taxi” feature even sources numbers for Taxi services from a local country directory.
Using the iPhone is also perfect for Stella’s target of affluent males between the ages of 25-35. Adding Augmented Reality, the overlay of images on the real world via a device’s camera, adds a heighten experience and a more intuitive user interface. Moreover, “Stella Artois chose this technology because they believe over the next three-to-four years augmented reality will be the primary delivery mechanism for location-based services. This is where the users are.”
