As part of their sponsorship activity, headline sponsor Budweiser has partnered with augmented reality firm Aurasma, to provide it's customers with the chance to drink out of a Virtual FA Cup.
Here at apt, we are huge fans of Augmented Reality, it's potential and the innovative ways it has been used; one of our favourites is Cadbury's chocolate games. When we heard about the new Budweiser partnership, we immediately thought it would be great - plenty of inspiration and a great sporting partnership in the year of sport. Yet when we watched how it works, we can't help feeling it's money well wasted and a huge disappointment...
Maybe it is because we aren't massive football fans at apt, or maybe it's that we just 'don't get it', but we have to be honest, this augmented reality partnership won't have us running out to buy a can of beer in the same way Cadbury inspired us to purchase some Dairy Milk...
Let's look at it objectively - the idea is that you can turn your can into an FA Cup - great, except the picture is a little ropey... What's more, unless you have mastered the art of sitting cross-eyed, you can't actually drink and see it at the same time. Then there's the fact they've left the lid on making it unrealistic, and finally how about the fact it is actually pointless; not in the addictive sort of pointless where you spend hours of your life trying to beat a game, but in that pointless pointless way that it actually well... has no point! To top it all off, the guys in the advert don't look that enamoured with it either (bored), so rather than adding it to our list of incredible augmented reality stunts, we'll be adding this to the pile of best forgotten.
For all you football-mad people out there, we are happy to stand corrected, but for us, this just isn't our cup of tea!