Heos by Denon and Augmented Reality

According to Heos, the bluetooth speaker market is highly competitive in terms of features, technology, size, and pricing & margins for dealers. In this market, vendors are investing in planning, designing, developing, acquiring and expanding to gain a competitive edge over their peers and need confidence in the market to launch.

Denon, an audio brand with a heritage of over a century were looking to unveil a brand new concept product at their European Dealer Conference (EDC) in Monte Carlo.

They were looking to boost dealers’ confidence and get them to buy-in to developing a competitive yet superior Bluetooth™ HEOS speaker product months before a physical working prototype was even available.

The Heos Augmented Experience

To achieve this, AR Media orchestrated a digital experience that utilised design, functionality and technology to deliver an innovative hands-on approach to presenting the product.

Visiting Dealers were presented with an empty table in the main exhibition area at the EDC which sparked immediate intrigue over what exactly was on display. Their curiosity peaked when they were enthusiastically handed an iPad and politely asked to have a look for themselves.

The Dealers were astonished to see a life sized, photorealistic, digital 3D version of the Soundbar speaker ‘appear’ on the rotating display with a virtual 3D flat screen TV playing the latest movie trailers.

Graphics and glyphs surrounding the virtual product intuitively directed the dealers to investigate the design intricacies of the Soundbar further, however as any hardened Audio Dealer will tell you… it’s what’s inside that counts

..and so that is precisely where we focused for our real WOW factor.

A tap of a simple button on the iPad screen and the entire surface of the Soundbar dissolved into a futuristic ‘X-ray’ view, enabling the Dealers to look directly inside and further explore the speaker’s internal components. With the ability to investigate and scrutinise the proposed technology in incredible detail, the Dealers were able to very quickly visualise and then enter discussions on all aspects of a product which at that point didn’t even exist.

The results for Heos

This creative visual hook had the desired impact on these Dealers and stimulated excited conversation between multiple Audio Dealers and Denon’s own representatives which in turn lead to a successful, memorable and confident launch of the physical product in the market only a few months later.