Red Digital taps augmented reality to spread Mirinda's pagalpanti!

The agency has launched two augmented reality games to spread awareness about the new flavours and the emoticons associated with them.

Mirinda, the beverage brand form the PepsiCo stable, has launched two augmented reality games for Android and iOS devices and one for the web browser using a webcam. The games have been developed by social media marketing agency Red Digital with the objective of spreading awareness about the new flavours and the emoticons associated with them.

The augmented reality game titled 'Pop the flavor' is available on Android and iOS devices and will soon be made available for iPhones, too. To play the augmented reality mobile game, the user has to scan an actual Mirinda Orange Masala or Mirinda Orange Mango bottle through the phone's camera. Once it is established that the bottle being scanned is a Mirinda bottle, the game will start and the emoticons from the scanned bottle will start popping up on the screen. The player has to pop as many emoticons as possible to score points and submit it to a high score leader board. The game ends when the player misses 10 emoticons. To play the game again, he has to scan the bottle once more.

Commenting on the use of augmented reality, Yashraj Vakil, COO, Red Digital, says, "Mirinda is all about pagalpanti and we wanted to leave our audiences breathless through whatever we did, which was the core brand positioning for this campaign. Call it shock and awe and we thought augmented reality would be the best solution to create that feeling."

Red Digital has also launched a web browser augmented reality game titled Mirinda Catch Your Flavor. The game uses the player's webcam and projects his image on the screen within the playing window. As the game starts, Mirinda flavours start falling from the top and the player needs to collect the flavour he is prompted to catch before the game starts. The player collects the flavour by simply seeing where the bottle is falling from and lifting his arm to position it in such a way that it is directly in the path of the falling bottle.

Vakil adds, "We believe augmented reality is just getting started. Many major gaming console manufacturers are also exploring incorporating augmented reality technology in their devices."