AR CASE STUDY
CLOUDWATER AR
From seed-to-store - this AR activation for KWS and Cloudwater tells the story of how beer is produced.
[ 2023 ]
[ AR ]
Draw & Code were commissioned to create a ‘living label’ AR experience for KWS – a global leader in seed breeding and production. KWS and Juice Immersive engaged Draw & Code following a period of consultation with the Digital Innovation Accelerator (DIA) at KWS, where they identified an opportunity to overcome a long-standing challenge the business had on how to communicate directly with product consumers when KWS operated at the top of a highly complex supply chain.
Raising the profile of farming supplier by partnering with a producer and conveying the seed-to-product story in a fun and innovative way was the brief, and so the seed of an idea was sown.
KWS worked to identify a brewery partner for the pilot project and Manchester brewer Cloudwater duly obliged, even committing to brewing a special one-off lager for the purposes of the project. The plan was to create an augmented reality animation that would be viewable via a bespoke mobile app, ingrain, when industry insiders and beer enthusiasts ‘scan the can’.
Our art team collaborated closely with Cloudwater during R&D to design a bespoke beer can label for the new brew Heritage Bock, that would act as an effective AR trigger. While making an AR app, a few challenges were thrown up, including using a cylindrical beer can as an AR marker. Happily, modern AR tools are up to the task so we tested extensively to ensure the experience could be triggered from a variety of angles. The label was heavily influenced by the tasting notes provided by Cloudwater’s Head Brewer and also incorporated many of the illustrations featured within the AR animation – tying the physical packaging to the digital storytelling.
The animation itself went through a number of storyboard iterations to ensure that the barley-to-beer story being told was communicated in an engaging and accessible way, leveraging the power and potential of augmented reality and creating a ‘living label’ concept. Once the narrative and 2D illustrations were signed-off, the animation work got underway in Unity, alongside voiceover recording, music composition and sound design.
Following a QA process involving all project stakeholders, the AR experience was ready to go, the can labels went to print and the beer was brewed and canned. The result was the ingrain AR app that was published to the App Store and Play Store.
Upon completion of the project, and approval of the ingrain mobile application on the app stores, KWS launched the unique one-off Heritage Bock lager at a private evening event in the brewery’s Unit 9 Taproom. The AR experience went down as well as the 6.5% malt-forward Heritage Bock lager.
The ingrain project was very much a learning exercise, designed to explore if making an AR app is a worthwhile project for the beverage and food production industries. The ease-of-use of the app and the quality of the AR storytelling on show quickly paved the way for a second AR experience within the ingrain pilot project – this time a triple-distilled vodka produced by award-winning distillery, In The Welsh Wind.
