Augmented reality (AR) has transformed the marketing world by overlaying digital magic onto the real world, creating experiences that captivate and engage audiences. From making dinosaurs roam a shopping mall to turning customers into video game heroes, brands have been quick to leverage AR to stand out. Marketers and advertising agencies are particularly excited about these augmented reality examples because they demonstrate how AR can boost customer interaction, social sharing, and even sales. In this article, we’ll explore ten award-winning or otherwise remarkable AR marketing campaigns – augmented reality examples in advertising that have wowed consumers and won industry acclaim. Each example comes with a brief video so you can see the AR experience in action. Let’s dive in!
National Geographic – Live Augmented Reality Wildlife Experience
One of the earliest augmented reality examples in marketing came from National Geographic. In 2011, the TV channel set up a huge AR display in a shopping mall that let passersby see themselves interacting with National Geographic content on a big screen. Unsuspecting shoppers suddenly found virtual dolphins, leopards, dinosaurs, and even a looming astronaut (recreating the moon landing) appearing right next to them! The AR system (created by agency Appshaker) superimposed lifelike 3D animals and scenes into the live video feed, so it looked like wild creatures were in the mall alongside people. The result was pure delight – you can see in the video how both kids and adults reacted with joy and surprise as a giant dinosaur stomped into view or a virtual storm raged overhead. This pioneering AR stunt wasn’t a traditional ad for a product, but rather a PR campaign to promote National Geographic’s TV content by inspiring awe. It succeeded in drawing crowds and generating millions of online views as a viral video, showing early on how AR can turn an ordinary location into something unforgettable.
Pepsi Max – “Unbelievable” Bus Shelter Prank
AR can make even a mundane bus stop feel unbelievable – Pepsi proved that with one of the most viral augmented reality examples in advertising to date. In 2014, Pepsi Max transformed a London bus shelter window into a simulated window to outrageous scenarios. Unsuspecting commuters looking through the glass saw what appeared to be the real street ahead – until asteroids suddenly crashed down, aliens emerged, and a giant tentacle snatched pedestrians off the sidewalk! In reality, it was an AR display using a live video feed of the street combined with CGI surprises. The “Unbelievable” Bus Shelter stunt, designed by agency Grand Visual, captured people’s shocked and amused reactions and turned them into a hit online video. The award-winning campaign (it even won a Bronze Cannes Lion) racked up over 8 million YouTube views in just a few days and reached an estimated 385 million people through press coverage. Even better, Pepsi Max saw a 35% jump in sales that month, proving the AR prank wasn’t just fun – it delivered real business impact. This Pepsi stunt is often cited as a masterclass in AR marketing: it used a simple setup and a lot of creativity to turn an everyday setting into an extraordinary experience.
Taco Bell – Record-Breaking AR Taco Lens on Snapchat
Social media is a natural home for AR marketing, and Taco Bell showed how a fun AR camera effect can achieve staggering reach. For Cinco de Mayo 2016, Taco Bell partnered with Snapchat to create a quirky AR Sponsored Lens that turned people’s faces into a giant taco shell. Yes, it literally gave you a taco head! The lens included playful audio (the famous Taco Bell “bong” sound) and augmented graphics like lettuce and cheese, transforming selfie-takers into the brand’s product. The result was the most successful Snapchat lens campaign ever at the time: it was viewed 224 million times in just one day, a new record on the app. According to Snapchat, users spent a cumulative 12.5 years playing with the Taco Bell lens in 24 hours – an incredible level of engagement for a single-day campaign. This lighthearted AR filter cost Taco Bell up to $750,000 (Snapchat charges premium rates for holidays), but it paid off in massive brand exposure among the Gen Z and millennial audience. Taco Bell’s social team noted that Snapchat’s audience was a perfect match for their playful marketing style. This example showed other brands what’s possible with AR on social platforms: if you make it fun and shareable, millions of users will essentially advertise your brand to their friends.
IKEA – “Place” App for AR Furniture Try-Outs
Augmented reality isn’t only for wild stunts; it can provide practical utility to consumers. A great example is IKEA Place, the AR app launched by IKEA in 2017 that allows shoppers to “try before you buy” with furniture. Using the app on a smartphone, you can scan a room in your house and then select IKEA furniture pieces to virtually place into your space at true scale. Through the camera, the chair or sofa appears right in your living room, letting you see its size and style in context. This solves a simple but common problem – “Will this couch actually fit and match my decor?” – without any heavy lifting. The app was built on Apple’s ARKit and was released when AR on iPhones was becoming mainstream. IKEA Place quickly became one of the most cited augmented reality examples of retail innovation. It kept customers engaged and even reduced returns, since people could make more confident buying decisions. IKEA benefited by gaining an edge over competitors and reinforcing its brand’s reputation for home design inspiration. The app was so popular that IKEA reported it had over 2 million downloads in the first few months. It’s conversational and easy to use – just point your phone and tap to place furniture – making AR a natural part of the shopping journey rather than a gimmick. Many other retailers followed suit with AR try-on and preview tools after this.
Burger King – “Burn That Ad” AR Hijack
Burger King took a cheeky approach to augmented reality marketing by directly involving its top competitor’s ads. The “Burn That Ad” campaign in 2019, run by Burger King Brazil, invited users to download the BK app and use an AR feature to literally set fire to any McDonald’s ad they came across. When viewed through the smartphone camera, billboards, flyers, even McDonald’s print coupons would virtually burst into flames and burn away on-screen. As the flames died down, an offer for a free Whopper appeared as a reward for “burning” the rival’s ad. This audacious idea turned every McDonald’s poster into an interactive BK promotion. The campaign was not just a prank – it was strategically solving a business challenge. Burger King’s agency (DAVID São Paulo) noted that McDonald’s outspent BK on advertising 4-to-1 in Brazil, so they piggybacked on McD’s media presence to get attention. The AR feature drove people to use the Burger King app (where they could redeem the free Whopper coupon), helping increase BK app downloads and usage significantly. Burger King anticipated giving away half a million Whoppers, showing how confident they were in the campaign’s reach. “Burn That Ad” earned a ton of press coverage for its bold creativity, and it even won awards such as a Bronze Pencil at The One Show for Interactive Innovation. This example demonstrates AR’s provocative potential in advertising – it can literally attack a competitor (in a tongue-in-cheek way) and delight customers in the process.
Pizza Hut – Pac-Man AR Pizza Box Game
Nostalgia and augmented reality proved to be a winning combo for Pizza Hut. In 2021, Pizza Hut released limited-edition pizza boxes printed with a Pac-Man maze design and a QR code, as part of a promotion celebrating the brand’s retro roots. When customers scanned the code with their smartphone, an AR Pac-Man game launched right on top of the pizza box. Through the phone screen, the box became a virtual Pac-Man maze, and users could swipe to control the iconic 80s character and play a round of Pac-Man on their table. This creative AR campaign turned a simple pizza box into an interactive arcade game, tapping into the nostalgia of anyone who grew up with Pac-Man. Pizza Hut even ran a TV ad during the Super Bowl to advertise the AR game, featuring Pac-Man and encouraging people to share their high scores on social media. The campaign was a massive success: it generated over 1 billion impressions (741 million via digital impressions alone during the promotion) and drove the sale of over 10 million AR pizza boxes. It also garnered mainstream news coverage in outlets like Hypebeast and Food & Wine, effectively merging old-school gaming with modern marketing. This is a great example of using AR for packaging – an ordinary product box became a channel for digital content and customer engagement. For relatively low cost, Pizza Hut gave millions of customers a fun experience that reinforced its brand heritage.
Top Gun: Maverick – AR “Call Sign” Filter
To build buzz for the blockbuster film Top Gun: Maverick, the studio created a highly engaging AR experience that let fans step into the shoes of a fighter pilot. In 2022, Paramount Pictures and creative studio Powster developed the “Top Gun AR Filter: Call Sign Generator”, a web-based AR experience accessible via a QR code and social media. Using face-tracking AR in the mobile browser, the filter would outfit the user with a virtual fighter pilot helmet and visor, just like Tom Cruise’s character, and then prompt the user with a quiz to generate their personalized call sign. Fans answered a few fun questions (e.g. personality traits, favorite flying maneuver), and the AR experience would then display their custom call sign on the helmet. It effectively put “You” into the Top Gun world. Users could snap selfies or record videos wearing their AR flight helmet and share them on social media. The campaign was hugely popular, leading to tons of user-generated content as fans showed off their call signs. Paramount localized the AR filter for over 40 countries and even partnered with brands like Coke and IMAX to extend its reach. The filter got additional publicity when actor Jon Hamm tried it live in a TV interview, demonstrating the AR on air. This Top Gun AR promotion is an excellent example of using augmented reality for fan engagement and personalization. By giving each user a unique output (their call sign), it encouraged sharing and discussion, all while hyping the movie’s release. It shows how AR can deepen interaction with entertainment IP by making the audience an active participant.
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Mobile games have embraced AR, and now advertisers are joining in-game AR to drive real-world action. A great example is Circle K’s partnership with Pokémon Go in 2023 to pilot Niantic’s new “Rewarded AR” ad format. In this campaign, players of Pokémon Go would see a floating Circle K balloon within the game – tapping it launched an AR experience using the phone’s camera. Players suddenly saw a giant interactive Circle K coffee cup appear in their real-world surroundings (through AR). By engaging with the 3D coffee cup (for example, by walking closer or tapping it), players earned in-game items and received a prompt inviting them to visit a nearby Circle K store for a coffee in real life. Essentially, Circle K used AR to bring a bit of their store into the game and then bring the gamer into the store! The results were impressive – the campaign saw an average 76% engagement rate and 95% completion rate, meaning nearly everyone who started the AR experience interacted with it fully. Those numbers are much higher than typical mobile ad benchmarks, highlighting the stickiness of AR when done right. Circle K was very pleased, noting that integrating their brand into a beloved game via AR made for a positive, memorable interaction. For marketers, this is a peek into the future of advertising: branded AR content can be woven into popular AR games or apps to drive both engagement and foot traffic. As AR gaming grows, we can expect more of these win-win collaborations between brands and game developers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZxfSZgZyic
Coca-Cola Zero Sugar – #TakeATasteNow Interactive Billboard
Coca-Cola took augmented reality to the streets (literally) in autumn 2023 with its #TakeATasteNow campaign – an interactive digital out-of-home experience that blended 3D billboards with AR rewards. Coke installed high-tech digital billboards in major UK cities (London’s Piccadilly Lights among them) displaying an enticing 3D Coca-Cola Zero Sugar bottle. What made it special was that passersby could scan a QR code on the billboard with their phone, and then change the billboard’s content in real time via AR. For instance, users could “grab” the virtual Coke bottle on their phone, and the billboard would react – triggering animations on the big screen. After a brief interactive moment (essentially a mini-game to “take a taste”), the AR experience would deliver a voucher for a free bottle of Coke Zero at a nearby Tesco store. This campaign was billed as a “two-way controlled” DOOH-AR experience, reportedly a world-first at that scale. It ran for three weeks across 13 locations, and thousands of consumers participated, essentially turning outdoor ads into an interactive sampling opportunity. Coca-Cola supported #TakeATasteNow with influencer videos on Instagram and other media, extending the reach of the AR activation. The beauty of this campaign is how it gamified a billboard – instead of just looking at an ad, people could engage and get a tangible reward (a free drink). It’s a powerful example of using AR to bridge online and offline: the ad caught eyes, the AR kept people engaged, and the reward drove them in-store to redeem a product. Coca-Cola effectively turned advertising into a fun quest. This kind of interactive AR advertising points toward the future of out-of-home marketing.
Red Bull – Cliff Diving World Series AR Experience
Red Bull is famous for extreme sports marketing, and AR helped the brand bring an extreme experience right to fans’ phones. In 2023, to promote the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, Red Bull and AR studio Rock Paper Reality created a WebAR experience that let users visualize the insane height of a real cliff dive. At live events and on social media, Red Bull encouraged people to scan a QR code which launched an AR scene of a towering 70-foot diving platform in their environment. Through a smartphone, users could point at any open space – like their backyard or a park – and see a life-size 3D model of the Red Bull diving platform and cliff appear. An AR diver would even leap off the platform, performing a dive in mid-air. This gave viewers a sense of the scale and thrill of a cliff dive without needing to be on location. It’s breathtaking stuff, watching a tiny AR figure plunge from such a height on your screen! The AR experience helped drive home the event’s excitement and presumably encouraged more people to follow the competition or attend in person. It’s easy to imagine how this boosted social sharing, too – users could record the AR dive and post it, tagging Red Bull. While we don’t have public stats on the engagement, the campaign aligns perfectly with Red Bull’s brand of delivering jaw-dropping moments. It shows AR’s power in event marketing: you can give anyone a taste of an extreme event, virtually, and amplify the hype. Red Bull’s AR campaign blurred the line between being a spectator and a participant – you could experience a cliff dive virtually, which might just inspire you to see the real thing.
These ten examples showcase how augmented reality has become a versatile and impactful tool in modern marketing and advertising. From immersive stunts in public spaces to playful social media filters and useful shopping apps, each of these augmented reality examples finds a unique way to engage people by blending virtual content with the real world. The common thread is creativity – AR gives brands a tech-powered magic trick to surprise and delight consumers, whether it’s by unleashing virtual wild animals, gamifying a product, or rewarding users in a new way. Importantly, these campaigns weren’t just cool gimmicks; they achieved serious results like viral awareness, higher sales, record engagement rates, and industry awards.For marketers and advertising agencies, these examples illustrate that AR can fit a variety of campaign goals. Want to generate PR buzz? An AR installation or prank might do it. Looking to drive trial or sampling? AR can dispense coupons or let customers try products virtually. Aiming to boost social media presence? AR lenses invite user participation and sharing. As AR technology becomes more accessible (with almost everyone now owning an AR-capable smartphone), brands have a valuable opportunity to incorporate it into their marketing mix. The key is to ensure the AR experience genuinely adds value – be it entertainment, utility, or an emotional connection – rather than using AR for its own sake. When done right, as with the campaigns above, augmented reality experiences can capture audience imagination and reinforce a brand’s message in ways traditional media simply can’t.
AR’s momentum in marketing is only growing. It’s exciting to imagine what the next wave of augmented reality examples will look like: perhaps more live AR events, personalized AR ads, or AR tied to emerging smart glasses. One thing is certain – AR empowers marketers to get creative and interactive, turning audiences from passive viewers into active participants. And that, ultimately, is marketing gold. The campaigns we’ve explored prove that a little augmented reality can go a long way in making advertising truly unforgettable.