Tiffany and Cartier aren’t the first brands to partner with Snap’s AR. Louis Vuitton just teamed up with artist Yayoi Kusama to create a Snap filter that covers landmarks around the world with Kusama’s signature polka dots. Snap has already partnered with Dior, Gucci, and Prada using virtual try-on technology.
“Brands are tapping into Snapchat’s largely Gen Z community to make the world more interactive and more fun,” said Geoffrey Perez, Snap’s head of luxury.
The Cartier Tank watch experience uses an augmented reality filter to transport the user to the Pont Alexandre III bridge in Paris. The virtual experience allows you to see four iterations of the clock from different periods of the past 106 years, and then look around the bridge and its fellow pedestrians to discover that time.
Tiffany, on the other hand, uses ray tracing technology, a technology from video games, which captures the movement of light in AR objects more realistically. For a jewelry company, this means that the unique shine of metals and diamonds can be translated into AR. Neither Cartier nor Tiffany returned requests for comment.
Ziyou Jiang, a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia, presented a paper at a clothing conference last year on how AR is influencing Gen Z. Jiang surveyed 134 people of this age if and how AR affects their purchasing decisions. He found that two things made them buy a product after encountering it in AR: interactivity and virtual experiences.
Cartier’s time travel experience is an example of interactivity. Jiang says Gen Z doesn’t need to be shown a product in an ad but to see how it fits into a larger story or movement, something AR is uniquely positioned to do.