A hallmark of the high-street shopping experience is to gaze at the various retail window displays while shuffling about. These intricate dioramas capture the attention of passersby and invite them inside through their creativity and intrigue—but these displays have long lacked a crucial element of engagement: interactivity.

A Forrester report highlighting the need for reaching consumers through digital experiences discusses the need for brands to center their marketing strategy on brand experience: “Digital is much more than marketing technology and channels; it is a way to harness technology’s enormous and unbridled capacity to reach out, connect, personalize, and engage.” The report goes on to mention how engagement through emerging digital channels in particular increases messaging salience, making it key for brands to continually bolster their understanding of emerging tech and its many applications.

To explore how brands could engage with audiences this way through one emerging channel—AR—the MediaMonks Labs team collaborated with one of the major players in the medium, Google. Together, they came up with an experimental app that transforms ground-level windows into portals to virtual worlds. Here’s how it works: take a look at a storefront window and you’ll find imaginative posters portraying friendly bees. Scan the marker with your phone’s camera, and the bee-bedecked windows transform into a splendid virtual world found inside a cartoonish beehive, the scene chosen for the tech’s prototype.

Inside the hive, busy bees work tirelessly to support their society (but not without having some fun). The idea is that a place of business could use this virtual display to invite passersby to peek “inside” their windows and get a sense of what’s going on there—in this case, workers doing their due diligence—without sacrificing privacy. Of course, the small virtual world offers numerous opportunities for digital brand storytelling as well.

What sets the app apart from your typical AR portal is that it’s designed for a specific window layout at a specific building, which allows for a more convincing virtual scene. For example, the precise measurements already programmed into the app allows the scene to continue to render even as users turn away from the AR marker that activates the experience. This means some bees can fly outside of the virtual space and into the surrounding world. Small details like this add to the scene’s realism and lets the digital experience spill out into the real world. “With this technology, you can tell a story on your façade,” says Geert Eichhorn, Innovation Director at MediaMonks. “You can take anything you want to showcase from your business at that moment.”

Showcasing Brand Values

In addition to letting viewers “peek in” to a place of business while maintaining privacy, the tech can also help white collar businesses maintain a friendly, active presence within its surrounding community through inviting digital experiences. With a quirky art style and delightful interactions, for example, the virtual beehive shows that the hosting office space isn’t your typical, boring place to work—and is committed to helping society as a whole, just like the friendly bees support their own. For retail businesses, similar AR experiences transform traditional window displays into memorable, interactive experiences—an objective that’s become increasingly popular for retailers in particular.

AR is a versatile technology, which means the virtual diorama doesn’t have to stick to a place of business, either. “Another aspect of this sort of experience is its portability,” says Roan Laenen, Jr. Creative at MediaMonks. “You can take the posters to other places, like a school. This digital beehive could easily be reframed as an educational tool on how bee colonies function or to raise awareness of dwindling bee populations.” As users interact with the hive, they’re treated to a selection of fun facts about the bees, delivered in an amusing environment.

While the context of interaction is different at a storefront versus a classroom, brands can consider how their AR campaign translates or integrates with larger social initiatives. For brands seeking ways to offer values-based marketing, AR provides an excellent opportunity to showcase those values in a fun, digestible way.

Engage Through Explorable Interactions

“Other storytelling mediums are linear, but this experience is personalized and reactive to the user’s exploration of the space,” says Eichhorn. Just like in a human city, life inside the beehive is broken down into various role-based areas: the nursery where bee larvae are fed and cared for, the queen’s palace, the construction site where builder bees press new honeycombs and more.

As users fix their gaze on these areas, a guide bee flies toward it and asks if they’d like to engage or learn more. “The guide bee isn’t just telling you what to do,” says Eichhorn. “His suggestions are built into the way the user looks around and explores, making him more like a real person who guides you through a space.” The guide balances the tightrope between leading users’ attention while also providing the freedom to engage however they please.

As a medium, AR naturally opens up opportunities for play and exploration. This results in a sense of intuitiveness that can’t be beat by most other forms of digital media. “This type of experience feels fun and understandable for young kids, yet it’s engaging for older people as well,” says Laenen, “even if they don’t understand the tech behind it.”

Good AR is a Multi-Discipline Effort

The guide bee buzzing to and fro isn’t the only way the experience captures user attention. “It’s a coming together of various talents and disciplines,” says Laenen. “The gamified element that attracts users to interact really flourishes with the animations and sound effects that also make up the experience.”

While much of the installation’s focus may be on the virtual world rendered via AR, one can’t forget the importance of the printed posters that activate the experience. They are, after all, what make the first impression to passersby and invite them to act. Printed collateral must not only be engaging, but consistent with the virtual experience. “The poster art easily translates to the 3D models,” says Laenen. “Close collaboration between the 3D modelers and the illustration team allowed us to realize a whole intricate world.”

By leveraging the latest digital technology, brands can reach their audiences in surprising and new ways, sometimes where consumers least expect it. By rendering imaginative virtual worlds as seen with MediaMonks Labs’ and Google’s digital beehive, brands can educate their audiences on brand values or key social issues in a way that sticks—and that sounds like a recipe sweeter than honey.