The future is now: Winerytale augmented reality app targets tech-savvy wine drinkers

04 Dec 2019 --- Wine industry platform Winerytale is offering a synonymous app that allows wine producers to create, manage and market an augmented reality (AR) experience to consumers via smartphone-scannable labels. The Winerytale platform seeks to boost sales and connect wineries with the new generation of tech-savvy wine lovers. The app has inspired more than 500 wineries across the globe into employing futuristic marketing trials.

AR and artificial intelligence (AI) were once considered the future but have now become a part of daily life. Automation has made processes easier, more agile and faster. These are important factors that have led many industries, including packaging, to gravitate towards implementing pioneering interactive systems. TetraPak, for example, launched a connected packaging platform, which will transform milk and juice cartons into interactive information channels, full-scale data carriers and digital tools.

Winerytale founder Dave Chaffey says that 524 wineries from across the world were already part of the trial and accessing the marketing potential of a marriage of AI and AR. Chaffey also notes that in the past few years a handful of wine producers have created AR apps for their specific brands. Winerytale aims to “blow the augmented reality door open” to any winery in an inexpensive and easy way. 

The technology behind the app is designed to work on any wine label, using AI to scan and recognize labels, and AR to showcase the wine’s backstory.“I don't believe anything like this has been done to this level before – bringing together artificial intelligence, augmented reality, clever technology, 500 different wineries with different visuals and branding, as well as different languages,” he says. “This platform is purpose-built for mass adoption and accessibility to any winery wanting to take advantage of a brand marketing and sales future that will undeniably involve augmented reality.”

Futuristic labels
The technology behind the app is designed to work on any wine label, using AI to scan and recognize labels, and AR to showcase the wine’s backstory by beaming it from an imaginary space inside and outside of the bottle. Through that technology, multimedia branding content comes alive, including winery tour videos, wine tasting notes, food pairing suggestions or nearby stockists.

The Winerytale team has also created a “fanwall” for every wine label. Through the use of AR, the fanwall appears to be inside the wine bottle and – driven by hashtags – displays images of the wine’s biggest fans inside the bottle.

Given this potential, field testing of the Winerytale App has attracted worldwide interest and a selection of leading wine producers are on board from across Australia and New Zealand, as well as from wine regions in South Africa, France, North America, Canada, Croatia, Lebanon and Mexico.

Chaffey says that the wineries involved in testing the beta version of the app are small to mid-level where the app has the ability to help them reach a broader market, boosting brand recognition and sales. “Current world consumers – millennial or not – live their lives through their phones and being able to give them the information they need, in a way they want, influencing the choices they make and harnessing that purchasing power is a no brainer.”

“When you switch the Winerytale app on, it becomes instantly activated on every bottle. And having every bottle activated is like having thousands of marketing machines all going to work for these wineries. The app allows them to tell their story, and through the app’s connection to social media, gives ‘insta-obsessed’ customers their own virtual connection to the brands they love to love,” he adds.

Location-based services
Through the app field trials, Winerytale is also rolling out location-based services (where the wine bottle in your hand “knows where it is” and adapts the content) with self-translating wine bottles to follow in 2020. For example, with this technology, a European traveler in Asia can easily view information about a wine in a language they can fully comprehend, which changes if they are within a winery's boundaries.

“Through Winerytale, the wine industry is becoming an early adopter of technology that has the potential to be used across multiple industries like pharmaceutical and grocery. It will just build on our current internet-based consumer habits. Want to know something about a product? Ask your artificial intelligence and augmented reality-powered app,” Chaffey concludes.

Edited by Kristiana Lalou