Augmented reality has landed at Johnson & Johnson Vision this summer with a new virtual try-on for Acuvue lenses. A first-of-its-kind launch in China for the company, the app allows users to see how they would look wearing Acuvue’s Define brand contact lens. The virtual on-eye experience debuted in Acuvue’s flagship store on Tmall and on WeChat.
The Define brand lenses accentuate eye color in part by outlining the limbal ring, which is the circular edge of the iris, versus traditional colored lens that cover up the iris. The more subtle effect however, is also more difficult to imagine, making the try-on feature useful—and, by the sales outcome, effective.
J&J Vision debuted the AR experience during the recent “6.18” midyear shopping festival in China with high engagement and an almost 30% consumer purchase conversion rate, J&J Vision said in answer to email questions from Fierce Pharma.
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“Digital innovative assets are a great complement to our traditional marketing approach to elevate our consumers’ experience and strengthen our engagement with them,” the company said.
J&J Vision, the eye care business unit inside J&J’s Consumer Health division, partnered with beauty tech company Perfect Corp. for the AR technology.
Perfect Corp. founder and CEO Alice Chang said in a news release that the solution would “offer beauty shoppers a full-range, immersive, hyper-realistic AR beauty experience, leading to a greater brand loyalty and a stronger omnichannel strategy.”
AR technology is increasingly being used by pharma companies with physicians to project 3D images onto real-life views that can help explain how a medicine works or create better empathy with patients. Migraine simulators in virtual headsets or on phones, for example, show how vision and hearing are impacted.
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The use of AR for consumers in health and pharma marketing is growing as well. At Cannes Lions Health last year, Sanofi talked about its OTC launch for Allegra in Brazil ,which included an AR campaign that showed users with red noses and watery eyes and even animated sneezes that blew droplets on the phone screen.