We worked with NYX Professional Makeup to create an AR experience that could only be accessed in Ulta stores in the US and Boots stores in the UK. The AR experience was an augmented world effect activated by a branded Snapchat Lens, which customers could open on their phones by scanning the available Snapcode in-store.

For US customers, the Lens greeted them with the call-to-action (CTA) ‘Find the vault and aim your camera at it to break in’, prompting them to point their phone’s back-facing camera at the image of a vault found on branded displays at Ulta.

Once the camera had tracked the vault image, a computer-generated image of a vault door was superimposed onto it alongside the CTA ‘Tap here’. Doing so unraveled the door that led to an explosion of gold bars and the appearance of a discount code that customers could use to get 10% off when purchasing the makeup.

The AR experience worked slightly differently for UK customers as there were no branded displays inside Boots stores. Instead, the Snapchat Lens revealed a La Casa del Papel-themed image with the CTA ‘Tap Here’. Tapping the screen led to gold bars piling to the floor alongside a new CTA ‘Tap to break in’. Tapping the screen again revealed the 10%-discount code, as shown in the video to the right.