The problem is not that brand teams are non-technical
The short answer is: technical knowledge is not the gap. A team that understands how AR tracking works can still write a brief that treats the format as an expensive banner ad. A team with zero technical knowledge but a clear understanding of why audiences participate in interactive media can write something a studio can actually build.
The gap is almost always conceptual, not technical. Teams that struggle to brief AR well are not struggling because they cannot name a rendering engine. They are struggling because they are applying a broadcast media mental model to a participation format. The two operate on completely different logic. A broadcast ad is pushed at an audience. An AR experience has to be picked up by one.
This is the thing I try to fix first in every workshop, before any case study or platform demo. The rest follows from it.
What teams usually believe about AR before the session starts
Three assumptions show up reliably in workshop rooms, regardless of the team's category, seniority, or prior AR exposure.
The first is that AR means a face filter or a scan-to-trigger moment. The frame is almost always social media. Teams that have seen AR in the wild have usually seen it on Instagram or Snapchat, so their mental model starts and ends there. This is fine as a starting point; it is the wrong place to stop.
The second assumption is that AR is primarily a technical challenge, something to hand off to the developer after the creative work is done. Teams with this assumption write briefs that describe the output without describing the audience moment. They hand the creative problem to the studio and expect the studio to infer what the brand is trying to do. Studios cannot read minds.
The third assumption is that the measure of a good AR campaign is whether it went viral. This one is the most expensive mistake because it shapes the entire creative brief. Briefing for virality produces work optimised for sharing in the abstract, rather than for a specific audience doing a specific thing in a specific context. Most AR campaigns that perform well are not viral. They are appropriate.
The three concepts that shift how teams brief
These are not frameworks I invented. They are descriptions of how the format actually works, arrived at across six years and more than enough campaigns where the brief was either very good or very bad.
In every other media format, the audience is the destination. In AR, the audience is the carrier. A Snap lens does not reach 20 million people because a media plan said so. It reaches 20 million people because 200,000 people chose to put their face in it and share it. The creative question stops being "how do we reach this audience" and becomes "why would this specific person use this in front of their camera, and what does it say about them when they do."
The best AR briefs define the audience moment before they define the mechanic. "We want something that makes people feel like they just stepped into our brand world for the first time" is more useful than "we want a face filter with our logo." The format should solve the moment, not demonstrate that AR was used. When teams lead with the format they want, they get technically functional work. When they lead with the moment they need, they get campaigns.
Platform constraints, face detection, world tracking, hand recognition, are often where the best ideas live. Teams that see a constraint as a problem try to work around it and end up producing work that fights the medium. Teams that see a constraint as a creative parameter find ideas that are native to it. The best AR campaigns are impossible to describe as anything other than AR. That is not a coincidence. It is a consequence of starting from what the format does, rather than what the brand wants to impose on it.
What happens when it clicks
The moment that shifts the room is almost always the same one. Someone on the team says, out loud: "So the person sharing it is the ad." That is the right framing. When it lands, the conversation changes. People stop asking how to make the experience impressive. They start asking why their specific audience would want to be seen using it.
"So the person sharing it is the ad." That is the framing that changes everything. Once a team gets there, the brief they write next is a different document entirely.
What follows from that moment is usually a round of questions the team has not asked before. What does using this say about the person? Does it make them look interesting, or is it just useful? Who in our audience cares most about being seen doing something like this, and why? These are not technical questions. They are audience questions. And they produce brief copy that a studio can do something with.
I have run versions of this session at GITEX, at Snap LensFest, and in private workshops for brand teams and agencies. The room dynamics are different every time but the moment of shift is almost identical. It is always the same conceptual step, and it is always the one that was missing from the brief the team came in with.
What a session covers and who it is for
A focused workshop runs three to four hours. It is not a lecture and it is not a case study reel. The first hour covers the format landscape: what social AR, WebAR, and wearable AR actually are, what each one does for the audience, and where they fit in a campaign. The second hour runs through the three concepts above with exercises specific to the team's category and brief context. The third hour is working time: the team drafts or restructures their brief using what they have just covered, and I give feedback in real time.
Teams leave with a working brief draft, a format recommendation with reasoning, and a vocabulary for the conversations they need to have with a studio. They do not leave with a slide deck. Slide decks do not survive first contact with a deadline.
The sessions are most useful for brand marketing teams commissioning AR for the first time, creative agencies handling AR briefs from clients but without an internal AR practice, and in-house creative teams at brands that have run AR but are moving into a new format category, wearable AR, for example, rather than social AR. For a full picture of what workshops cover and how they are structured, see the workshops page.
For teams that want to understand the broader strategic decisions behind AR format selection before booking a session, the article on choosing the right platform for an immersive campaign covers that ground without the workshop context.
What changes after the session
The briefs get shorter. That is the most consistent change. Teams that came in with three-page briefs describing technical outputs leave writing half-page documents that describe a moment, a reason for the audience to participate, and a measurable outcome. The shorter brief is almost always the better one because it leaves room for the studio to solve the creative problem rather than implement a predetermined answer.
The other thing that changes is the conversation dynamic with the studio. Teams that understand participation mechanics ask better questions in the kickoff call. They push back on creative directions that do not serve the audience moment. They know what success looks like before the campaign launches rather than after it runs. That shift is worth more than the workshop cost.
Frequently asked questions
Do brand teams need to understand the technology to brief AR well?
No. Technical knowledge is not the gap. The gap is usually understanding what the format is actually doing for the audience. A team that understands participation mechanics, identity expression, and platform distribution can write a strong brief without knowing how a face tracking model works. Technical knowledge becomes relevant when briefing specific capabilities, but the creative direction decisions that make a campaign successful are not technical ones.
What does an AR workshop for brand teams typically cover?
A focused session covers three things: what AR actually is in each of its formats (social AR, WebAR, wearable AR), what the audience is doing when they use it and why that changes the creative question, and how to write a brief that gives a studio something real to build from. The session is hands-on, not a lecture. Teams walk away with a draft brief or brief framework for their specific campaign, not just a slide deck of case studies.
How long does it take a brand team to get comfortable briefing AR?
One focused session of three to four hours is enough to shift the framing for most teams. The shift that takes longer is cultural: teams that have never commissioned AR tend to default back to familiar media habits under time pressure. A follow-up session six to eight weeks later, after the team has had a first briefing conversation with a studio, resolves most of what the initial session did not fix. Two sessions with a live briefing project in between is a faster path to fluency than one longer training day without it.
Who is an AR workshop most useful for?
Brand marketing teams commissioning AR for the first time get the most value because it prevents the brief mistakes that cost the most to fix later. Creative agencies that have started getting AR briefs from clients but have not built internally also benefit, because the workshop gives them a shared language for client conversations. In-house creative teams at brands with an existing AR programme find that workshops are most useful when scoped to a specific new format or platform, rather than AR in general.
Can workshops be tailored to a specific industry or campaign type?
Yes, and this is usually the right approach for teams that already have some AR awareness. A workshop tailored to fashion and beauty brands runs different case examples, different creative exercises, and a different brief framework than one built for entertainment campaigns or live events. The core concepts are the same, but the audience examples and the brief structure change significantly depending on the category. Bespoke workshops are also shorter because the examples do not have to cover every format, only the ones relevant to the brief the team is most likely to write.
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