Jimmy Dean sponsors Time's Apollo landing celebration in new AR app

Dive Brief:

Jimmy Dean Foods is the inaugural sponsor of Time's new augmented reality (AR) app, called Time Immersive, which showcases the publisher's visual journalism via AR and virtual reality (VR), Time announced. The app's first editorial project, "Landing on the Moon," focuses on the Apollo 11 landing on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
The Apollo project, which was produced in partnership with the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, enables app users to "experience a scientifically and historically accurate cinematic recreation of the Apollo 11 landing in photo-real 3D on any table top at home," per Time. The Jimmy Dean ad appears when the app launches.
Jimmy Dean, which is also celebrating its 50th anniversary, has sponsored the print edition of Time for the week of July 29. The experience is mentioned on the front flap cover,and calls readers to download the Time Immersive app. This promo is billed as "Brought to you by Jimmy Dean," a rarity on a cover page, per MediaPost.

Dive Insight:

The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing has shaped up to be a large media event as publishers hope to leverage nostalgia for the historic event to attract a lot of eyeballs. AR, which provides an immersive storytelling experience, is proving a popular way for publishers to show off their visual journalism capabilities and potentially drive engagement with the growing number of people who consume most of their media on mobile devices.

In similar news, USA Today Network worked with Smithsonian to mark the U.S. moon landing with a two-part AR experience in the network's core mobile app and a standalone AR app.

Time worked with a number of partners to help create a compelling experience and reach as many people as possible. Time's AR experience is also available on the Yahoo News app. A companion mobile web AR experience was built on Amazon Sumerian. In addition to the Smithsonian, Time's partners for the project include mixed reality agency Trigger, Industrial Light & Magic's Chief Creative Officer John Knoll, RYOT and Yahoo News.

Many brands are looking for ways to take advantage of the interest in the Apollo landing and get their messaging out in conjunction with related content. Blue Moon created spaceship-shaped beer kegs for the anniversary, Oreo baked up a new marshmallow moon cookie with outer space-themed cookie designs and Krispy Kreme is capitalizing on archival footage which shows the brand serving doughnuts at Cape Canaveral back in 1969, per Ad Age.

Like the doughnut brand, Jimmy Dean was born the same year the moon landed, giving the brands a connection to the Apollo landing anniversary on which they hope to capitalize.