No Longer Silenced By History, Talking Wine Labels Bring Prisoners to Life

In October, we introduced you to the incredible labels from 19 Crimes wine that feature actual prisoners whose punishments were transportation to Australia in the late 1700s. With the help of some very well-crafted augmented reality, the prisoners pictured on the labels come to life to tell you their story.

We got the chance to ask Doug Altmeyer, senior brand manager at 19 Crimes, some questions via email and he explained that the idea behind using augmented reality was to capture the spirit of the prisoners. He wrote:

In 18th-century Britain, criminals guilty of at least one of the 19 crimes were sentenced to live in Australia, rather than death. Those 19 crimes turned convicts into colonists, when, as pioneers in a frontier penal colony, they forged a new country and new lives. 19 Crimes wines celebrate the rebellious spirit of those men and women by picturing their images on the wine’s labels. 19 Crimes wines is now bringing their band of rogues, depicted on the wine labels, to life with the launch of the first-ever wine Augmented Reality (AR) app. No longer silenced by history, the new app animates 19 Crimes’ convicts-turned-colonists who tell their own infamous story.

A custom app was used to create a "custom functionality and look," something that existing AR apps don't facilitate, Altmeyer explained. 

"For example, for 19 Crimes, we have used the live camera feed to influence the lighting of the virtual labels that animate on the surfaces, helping integrate the AR illusion into the view, making it more seamless," he said. 

The app uses image recognition, which Altmeyer said gives 19 crimes the ability to input files to be recognized, triggering the AR experience. Altmeyer explained that the company started with only three labels that were interactive — Hard Chard, Red Wine and The Banished — but the response from consumers was so positive that the company expanded the technology to include interaction with 19 Crimes' complete line of wines. The labels were printed by Multi-Color Corp. using a Nilpeter MO-4 with in-line finishing.

From the amount of engagement on social media and recent news coverage (such as this article from Forbes), it's clear consumers are excited to engage with relevant and highly-functional interactive packaging.