Sepoy & Co. AR Packaging Experiences: Helping a Premium Tonic Water Brand Stand Out with WebAR

Project Overview

Client	Sepoy & Co.
Industry	FMCG / Premium Beverages
Location	New Delhi, India
Product	Sepoy & Co. Indian Tonic Water
Service	WebAR Development
Solution	Interactive AR Packaging Experiences
Campaign Year	2024
Experiences Developed	2
Campaign Duration	Approximately 1 Year
Development Time	Less Than 3 Months
Developed By	InReality Solutions

On This Page (16)

1. Helping a Premium Challenger Brand Stand Out in a Competitive Market
2. The Opportunity: Using AR Packaging to Differentiate a Premium Beverage Brand
3. Two Bottles. Two AR Experiences. Two Different Objectives.
4. Experience One: Bringing the Botanicals to Life
5. Making the Botanicals Appear to Emerge from the Physical Label
6. Turning the Bottle Label into an Interactive Interface
7. Botanical Experience Results
8. Experience Two: Transforming the Label into a Window for Brand Storytelling
9. Using Existing Brand Content in a Completely New Way
10. The Technical Challenge: Keeping the Story Inside the Oval Label
11. Overcoming a Difficult AR Image Target
12. Storytelling Experience Results
13. More Than 31,000 Combined AR Scans
14. Testing Across Android and iOS Devices
15. From Creative Strategy to Technical Deployment
16. What the Sepoy & Co. Project Demonstrates About AR Packaging

Helping a Premium Challenger Brand Stand Out in a Competitive Market

Sepoy & Co. is an Indian premium beverage brand offering Indian tonic water and other beverage varieties.

As a newer entrant into the Indian tonic water market, Sepoy & Co. faced a challenge common to many emerging FMCG brands: how to attract attention and build brand recognition in a category already occupied by established competitors.

The company had invested significantly in its visual identity and product presentation.

Sepoy & Co. Indian Tonic Water was presented in premium glass bottles with distinctive branding designed to differentiate the product from more established mass-market alternatives.

However, attractive packaging alone does not necessarily give consumers something to talk about or share with others.

InReality Solutions saw an opportunity to take the brand’s existing packaging strategy further.

Rather than using the physical bottle solely to contain and present the product, we proposed transforming it into an interactive digital brand touchpoint through augmented reality.

The result was not one but two complementary WebAR experiences.

One experience transformed the bottle’s oval label into a digital window through which consumers could discover the history of tonic water.

The other brought the product’s botanicals to life through animation.

Together, the two experiences generated 31,008 scans.

The Opportunity: Using AR Packaging to Differentiate a Premium Beverage Brand

For an emerging beverage brand, attracting consumer attention can be challenging.

Established competitors often benefit from years of brand recognition, widespread distribution, existing customer loyalty, and significant retail presence.

Sepoy & Co. was also positioned as a premium product, making differentiation particularly important.

The company had already developed distinctive branding and premium glass packaging.

InReality Solutions proposed adding another layer to the product experience.

Augmented reality could give consumers something unexpected to discover when interacting with the bottle.

Instead of creating a single AR activation, we proposed two different experiences, each serving a different purpose.

The first would focus on visual engagement and product discovery.

The second would focus on brand storytelling and consumer education.

Both would transform the existing Sepoy & Co. bottle into an interactive digital experience without requiring users to download a dedicated mobile application.

Two Bottles. Two AR Experiences. Two Different Objectives.

The two Sepoy & Co. WebAR experiences were available simultaneously.

Special neck tags containing QR codes were placed on selected bottles.

Some neck tags invited consumers to discover the botanical experience.

Others directed consumers toward the storytelling experience.

Simple instructions guided users through the process:

Scan the QR code.

Launch the AR experience.

Point the smartphone camera toward the Sepoy & Co. bottle.

The physical bottle then became the foundation of the digital experience.

Although both activations used the same product packaging and provided access to the same digital brand touchpoints, they approached consumer engagement in completely different ways.

Experience One: Bringing the Botanicals to Life

For the first experience, InReality Solutions proposed using augmented reality to visually bring the ingredients and botanicals associated with the product to life.

The concept was inspired by previous international examples of AR packaging in the premium beverage industry, but the experience was redesigned and developed specifically around Sepoy & Co.’s bottle, branding, and physical label.

When consumers pointed their smartphone cameras toward the bottle, animated botanical elements emerged from behind the oval label.

The ingredients spread outward from the packaging, transforming the bottle into the centerpiece of a dynamic visual experience.

The animation was designed to appear as though the botanicals were physically emerging from the product itself.

The complete animation lasted approximately 25 seconds before revealing the interactive elements of the experience.

Making the Botanicals Appear to Emerge from the Physical Label

Creating the botanical experience required more than placing a conventional animation over the bottle.

The visual elements needed to appear to originate from behind the physical label.

If the animation incorrectly passed through the center of the bottle or appeared in front of areas where it should have been hidden, the illusion would be lost.

InReality Solutions therefore implemented 3D occlusion within the experience.

A cylindrical 3D occlusion model was adapted to match the physical dimensions of the Sepoy & Co. bottle.

The model allowed specific parts of the animation to remain hidden while others appeared to extend outward from behind the bottle label.

The animation itself also required significant adjustment.

The botanicals needed to spread outward in a shape that complemented the proportions of the physical bottle and oval label.

If the animation was stretched too far, it appeared visually distorted.

If it remained too compact, the intended effect of the botanicals emerging dynamically from the packaging was reduced.

The final composition required careful adjustment of the animation’s scale, shape, positioning, and relationship with the physical bottle.

Turning the Bottle Label into an Interactive Interface

The botanical experience was designed to provide more than a visual animation.

After the botanicals emerged, consumers could interact with the physical label area.

Tapping the label triggered additional calls to action around the bottle.

These interactive elements connected consumers with five digital brand touchpoints:

• Recipes
• Social media
• WhatsApp
• Online shopping
• Sepoy & Co.’s loyalty membership program

The bottle therefore functioned as both the visual centerpiece of the experience and an interactive interface.

Consumers could enjoy the animation and then immediately continue their journey with the brand.

Botanical Experience Results

The botanical WebAR experience generated:

17,680 scans.

The average time spent on the experience page was:

57 seconds.

This is particularly notable because the primary botanical animation lasted approximately 25 seconds before the interactive elements appeared.

The available analytics also recorded:

15,912 scans from Android devices.

And:

1,768 scans from iOS devices.

Geographic analytics recorded interactions across several major Indian cities, including:

• 6,188 scans from New Delhi
• 5,658 scans from Mumbai
• 3,182 scans from Gurgaon
• 1,149 scans from Bangalore
• 972 scans from Hyderabad
• 530 scans from other locations

Experience Two: Transforming the Label into a Window for Brand Storytelling

The second Sepoy & Co. experience took a completely different approach.

Sepoy & Co. already had an animated branded video telling the history of tonic water.

Rather than allowing that content to exist solely as a conventional video, InReality Solutions proposed transforming it into an augmented reality experience.

The idea was to use the distinctive oval bottle label as a digital window.

When consumers pointed their smartphone cameras toward the bottle, the physical label transformed into a screen through which they could watch the animated story.

The animation remained contained within the precise oval shape of the label.

The surrounding bottle remained visible.

This created the impression that consumers were looking through the physical packaging and into another animated world.

Using Existing Brand Content in a Completely New Way

One of the strengths of the storytelling experience was that Sepoy & Co. did not need to create an entirely new piece of content.

The company had already invested in developing an animated video specifically for the brand.

InReality Solutions identified an opportunity to repurpose that existing digital asset into a more interactive consumer experience.

The approximately 60–70 second animation introduced consumers to the history of tonic water and was accompanied by narrated audio.

InReality Solutions adapted and optimized the existing video for use within the WebAR experience.

This demonstrates another potential application of augmented reality for brands.

AR does not always require creating every piece of content from scratch.

Existing brand assets, including videos, animations, product stories, and educational content, can potentially be transformed into interactive experiences connected directly to physical packaging.

The Technical Challenge: Keeping the Story Inside the Oval Label

The creative concept was visually simple.

The technical implementation was not.

The animation needed to remain precisely aligned with the oval label throughout the experience.

It could not appear outside the edges of the label.

It could not shift significantly when the user moved the smartphone.

It needed to maintain the correct proportions and remain visually connected to the physical packaging.

InReality Solutions adapted the existing animation to match the precise shape and dimensions of the Sepoy & Co. label.

The video needed to be resized and optimized without making the original animation appear excessively stretched, compressed, or distorted.

Tracking also needed to remain sufficiently stable for the illusion of a digital window to work convincingly.

The result transformed a conventional branded animation into a packaging-based storytelling experience.

Overcoming a Difficult AR Image Target

Another technical challenge affected both experiences.

The Sepoy & Co. bottle label was not naturally ideal for image-based AR tracking.

Effective AR image targets generally benefit from distinctive visual features, strong contrast, and sufficient detail for tracking systems to consistently recognize the target.

The Sepoy & Co. label presented limitations in these areas.

However, changing the physical branding or redesigning the product label solely to accommodate the AR technology was not a practical solution.

The technology needed to work with the brand’s existing packaging.

InReality Solutions therefore optimized the image target and tracking implementation to achieve reliable performance despite the limitations of the original label design.

This optimization also allowed the experiences to work across different Sepoy & Co. beverage variants where the primary label design remained similar but certain colors changed.

Storytelling Experience Results

The Sepoy & Co. storytelling WebAR experience generated:

13,328 scans.

The average time spent on the experience page was:

78 seconds.

The available analytics also recorded:

8,124 scans from Android devices.

And:

5,204 scans from iOS devices.

Geographic analytics recorded:

• 4,532 scans from Mumbai
• 4,398 scans from New Delhi
• 2,132 scans from Gurgaon
• 1,066 scans from Bangalore
• 933 scans from Hyderabad
• 267 scans from other locations

The 78-second average time on the experience page exceeded the approximate 60–70 second duration of the primary storytelling animation.

More Than 31,000 Combined AR Scans

Together, the two Sepoy & Co. WebAR experiences generated:

31,008 combined scans.

The experiences were promoted primarily through the bottle neck tags, physical events, verbal introductions to consumers, and a limited number of social media posts.

According to the client, there was no dedicated paid advertising campaign specifically promoting the AR experiences.

The activations remained available for approximately one year.

The combined results demonstrate how physical product packaging can provide an ongoing entry point into digital brand experiences.

Rather than creating a single temporary activation, Sepoy & Co. offered consumers two different ways to interact with the brand through its physical products.

Testing Across Android and iOS Devices

Both experiences were tested across at least 10 different smartphones and devices.

Testing included:

• Android smartphones across different price points
• Different Android operating system versions
• iOS devices
• Different hardware capabilities

By the time InReality Solutions developed the Sepoy & Co. experiences, our previous work on commercial WebAR campaigns had provided extensive practical experience with cross-device compatibility and optimization.

This experience allowed the development team to anticipate potential differences between Android and iOS devices and address compatibility considerations throughout the development process.

Both experiences were optimized for performance, tracking stability, loading speed, and usability across a range of consumer smartphones.

From Creative Strategy to Technical Deployment

InReality Solutions was responsible for the complete development of the two Sepoy & Co. AR experiences.

Our scope included:

• AR strategy and concept development
• Creative experience design
• Adaptation of the existing storytelling animation
• Development of the botanical animations
• Image target optimization
• AR tracking implementation
• 3D occlusion implementation
• Animation optimization
• CTA design and integration
• UI/UX development
• Cross-device optimization
• Device testing
• WebAR development
• Final deployment

The complete project was developed in less than three months.

The process included multiple rounds of development, revision, testing, and approval.

What the Sepoy & Co. Project Demonstrates About AR Packaging

The Sepoy & Co. project demonstrates that a single physical product can support multiple augmented reality experiences designed around different marketing objectives.

The botanical experience focused on visual engagement.

It used animation and 3D occlusion to transform the physical bottle into a more dynamic and unexpected consumer experience.

The storytelling experience focused on education and brand communication.

It transformed the physical label into a digital window through which consumers could discover the history behind tonic water.

Both experiences then connected consumers to practical digital destinations, including recipes, social media, WhatsApp, online shopping, and the company’s loyalty program.

The project also demonstrates how augmented reality can help brands maximize their existing marketing assets.

One experience required original animations developed by InReality Solutions.

The other repurposed an existing branded video into an entirely new interactive format.

Together, the two experiences generated more than 31,000 scans across major Indian cities.

For an emerging premium beverage brand, AR packaging provided another way to differentiate the product experience beyond traditional packaging design and advertising.