The COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures and instantly changed the education landscape for millions of students across the country. Creating new challenges in education and new challenges for brands to connect with their customers. So, as parents became teachers and living rooms became the classroom, Hyundai and National Geographic took distance learning on the road. Transforming the family road trip into an immersive, living classroom empowered by contextual augmented reality lessons. As a brand dedicated to creating vehicles and technology to improve family life, Hyundai found a way to directly improve the educational experience for families across the country.

For years students have learned about the world in classrooms, distracted by their mobile devices. Outside Academy turns their phones into a tool for contextual learning by tuning the real world into a classroom. Utilizing Instagram’s native AR technology. We turned the social media platform into a mobile self-guided educational experience accessible to anyone. This was accomplished by combining real-world target images, present throughout national parks, with Instagram's image/facial recognition capabilities to create contextual augmented reality lessons. When scanned, these installations brought to life lessons in History, geology, conservation, and native wildlife and highlighted Hyundai’s role in protecting these treasured spaces for generations in a way that has never been done before. If users were not in the park, tap-to-place wildlife and immersive 360 video transported viewers to the park and empowered real-world learning in a safe and immersive way.

In 2021, 56 million students across the U.S. were thrown into remote learning. Almost overnight, both parents and students were re-learning how to learn. As a brand dedicated to creating vehicles and technology that improve family life, we saw an opportunity to help. Our family-focused target with 1-2 kids in their household, expects intuitive technology to empower their journey and make their lives easier and remote learning was anything but intuitive. We partnered with National Geographic to develop the technology, ensure the content’s academic accuracy, and place Hyundai’s commitment to conservation front and center. We set out to make the world's most engaging free educational resource embedded into social media and further prove Hyundai is a leader in innovation.

Outside Academy turned Instagram's native filter technology, Spark AR, into an augmented reality educational tool kit. We utilized Instagram’s plane tracker to track surfaces, recognize objects, and the phone’s accelerometer to immerse users in new 360 environments. This combined with the user's location allowed us to push the platform into entirely new territory. By partnering with National Geographic, not only did we ensure educational accuracy, but augmented reality seamlessly became an element within a larger educational story. Lessons covered subjects like history, wildlife conservation, geology, and science turning these select National Parks into interactive field trips. Each park was paired with one of Hyundai’s latest electrified vehicles and put Hyundai’s commitment to conservation, protection and technology front and center. Everything also lived on a digital hub. Where more educational content, 360 videos, and immersive tap-to-place wildlife filters brought the national parks to students who couldn't visit the parks in person.

6,409,806 AR Opens

11,710,352 Total ROS Impressions

+804% Daily conversion volume

60.9MM estimated readership (Nat Geo magazine) across three months

3,255,216 Facebook Impressions (+158% above goal)

36,842,705 Instagram impressions (+99% above goal)

723,019 Twitter Impressions (+1,507% above goal)

111% Increase in Cross-channel content interactions