Starbucks has joined the augmented reality bandwagon by launching an app this holiday season that will let customers animate their coffee cups with their smartphones. This news comes just a few weeks after we shared the new augmented reality advertising campaign by Volkswagen. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can catch up here.

Starbucks Cup Magic launches for iPhone and Android devices in the U.S. next Tuesday. (In Canada, just the iPhone version will launch.) The app works by pointing your phone’s camera at the company’s red holiday season coffee cups and apparently 47 additional objects like bags of coffee on display at Starbucks cafés. Doing so will produce animations involving five characters — an ice skater, a squirrel, a boy and a dog sledding and a fox — on your smartphone. With this app you can also interact with the characters which is unique from the earlier VW campaign for the new Beetle. For example, if you tap the boy on the sled he does a somersault. Those who activate all five characters can qualify to win a prize which is yet to be named.

Keeping with the times, the app also includes traditional and social sharing capabilities. You can the send ecards as well as holiday offers from Starbucks, among other things. This is no surprise from Starbucks considering their recent excellence in beefing up their brand.

Cup Magic, created by Blast Radius, caps off a year of successful mobile implementations by Starbucks. The brand launched a mobile payment app in January that has been used in more than 20 million transactions and a QR code program designed, like Starbucks Cup Magic, to enhance the in-store brand experience.

About Jay Eckert

Jay graduated from the Seneca College graphic design program in 2003 and quickly received his Registered Graphic Designer (R.G.D.) designation in 2007. For the last decade Jay has been honing his skills in the creative industry working in web, mobile and print design. Follow Jay Eckert on Google+, Twitter and Facebook.