Custom Snapchat lens for an event
Last year you held it. This year you are the award.
AWE did not ask for a lens with their logo on top. They asked that every attendee at the #1 XR+AI Conference and Expo become the Auggie for a few seconds.
- Industry
- XR+AI conference
- Use case
- Activation for an event
- Technology
- Snapchat, opened with a Snapcode
In short
In June 2026 Fyware built AWE (Augmented World Expo) a Snapchat lens that turns the attendee into the Auggie Award. The lens is called AWE Golden Spirit, and AWE introduced it from their main stage as You Are The Auggie AR Filter. It recorded 4,261 plays and 4,385 views in Snapchat Lens Insights, with 1,321 long plays and 16 seconds of play time per unique user. 99.3% of those plays happened during AWE USA 2026, 15 to 18 June in Long Beach, California, and the three weeks after it. This is the second lens Fyware has built for the Auggie Awards: the 2025 one recorded 4,021 plays.
A custom Snapchat lens is an augmented reality experience built in Lens Studio and distributed with a Snapcode: the attendee points their phone camera at the code and the experience opens with no app to install.
How it came together
Four days of event and zero tolerance for installing anything
The situation
AWE USA gathers the entire extended reality and artificial intelligence industry into four days, and the Auggie Awards are its night. Thousands of people with a full agenda and a phone in hand: in that context, anything that asks for an app download is lost before it starts.
The idea, which is AWE's
AWE arrived with the brief and with their own assets. The Auggie is their award, their sculpture and their identity; the question they brought was how to make their community feel the award was theirs without downloading anything.
What we built
A Snapchat lens that puts the Auggie's golden monocle over one of the attendee's eyes, mirrored lens and all, shifts their skin to the award's tone and drops them into its starfield. It opens by pointing the camera at a Snapcode, and AWE projected that Snapcode from their own main stage.
Second year, and the mechanic flipped
In 2025 we built AWE a lens where the attendee held a hyper-realistic Auggie in their own hands, with hand tracking, parallax and spatial sound. It worked, and that is why there was a second year. For 2026 the mechanic turned around: you no longer hold the award, you are it.
The change is substantive. Holding something means looking at it; becoming something means wearing the award's face and seeing yourself. That is what makes a person take the photo, and at an event where everyone posts, the photo is the distribution.
AWE put it in their own words on their stage screen: the lens “transforms you into the most desired XR prize: The Auggie Award, because at AWE everybody is a winner”. That framing is theirs, and it is what makes an attendee want to show up wearing the lens instead of just watching it.
Both lenses were measured in the same Snapchat dashboard, so the comparison is between two like things and not between two ways of counting:
| Metric | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plays | 4,021 | 4,261 | +6.0% |
| Views | 4,124 | 4,385 | +6.3% |
Lifetime figures for each lens from Snapchat Lens Insights. The 2025 lens was measured from 19 May to 16 June 2025; the 2026 one corresponds to AWE USA 2026, 15 to 18 June in Long Beach.
And the concentration matters as much as the total: of those 4,261 plays, only 29 happened in the last 30 days. That means 99.3% landed during the event and the three weeks after it. An event lens is measured by how much it captures while the people are there.
How it reached people
AWE promoted the lens from their main stage, with the Snapcode on screen and the Auggie statuette beside it. That solves the hardest part of an activation: making people aware the experience exists during the minutes they are willing to try it.
“We’re happy with everything.”
Project sheet
- Lens
- AWE Golden Spirit, introduced on stage as You Are The Auggie AR Filter
- Client
- AWE XR, Augmented World Expo
- Platform
- Snapchat, opened with a Snapcode from the camera
- Scope
- Face lens with the Auggie's monocle, color treatment and environment, built from the client's brief and assets
- Measurement
- Snapchat Lens Insights: plays, long plays and play time per user
- Date and place
- June 2026 · AWE USA 2026, 15 to 18 June, Long Beach, California
What makes it work
Four decisions you can repeat
- Zero install: it opens with a Snapcode from the camera.
- The brand does not sit on top of the attendee: the attendee becomes it.
- We used the element that identifies the award, its monocle, taken from AWE's own assets.
- The channel was the client's own stage, which is where they already had the attention.
The brief and the assets came from AWE, and their own review says so. The Auggie is their award and their identity. We built the lens. We spell it out because in a project like this it is easy for the vendor to take the whole medal.
Does a Snapchat lens work at a professional event?
It is the reasonable objection, because Snapchat reads as young and consumer. But AWE USA is the #1 XR+AI Conference and Expo, and the people walking it are developers, executives and technology buyers. Those 4,261 plays came from that audience.
It works because the camera is already in their hand and there is nothing to install. At a four-day conference with a tight agenda, that is the only augmented reality format that reaches a lot of people. And unlike a booth, it leaves a record: plays, long plays and seconds per user, all in the lens dashboard.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a custom Snapchat lens take?
This one shipped inside June 2026, against an event date that was not moving. Scope defines the time: how much has to be modelled, whether the brand already has the asset in 3D or it has to be built, and how precise the face tracking has to be.
Do attendees have to download anything?
No. The lens opens by pointing the Snapchat camera at a Snapcode, and that Snapcode can be projected, printed on a badge or shown on a screen. At a four-day event with a full agenda, anything that asks for a download is lost.
How do I know whether the lens worked?
Snapchat gives you the lens dashboard with plays, long plays and play time per user. Here it was 4,261 plays, 1,321 of them long, and 16 seconds per unique user. The number that says the most is how long they kept it on.
How is this different from an Instagram or TikTok filter?
The build is similar, the distribution is not. Snapchat has the Snapcode, a code you can project on a screen or print on a badge that opens the lens straight from the camera. At an event with people on their feet, that is the difference between them trying it and never knowing it exists. If the brand's audience lives on another network, the same 3D asset can be taken there.
Tom KlukowskiFyware Partner · Valcre Marketing
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Same approach, your brand and your asset: we build the lens and people open it by pointing the camera.
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