Virtual Reality. A term coined by Mr Jaron Lanier in 1987 whilst researching the potential application of Head Mounted Displays in various fields (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2015).

Fast forward to 2015, where, for the first time since its inception, Virtual Reality is set take the world by storm, disrupting industries ranging from the obvious, such as video games and film, to the un-obvious, such as medicine. Why? Because technology has finally caught up to deliver the user his or her first taste of a truly fully immersive, 360° viewing experience.

In 2014, Oculus Rift, one of the leading players in the VR market, sent out 100’000 developer kits to media players, marketing agencies, brands and vendors across the globe, enticing marketers to come up with novel ways using said technology. For what do marketers want most? Engagement with a captive audience… which is a defining core competency of VR (Heine, 2015)

Jim Morel, from DigiCapital, recently assessed the current VR and Augmented Reality (AR) markets and forecast that combined, these markets are set to achieve a $150 billion market cap by 2020 (TechCrunch, 2015)

These impressive statistics are backed up by the number of tech giants willing to throw billions at start-ups in order to acquire their own virtual reality hardware (VRH) in order to be the next “iPhone”. Take Facebook, who, in 2013, paid a combination of $3.2 billion in cash and stock options to acquire Oculus Rift, currently the industry’s leading hardware designer. Another example is Google, who have recently invested $542 million for Magic Leap, another iteration on a virtual reality headset (Merel, 2015)

With such tech giants willing to spend colossal sums of money in this infant industry, it seems virtual reality is here to stay. As Shuhei Yoshido from Sony Worldwide Studios stated: ‘We used to say seeing is believing… Now we say experiencing is believing’. 

Below are 2 examples of companies successfully using virtual reality as the medium in a marketing campaign.

1. Toyota: TeenDrive365

With the New York Auto Show coming to a close tomorrow on April 12th 2015, Toyota have clearly differentiated themselves from other automakers by embracing the use of VRH. During the promotion of their new 2015 Corolla, Toyota invited car enthusiasts to strap themselves into the car, put on an Oculus Rift VRH and experience their Distracted Driving Simulator, designed to replicate being in the car with 2 talkative teenagers whilst driving in a big city during rush hour (Mashable, 2015) as seen in the video below;

 

Why was it successful?

Besides the average 2h long queue to try out the driving simulator, for many users this was the first time they had tried a VRH that, depending on the direction they were looking in, the VRH would replicate it. Another reason why it was successful was that users instinctively felt as though they were actually driving the car.

 

2. Marriott Hotels: #GetTeleported

 In September 2014, the Marriott Hotel Group decided to set up a fully immersive 4-D Virtual Travel Experience, taking guests to on a virtual tour of 2 different hotels, with 2 wildly differing experiences, as Marriott Hotels imagines the future of travel with Oculus Rift technology (Marriott Newsroom, 2014).

Marriott Hotels set up two booths in Wedding Park in New York city where 0ver 100 hundred couples get married each day and offered them to try a 2 minute “honeymoon”, virtually teleporting users to the tropical sandy beaches of Hawaii or on top of London’s iconic Tower 42.

Why was it successful?

Marriott Hotels coupled one of the tech markets hottest emerging products with their vision of the future of travel which was: Experience a taste before you buy (Marriott.com, 2015). They then went to Reddit to ask users which cities they should bring their 4-D booths to and elicited over 230 million social media impressions in total, the hotel groups highest ever (Heine, 2015).

Michael Dail, Vice President of global brand marketing stated that they were thinking of introducing Oculus Rift headsets in their hotels across the globe, further cementing the success of effectively using virtual reality in digital marketing.

 

Final Thought

These are but two examples of successful VRH marketing. As VRH are not readily available for consumers, I advise you to wait a few more months to see in which major direction VR is going to head, be it towards gaming, film or B2B.

 

References

Encyclopedia Britannica, (2015). virtual reality (VR) | computer science. [online] Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/630181/virtual-reality-VR [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Heine, C. (2015). How Oculus Rift Is About to Reshape Marketing Creativity. [online] AdWeek. Available at: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/how-oculus-rift-about-reshape-marketing-creativity-162124 [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Marriott.com, (2015). Marriott Oculus Get Teleported | Marriott Travel Brilliantly. [online] Available at: https://travel-brilliantly.marriott.com/our-innovations/oculus-get-teleported [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Marriott Newsroom, (2014). #GetTeleported. [online] Available at: http://news.marriott.com/2014/09/getteleported-the-most-immersive-4-d-virtual-travel-experience-arrives-taking-guests-to-parts-known-and-unknown-as-marri.html [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Mashable, (2015). Toyota and Chrysler teleport into the fast lane with virtual reality. [online] Available at: http://mashable.com/2015/04/01/toyota-chrysler-oculus-rift/ [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].

Merel, T. (2015). Augmented And Virtual Reality To Hit $150 Billion, Disrupting Mobile By 2020. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/06/augmented-and-virtual-reality-to-hit-150-billion-by-2020/#.gkw8ht:aSyo [Accessed 11 Apr. 2015].