‘Immersive campaigns are now a reality’
Virtual, augmented and mixed reality are the marketing buzzwords of 2018 – but how can they actually help marketers?
Unbound is one of Australia’s leading producers and distributors of the tech, and is backed by the ASX-listed media company HT&E. Here, its founder, Ant Arena, gives an update of what’s achievable now, and what’s coming in the near future.
Today’s immersive experiences are hi-res, interactive and very affordable for consumer use. We’re on the cusp of mass adoption, you can feel the momentum. For VR, there’s around a million more headsets in Australia than this time last year – that’s the post-Christmas windfall. And that’s only going to grow as the hardware becomes cheaper, like the Oculus Go, which is also supported by Facebook ($319). AR adoption is hitting peak as nearly all phones and devices can now run the tech. In the very near future, you won’t need an app to run AR, as experiences will run natively from browsers like Chrome.
When television arrived, the content was basically ‘filmed radio’ – and it took a while for producers to get their head around the medium. Today, too many people are just doing ‘TV on VR’ and it doesn’t work as well as it could. The very nature of immersive technologies changes the dynamic of the storytelling mechanism. VR is completely different to traditional video and the industry as a whole needs to work out how content can work within what is, effectively, a new creative medium where the focus is doing, not viewing.
An issue in Australia with immersive content is a lack of a distribution platform. Brands want to know how they can get content to the masses. Right now, it’s tricky because, for example, content produced by Samsung can only be viewed on a Samsung headset. We’re building Australia’s first platform-agnostic distribution app, meaning we can produce or aggregate content that works across all headsets and devices. Launching in September 2018, it’s like a Netflix of immersive content, and we’ve partnered with others trying this model in the US and Europe, sharing content and technology.
AR will be bigger than VR because of the access to your device. As part of media group HT&E, we’re now looking at how we integrate other media channels with AR to further extend campaign reach, engagement and lifecycle. Outdoor in particular is of interest as our tech allows us to create strong attribution links between traditional media and mobile/digital data sets, closing what has historically been a challenging loop.
There’s literally no industry that this technology can’t influence in one way or another. VR is a fantastic tool for creating a deep emotional connection with an audience, yet can also be used in many enterprise situations such as training and education. AR can be highly engaging and entertaining, but also has tremendous utility, literally creating new mechanisms for audiences to interact and buy from brands. The power of these technologies combined also creates an abundance of new opportunities, which we love workshopping collaboratively with clients.
Glossary
Virtual reality (VR) immerses users in a fully artificial digital environment.
Augmented reality (AR) overlays virtual objects on the real-world environment.
Mixed reality (MR) not just overlays but anchors virtual objects to the real world.