March 1, 2023
By 2025, the virtual and augmented reality market was expected to reach $35 billion worldwide. The top five markets in terms of total sales are video games, healthcare, engineering, live events, and video entertainment. Live events are one area where the growth is tremendous going from $800 million to $4.1 billion.
Virtual reality creates a 360-degree virtual environment, tapping into sight and sound, that users can explore and navigate. Have you ever put on a VR headset and played a game like Beat Saber, where you have to hit the beats with your two lightsabers (red and blue) in the correct pattern? That’s VR.
Augmented reality is similar except that you’re using a real world with added sounds, graphics, and texts. You’re in your own world, but bringing aspects of virtual technology to it. Pokemon Go is a good example of AR. Players explore their city, streets, and buildings trying to find the virtual Pokemon characters along the way and collecting them on their phones.
This leaves mixed reality, which is a mix of the two. With mixed reality, you can take the digital world and the real world and merge them. You could reach out and pick up the pillow that’s really in your living room and throw it in the game’s virtual setting.
Explore Some Award-Winning and Unforgettable Uses of VR, AR, and MR in Marketing
Have you considered how you can use virtual and augmented reality in your experiential marketing strategies? Technology brings an experience to consumers no matter where they are. They could experience the AR, VR, or MR app or presentation in their home or at a pop-up. You can set up an experience within your store, restaurant, or tradeshow.
- Bowie 75
For the late musician’s 75th birthday, Factory 360 created a pop-up celebrating David Bowie’s music and life. AR trivia plaques, a telephone booth with his recordings, album cover selfie portals, lyric walls, an animated tribute station, and specialty merchandise provided plenty for Bowie fans to do and see.
The award-winning experiential campaign made a huge impression on fans with more than 275,000 Instagram impressions, and thousands of trivia scans and personalized messages to Bowie. Plus, the campaign received millions of press impressions around the world. It got a lot of reach, sold limited-edition merchandise, and celebrated the artist in a unique way.
- Ikea: Place
Ikea came up with a unique AR app that allowed consumers to place Ikea furniture in their homes using their phones. The consumer chooses an item, loads it in the app, and then focuses on their home’s floor to allow the AI to scale the furniture to the correct size. Holding up the phone shows what the item will look like in that location.
The Ikea: Place a Tree On It followed and allowed users to try out different artificial Christmas trees in different rooms to find the perfect tree for the space. This AR experience tapped into something that people wanted.
- Nikeland
Nike partnered with Roblox to create Nikeland, a VR world patterned after Nike’s headquarters. While in Nikeland, guests could play mini-games, explore the buildings, and buy digital products for their avatars. The limited-edition virtual products drew the interest of both Nike and Roblox’s fans.
- Sky: The Scary Shelter
Vienna’s bus riders experienced quite a show while waiting for the bus. An AR display of the Walking Dead’s zombie apocalypse filled up the bus shelter. While waiting for the bus, riders experienced what seemed like a real zombie attack through the glass window. The reactions were priceless!
This AR campaign relied heavily on the element of surprise. The bus shelter looked like a normal shelter with clear glass panels. Until it caught on through social media shares, people were caught off-guard by the jump scares.
- XQ Avatar Porsche
The XQ Avatar Porsche is a game-changer when it comes to test drives. Instead of people driving a car out on the open road where accidents are likely to occur, they hop into the car of interest at the dealership and head off on a trip without even leaving the room. The car’s front tires are on a platform allowing for movement while the front window plays a road trip that matches the speed the driver is doing. This mixed reality experience won the VR Awards.
What Makes a Virtual Experience Stand Out?
What makes a VR, AR, or MR virtual experience stand out? Lots of things can leave an impression, but these are the areas to focus on.
- Make Sure It Grabs Attention
The experience has to grab attention. Remember Sky’s Walking Dead Scary Shelter? If you’re sitting quietly waiting for a bus and suddenly see something banging on the glass beside you, it’s going to grab your attention. It was startling, but once people realized it was a video experience, it had people grabbing their phones and sharing videos.
- Make Sure It’s a Clear Representation
The goal of an experiential marketing campaign is to provide an engaging, realistic look at a product or service. Don’t rush your campaign. Take time to build a campaign that has a clear intent and quality images and videos. If you’re not sure you can do this on your own, hire an expert in VR, AR, and MR marketing campaigns.
- Put Yourself in a Consumer’s Shoes
If you were a consumer and wanted to learn more about your product or service, what questions would you ask? If you have to, take a competitor’s product and think about what you want to know about that company. Build your campaign in a way that addresses every question you have.
- Explore What Your Competition Is Doing
Take a closer look at what the competition is doing. What do they do that you admire and where do you feel they missed the mark? Your goal is to do better than they did while also considering the message you’re sharing. Make sure you’re not alienating anyone in the process. You need to remain ethical and avoid the use of any stereotypes or presumptions when it comes to the people who will use your service or products.
Technology has the power to introduce consumers to your brand in unique, memorable, immersive ways. You can have a potential client walk through your factory to learn exactly how a product is made or attend a virtual concert you sponsor all without having to leave their home.
Factory 360 is an MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) certified experiential marketing agency. Our team is one of only 0.1% of women-founded creative agencies. Our expertise is broad and includes a team who specializes in using augmented, virtual, and mixed realities in experiential marketing. Let us know what you want to say and we’ll help you create an effective campaign that puts your brand in the best possible light.
