How Brands Are Using AR And VR For Effective Marketing

Technology ceaselessly produces and amazes with new entrants teeming the markets. With countless applications and technological developments crowding our digitally enabled world; keeping up with new technology has become a full-scale job on its own. Here comes the role of AR and VR enabled marketing.

On the other end of the development spectrum, there are companies with brands to sell, brands that need to survive constantly evolving markets and sharpening competition. Companies find themselves spending more time than ever on how to vie for the prized customer’s attention, be a part of the customer’s life journey, provide for the whole arc spanning need(s) to luxuries.

Today, fortunately, they can explore an endless pursuit of possibilities to capture imagination, demand empathy, engage and entertain. Now, more than ever the world is drowning in images and interacting through screens. Self-expression, updates, news, CSR is exacted through the media of stills, moving images and videos. Visual aid is communication, what can be seen is processed and shared. All our web platforms from WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, Cinemagraph to name a handful are resources built to share and exchange information through images. We are today a world held together and separated by screens. The screen is our biggest influencer, the customer is a loyal consumer and thus the need to fulfil that need through exciting dimensions provided by new technology.

Visualization has touched an all new level of seamless exchange with Augment Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Augmented and Virtual Realities have overwhelmed us enough to term them as realities of tomorrow. A statement a tad bit too early to make or maybe a tad bit too late considering employing Artificial Intelligence a couple of decades ago seemed like stuff of restricted to movie lore.

When clients embark on strategizing design visualization a world of fascinating possibilities opens up. These possibilities can be previewed and modified before it is set in stone for the customer to experience. Going back in time, filmmakers were allowed only two takes before they could perfect a shot on their bulky 16mm’s. Today, the world is captured on mobile technology and a new breed of filmmakers, musicians, artists have emerged to produce technically enabled pieces of communication. Brands too have taken the path less trodden to achieve refined results that guarantee attention.

AR and VR enable marketers to present brands in real time with malleable size, scale, context and depth made available to ensure mind-blowing results. Real world creation and spaces have become achievable and the possibilities to achieve these to express brand values is highly exciting.

Yesterday, storytelling or telling a story concisely dominated marketing trends. Today, creating the world our stories will take place in is a priority and the future of effective AR and VR enabled marketing.

One can observe how the stakes have risen in this domain with Facebook investing billions in Oculus where developers will be busy creating 360 degree VR content with timeline feeds.  This opens up a world of opportunity for content creation. With this level of VR technology what is the kind of content that will be housed within it and will keep trending? With the question of trending, we obviously come to an engagement, here the research is positively charming. Results show how AR, VR technology is even more compelling than TV.

It can not only influence and engage but also derive empathy and foster a far more tangible and authentic connection with audiences. This is a win-win situation for marketers who are basing entire campaigns on experience creation through AR and VR.

Brands within the domain of medicine, therapy travel can consider and are in certain countries using VR for its sheer strength of transporting a user to a simulated environment created for a specific purpose like healing or treatment. In recent times, noteworthy content has emerged from Brands like Oreo, when they promoted their new Filled Cupcake Flavoured Cookies, the team created a virtual world that looks tempting enough to touch and eat, Oreo biscuits are trapdoors that open to chocolate rivers, fountains and cream spouts that add flavour to the new Oreo cookie. This video has over three and a half million views and has garnered admirable popularity. Another compelling example is that of Xfinity, the creation of a real NASCAR race where the spectator is tempted with the promise of ‘feeling and viewing’ the race very closely. The tantalizing ‘closer? Teases and rewards viewers with a stop at the pit stop, back of the racing car and right inside the car along with the racer.

Even then experts share how we have only scratched the surface when it comes to these two empowering technologies. Companies are considering crafting the VR experience to enable users to travel to destinations or environments, watch and experience major international sporting, world, religious and other events, even music concerts.

Our ability to tell compelling stories is now challenged with technology that is more than efficient to project it. Now, the onus of effective content creation lies with marketers and creative talent who can use the power of AR and VR evolution to its full extent. There’s a good chance creativity will crash-land on AR, VR technology to give us concepts, stories and campaigns worth emulating in our rapidly changing world that never ceases to surprise us with yet another technological invention.

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