What Happened
Mountain Dew has unveiled a new virtual reality initiative as part of its “DEWcision 2016” campaign to promote two new flavors: Baja Blast and Pitch Black. Designed as a virtual racecar experience, the soft drink brand asks consumers to choose between two routes designed to correspond to the two new flavors as a way to gauge which is more popular. The company will set up a VR station at the JR Motorsports Fan Day in Mooresville, NC, and is distributing the content through Samsung’s Milk VR library, YouTube, and Facebook.
While this is Mountain Dew’s first VR experience for Oculus headsets, it is not the first time the soda brand has dived into virtual reality. Mountain Dew unveiled its first VR experience in 2014, which took viewers skateboarding through iconic spots in Las Vegas. Since then, it has experimented with several more VR and 360-degree video efforts to build up its branded content.
What Brands Need To Do
As more and more platforms start supporting VR and 360 video content, the mainstream audience is quickly gaining access to these types of immersive content, even if they don’t own a VR headset. For brands seeking to stay ahead of the digital curve, now is the time to take a cue from Mountain Dew to develop a library of branded VR content.
The Lab currently has four VR headsets — an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and two Samsung Gear VRs — ready for demo. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood. So come by the Lab and get a VR demo to see just how engaging it can be, and understand why consumers would be excited by this technology.
Source: Digiday