Tag: vr

NFL Teams Up With Google For Original VR Series

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Continuing its experiments with VR content, the NFL announced it is expanding its partnership with Google to develop a nine-part VR series that will offer viewers a 360-degree perspective of life in and around the NFL. This marks the league’s first foray into producing content in virtual reality. The series will be available to watch via the NFL channel on YouTube, with the first episode scheduled to debut on Thanksgiving Day, as well as via the NFL VR app for Daydream, Google’s upcoming affordable mobile-powered VR headset.

What Brands Should Do
As more and more brand marketers rush into VR to capitalize on the booming popularity of the emerging medium, many fail to come up with a sustainable, long-term VR strategy that fits their brand. The NFL, however, avoid this rather short-sighted approach by developing this multi-episode VR series, which could attract more football fans to try out VR viewing. Brands should take a cue and start developing VR content that truly enhances brand messaging and contributes to the campaign objectives.

The Lab currently has four VR headsets — an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and two Samsung Gear VRs — ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

 

Source: TechCrunch

L’Oréal Launches Virtual Reality Salon For Hair Stylist Training

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
L’Oréal has found an interesting way to use VR technologies to improve its Matrix Academy program, a branded training program for hairstylists. Working with VR software startup 8i, L’Oréal will be offering hairdressing classes via a room-scale volumetric VR experience, which allows trainees to walk around the room, view the hairdo from different angles, and even step into the instructor’s virtual body and learn how to style the model’s hair from a first-person view. The goal is to enable aspiring hairstylists to learn the latest hair techniques and hone their skills without having to travel for their training.

What Brands Should Do
This initiative showcases a rare enterprise use case for brands to leverage burgeoning VR technologies to modernize their training programs. Moreover, this VR initiative also points to a future that beauty-related branded content can evolve into. In recent years, makeup tutorials and product review videos have gained significant traction on sites such as YouTube and Instagram, giving rise to a slew of beauty vloggers and influencers. The possibility of extending such educational VR programs to let consumers learn makeup skills in an immersive virtual experience would be a truly exciting way to attract beauty customers.

The Lab currently has four VR headsets — an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and two Samsung Gear VRs — ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Image Credit: 8i Medium post

HTC VIVE Partners With Condé Nast China To Let You Read A Travel Pamphlet In VR

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Physical pamphlets are about to get a lot more exciting thanks to the “Vivepaper” product from HTC. The Taiwan-based tech manufacturer has teamed up with Condé Nast China and created a digitally enhanced pamphlet for the December issue of Condé Nast Traveler (China Edition). Using the front-facing camera on Vive headsets, viewers can read the Vivepaper-enabled pamphlet in what the company calls “Augmented Virtual Reality,” where they can activate interactive content such as 360-degree photos and videos, 3D models, 2D content, and additional audio simply by touching and turning the pages.

More Chinese publishers are working with HTC to release Vivepaper-enabled interactive printouts of their content, including China Daily 21st Century English Newspaper, Caixin VR, and the Publishing House of Electronics Industry. Vive is also in discussions with major western publishers to bring Vivepaper to a global audience soon.

What Brands Should Do
This cool invention promises to bring new dimensions to print materials, giving print media companies and brands a way to incorporate digital content into existing print products. Combining the immersion of VR with the haptic interactivity of print material, it creates a powerful tool for grabbing consumer attention. Therefore, brands seeking to make their print marketing material more engaging should keep an eye on this product’s availability and consider working with content creators to develop interactive experiences suitable for this new VR opportunity.

 

Source: PR Newswire

Microsoft To Release Standalone VR Headsets That Start At $299

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Microsoft unveiled a series of new hardware products at its press event in New York City earlier today, and one particular announcement caught our eye. The company has so far been absent in the booming virtual reality field, focusing its energy on mixed reality championed by its HoloLens instead. That changes today as the Mountain View-based company announced that it is working with several manufacturer partners that so far include Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer to release several standalone, Windows 10-compatible VR headsets starting at $299. Microsoft also showcased a ‘HoloTour’ VR app which takes users on Street View-like virtual tours around the world.

What Brands Should Do
At the moment, most VR headsets are tethered to desktop or mobile devices, so it will be interesting to see how powerful Microsoft’s standalone VR headsets will be. With consumers becoming increasingly familiar with VR and now Microsoft reading to push affordable VR headsets into the mainstream consumer market, brands that wish to stay ahead of the curve should start working with content creators to develop engaging branded VR content.

The Lab currently has four VR headsets — an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and two Samsung Gear VRs — ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

 

Source: The Verge

USA Today Network Releases Its First VR News Show With Toyota As Sponsor

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
USA Today Network announced on Thursday the release of its weekly virtual reality news show, VRtually There, for which the publisher has inked partnerships with YouTube and Toyota as the distribution channel and brand sponsor, respectively. Each episode of VRtually There will be around six minutes long and include segments for original editorial content, branded VR content, as well as a VR ad unit that USA Today calls a “cubemercial.” Toyota is the first brand to pilot the cubemercial to promote its 2017 Toyota Camry.

What Brands Should Do
This launch serves as another example for VR content development as media companies race to capitalize on the VR boom. As content creators improve their skills in producing immersive content, they offer brands opportunities to create new types of branded content to engage their audiences with. Although virtual reality may still be a few years away from mass adoption (as we predicted in the 2020 section in our Outlook 2016), brands looking to stay ahead of the innovation curve would be smart to work with content creators and start developing their own branded VR content today.

 

Source: Ad Exchanger

NBA Partners With NextVR To Broadcast Weekly Games In Virtual Reality

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The NBA is bringing its games into virtual reality as the league announced on Thursday it is teaming up with VR production company NextVR to live broadcast at least one game per week in virtual reality. Viewers that wish to watch those VR streams need to purchase a $200 NBA League Pass subscription, as well as a VR headset compatible with NextVR’s content portal. The NBA says there will be no ads in the VR broadcasts, but will eventually offer “branded VR experiences” that viewers can interact with during time-outs or commercial breaks.

What Brands Should Do
The NBA has experimented with live streaming games in VR before, but the viewing experience it offered with its season opener last year left a lot of room for improvement. The league is aiming for a more TV-style broadcast this time around, which will hopefully attract more basketball fans to try out VR viewing. As VR and 360-degree content continue to gain traction among consumers and media owners, brands need to start working with content creators to craft narratives that engage and resonate with their audiences.

The Lab currently has four VR headsets — an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and two Samsung Gear VRs — ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

 

Source: Re/Code

Alibaba To Let VR Shoppers Pay With A Nod

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Alibaba’s Ant Financial recently demonstrated a payment service developed by its incubator F Lab that allows shoppers to confirm their purchases in virtual reality simply by nodding their heads. Dubbed VR Pay, the new payment system is Alibaba’s latest effort to explore the ecommerce potential of virtual reality. The VR payment system also uses a “voice print” technology for verifying user identity by recognizing each person’s unique voice. Alibaba says VR Pay is set for commercial launch by the end of this year.

Why Brands Should Care
This is not the first time Alibaba has experimented with new forms of digital payments. Last year, it rolled out a facial recognition feature in its Alipay service that allows users to authenticate their payments with a selfie. As VR devices continue to inch closer to mainstream consumer adoption, brands would be smart to keep abreast of the development of virtual ecommerce and start exploring emerging sales channels.

Source: Reuters

Event Recap: Oculus Connect 3 Highlights

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Oculus kicked off its annual Oculus Connect Event earlier today in San Jose, California, where the Facebook-owned VR company unveiled a series of updates for its products and software. CNET has a good summary of all the announcements the company made, but two of them stood out as brand-related highlights:

First, Oculus introduced two new technical features called “Timewarp” and “Spacewarp,” which create synthetic frames that can keep the image smooth, enabling Oculus Rift to provide a decent VR experience on a PC that costs as low as $499.

In addition, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will invest $250 million in the Oculus developer community, on top of the $250 million it has already spent. $50 million of the funding is allocated for mobile VR content and another $10 million for educational programs.

What Brands Should Do
Lowering the minimum PC requirements to support Oculus VR headsets may help expand its user base, which in turn provides brands with a bigger audience to reach with VR content. And Facebook’s continued investment in VR content not only shows its commitment to the emerging medium but also presents brands with an opportunity to work with developers to capitalize on the impending VR content boom with branded VR content and experiences.

The Lab currently has four VR headsets — an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and two Samsung Gear VRs — ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

Sources: The Verge & VentureBeat

 

Fast Forward: Everything From Google’s Hardware Event That Brands Need To Know

Posted on by Lab Team

Your guide to tech-driven changes in the media landscape by IPG Media Lab. A fast read for you and a forward for your clients and team.

Editor’s note: This is a delayed posting of the Lab’s hot take on the latest tech events. For a more timely delivery, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to join our Fast Forward mailing list.

The highlights:

• Updated Google Assistant service brings AI-powered convenience to a wide-range of Android devices
• Google readies push into smart home space as it sets release date and pricing for its Echo competitor
• Daydream View VR headset looks to bring immersive media to more Android users

What Google Announced

Google unveiled a series of new hardware products at its much-anticipated “Made by Google” event on Tuesday in San Francisco. The Verge has great coverage of all the product announcements that Google made today. The announcements that are particularly relevant to brands and marketers include:

• Google debuted the Pixel phone with built-in Google Assistant, Google’s answer to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, capable of both voice-based and text-based conversational interactions.
• Google announced the release date and pricing for Google Home, a smart speaker powered by Google Assistant, that it introduced at this year’s Google I/O event.
• Google introduced its first VR headset, the Daydream View, which is designed to work seamlessly with Pixel phones and will come with a handheld motion-sensing controller.
• Google launched a developer platform for creating “Actions” for Google Assistant for both smart home tasks and conversational apps.
• Google also announced that an SDK for embedding Google Assistant into third-party devices is in the works.

What Brands Need To Do

Build Google Assistant Actions To Reach Android Users
Kicking off the presentation, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage to introduce updates to Google Assistant, an evolution of Google’s predictive search service Google Now. Looking ahead, he commented, we are be moving from “mobile-first” to “AI-first,” a future where AI-powered digital assistants will handle most tasks and interactions across devices and platforms. For brands, this fundamental shift will have significant implications to brand-customer interactions across all digital touchpoints.

For now, however, it means brands need to finetune their digital strategies to add digital assistant services into the fold. The Google Assistant integration that was demoed today shows that Google is going to bring the more transactional aspects that are now completed in apps into Assistant as much as possible. It’s a great time to think about how your brand can help consumers in this way, even if it’s complementary to your typical goods or service, rather than a core offering. For example, auto brands could help consumers understand car maintenance best practices in addition to making sure that information about their latest models, dealership locations, and customer service phone numbers are all correctly indexed by Google.

Brands should also take advantage of Actions to integrate their services into Google Assistant. Starting in December, brands can work with developers to build Google Assistant Actions to reach Android users across many devices and contexts. For instance, an entertainment brand may consider building an Action that enables Google Assistant to surface movie trivia and trailers when Assistant users ask for it. Details on how this developer platform is scarce at the moment, so stay tuned to find out more.

Develop A Brand Voice For Smart Home
The smart home market is set to heat up again with the impending arrival of Google Home. Amazon has been conquering the market with its Echo lineup, pushing its digital assistant service Alexa into many a living room. Compared to Alexa, Google Assitant has the advantage of Google’s vast Knowledge Graph it accumulates from its search service, which allows it to answer a wide-range of questions with ease. Competitively priced at $129, Google Home may just have what it takes to convince customers to pick up a smart speaker come the holiday shopping season.

Although smart home devices have so far remained ad-free environments, that doesn’t mean brands can’t leverage branded content and functions, especially Alexa Skills for Amazon Echo devices and Google Assistant Actions for Google Home, to reach customers at home. As voice-based smart home devices continue to proliferate, brands will need to figure out a brand voice that is authentic to the brand image and appealing to the target audience. For example, a mass fashion brand should make sure their brand messaging appears approachable and universal, whereas a niche fashion brand may consider making theirs a bit quirky and tailored.

The home environment presents new contexts and challenges that brands will need to navigate mindfully. For example, a healthcare brand is able to reach customers at home with audio content such as wellness tips or instructions for taking medications, but it needs to be cautious in dealing with personal medical information given the social nature of such devices.

Use VR To Craft Engaging Brand Narratives
While it is too early to tell if Google’s Daydream will make a dent in the consumer VR market, it signals Google’s ambition in pushing affordable, mobile-powered VR experiences into the hands of more Android users. As more and more brand marketers rush into VR to capitalize on the booming popularity of the emerging medium, some fail to come up with a brand narrative that truly utilizes the immersive and interactive advantages that VR offers. And instead of coming up with a sustainable, long-term VR strategy, many brands dove into the medium with a one-off piece of VR content, distributed it across all channels regardless of behavioral differences.

To avoid this kind of rather short-sighted approach, brands need to work closely with content creators to develop VR content that truly enhances brand messaging and contributes to the campaign objectives. For example, American Family Insurance recently struck a content development deal with AOL, which allows the insurer to tap into creative resources at AOL’s Partner Studio and HuffPost RYOT to develop a three-part, branded VR series as well as a number of 360-degree video ads that will appear across AOL’s ad network in tandem.

How We Can Help

Please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) if you would like more detail or want to schedule a visit to the Lab to discuss how your brand may benefit from integrating with Google Assistant to surface brand messaging and developing branded immersive content to engage consumers.

For previous editions of Fast Forward, please visit ipglab.com. Please reply with any constructive criticism or feedback. We want these to be as useful as possible for you and your clients, and your input will help us immensely.

NYC AdWeek 2016: Circa Plans to Create Weekly Ad-Supported VR Spots

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Wednesday at its AdWeek event in New York City, Circa announced an ambitious VR initiative that will have the Millennial-focused news publisher work with production company MomentumXR to create two pieces of ad-supported VR content on a weekly basis. Circa didn’t name any advertisers, but says ads will run as pre-rolls in VR or 360-degree video format. The Sinclair Broadcasting-owned publisher is also open to working with brands to create custom VR clips in the future.

What Brands Should Do
As more and more brand marketers rush into VR to capitalize on the booming popularity of the emerging medium, many fail to come up with a sustainable, long-term VR strategy that fits their brand. Instead, most of them dove into the medium with a one-off piece of VR content, distributed it across all channels regardless of behavioral differences, and just left it at that with no follow-up. To avoid this kind of rather short-sighted approach, brands need to work closely with content creators to develop VR content that truly enhances brand messaging and contributes to the campaign objectives.

If you’d like to talk more about how to develop a long-term VR strategy for your brand, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab. If you have yet to experience the true power of an immersive VR experience firsthand, the Lab currently has three VR headsets — an HTC Vive and two Samsung Gear VRs — ready for demos upon request.

 

Source: AdWeek