As any cutting-edge medium rides a wave of hype, there are normally several corporate sharks who attempt to ride the stream, in a bid to gather attention for their products and services. In many cases, these collaborations were nothing more than a tact-on addition to a campaign, with little beyond ‘it is immersive’ to back its reasoning. Further, many PR companies sent stats and figures on the growth of VR or its place in the future based on polls, in a bid to hijack the news with very similar sounding but largely false news. In one case, a company merged VR and 360° video together to inflate the statistics, not drawing a distinction between the two very different mediums to improve its stats.
360° video will likely remain a domineering force for content production with its ease of access on social platforms. Blend Media, a pioneer in this sector, primarily uses 360° videos for campaigns, particularly the King of the Netherlands’ fiftieth birthday and the recent collaboration with MTV. This is unlikely to change in 2018 as HMDs remain expensive and largely inaccessible by the general public.
Yet the passing of time generates nuance, and 2018 looks ripe for great campaigns linked with immersion. This is, in part, linked to the suffusion of producers cropping up who are specialising in the technology. VirtualRealityMarketing.com states that, at least on the production side, there are a tonne of virtual volcano eruption of participants: “As VR becomes better, cheaper and mainstream this volcano will only erupt harder with each passing year.”
It is expected that immersive reality marketing is here to stay, at least in some form. In select cases, 360° videos on Facebook will be portrayed positively and used effectively, such as McDonalds early last year. The content is becoming cost-effective, and with that comes innovations. 2018 will have some slow transitions, but they will be interesting to follow.
