Creating a memorable experience

With launch­es of VR head­sets com­ing thick and fast – Ocu­lus Rift, Sony PlaySta­tion and HTC Vive are poised for con­sumer launch­es ear­ly next year – 2016 is already being dubbed the year of vir­tu­al real­i­ty.

Opin­ions dif­fer on the growth of VR, for exam­ple Trac­ti­ca says con­sumer spend­ing on VR soft­ware and hard­ware is expect­ed to reach $21.8 bil­lion, and Digi-Cap­i­tal goes even fur­ther to sug­gest the VR/AR mar­ket will reach a stag­ger­ing $150 bil­lion by 2020. Even though the pre­cise future isn’t clear, we can see these impres­sive growth pro­jec­tions great­ly out­per­form oth­er adver­tis­ing mar­kets and could even be likened to the emer­gence of tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing.

Brands are keen to be part of this rev­o­lu­tion and are look­ing to VR as a medi­um for inspir­ing and engag­ing con­sumers with spon­sored con­tent.

At Hap­py Fin­ish, we have been spe­cial­is­ing in cre­at­ing VR expe­ri­ences for brands for the past three years. We have built up a port­fo­lio of strong, engag­ing cam­paigns for lead­ing brands such as Asda, Ted Bak­er, Riv­er Island, RNLI, Hon­ey­well, Sub­way, Vaux­hall, Renault and WHIST, which is a project fund­ed by Arts Coun­cil Eng­land.

We help brands cre­ate vir­tu­al con­tent that is pow­er­ful, com­pelling and unfor­get­table

These ear­ly-adopters have earned some great PR from get­ting involved with VR right at the start and have used the medi­um to forge pow­er­ful bonds with con­sumers.

VR has a pow­er­ful influ­ence on con­sumer behav­iour and boosts people’s propen­si­ty to pur­chase. And VR ads have also been shown to increase click-through rates. When con­sumers don the head­set and head­phones, they are trans­port­ed into an all-envelop­ing sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence.

VR is seam­less­ly immer­sive. You can look straight ahead or turn your head to see what’s behind you. You can gaze above and look beneath you. It is a tru­ly 360-degree expe­ri­ence.

We help brands cre­ate vir­tu­al con­tent that is pow­er­ful, com­pelling and unfor­get­table. We believe that brands which can offer con­sumers a stun­ning VR expe­ri­ence will be remem­bered and respect­ed for years to come.

The spooky Hal­loween VR expe­ri­ence we cre­at­ed for Asda is an exam­ple of the high-qual­i­ty con­tent that can give a brand a real point of dif­fer­ence. The cam­paign helped the retail­er gain trac­tion on social media and boost­ed its stand­ing as a store to vis­it for Hal­loween shop­ping.

The four-minute film, shot on a 360-degree cam­era, told the sto­ry of a group of trick or treaters who wan­der into a haunt­ed house and have some spooky expe­ri­ences. It was shot in 3D video and can be viewed on YouTube 360, launched ear­li­er this year to show­case 360-degree video. It gar­nered some 1.3 mil­lion views.

Asda cus­tomers were able to expe­ri­ence the film in VR on their smart­phones using Asda-brand­ed Google Card­board head­sets which were hand­ed out free at some stores. When viewed on a mobile, the film offered True­View cards, a YouTube fea­ture giv­ing extra infor­ma­tion and click-to-buy options.

Chris Chalmers, senior direc­tor for dig­i­tal and direct com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Asda, says: “Work­ing with Google, YouTube, Hap­py Fin­ish and Carat on tri­alling a new, fun way to immerse shop­pers in our Hal­loween range has proved to be a real suc­cess for us.

“Our cus­tomers are ahead of the curve when it comes to social media and we’ve had a pos­i­tive reac­tion from them. We’ve been real­ly impressed with the num­ber of peo­ple who have viewed and inter­act­ed with the video.”

The film fur­ther boost­ed the rep­u­ta­tion of Hap­py Fin­ish as a lead­ing cre­ative force in the world of brand­ed VR con­tent. Over the past few years we have grown from not just being a pho­tog­ra­phy and motion spe­cial effects stu­dio in London’s cre­ative cen­tre Shored­itch, into a glob­al cre­ative pro­duc­tion agency, but now also spe­cial­is­ing in vir­tu­al real­i­ty and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty with proven expe­ri­ence world­wide.

With stu­dios in Lon­don, Shang­hai, Mum­bai, Port­land and New York, glob­al brands are flock­ing to try out our VR cam­paigns, and we have recent­ly signed a strate­gic part­ner­ship deal with adver­tis­ing giant WPP’s GroupM divi­sion in Asia-Pacif­ic to work on VR cam­paigns with its clients.

In anoth­er much-loved and high­ly engag­ing VR cam­paign, we took 450 plus Lon­don­ers on a vir­tu­al tour of New York for the launch of Subway’s Beef Pas­tra­mi Melt sub. This sand­wich promis­es to offer the taste of New York City, with two yel­low New York cabs on the South Bank of the Thames and a bell boy to invite passers­by to sit inside and try a free pas­tra­mi sub.

While they were eat­ing, they put on a VR head­set and were tak­en on a vir­tu­al tour through the streets of New York. We recre­at­ed the effect of sit­ting on top of the cab, allow­ing them to look all around as they trav­elled through the city and expe­ri­enced the New York taste of the pas­tra­mi sub. This cre­at­ed a high­ly real­is­tic mul­ti-sen­so­ry audio­vi­su­al expe­ri­ence and many cus­tomers com­ment­ed that they felt they had actu­al­ly been trans­port­ed to the city.

The cam­paign won great head­lines and sig­nif­i­cant social media shares. VR and social media go hand in hand and peo­ple are keen to share their VR expe­ri­ences on social plat­forms. It is no sur­prise that two of the big VR head­set man­u­fac­tur­ers are also sig­nif­i­cant play­ers in the world of social media and user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent.

Last year, Face­book bought Ocu­lus Rift, which will launch its sophis­ti­cat­ed head­set next year. Google, which owns user-gen­er­at­ed video con­tent plat­form YouTube, launched Google Card­board last year. This is a sim­ple and low-cost head­set made of card­board that con­sumers can con­struct them­selves, slot­ting in their mobile phone as the screen. Card­board, which won the grand prix at this year’s Cannes Lions Fes­ti­val of Cre­ativ­i­ty in the mobile cat­e­go­ry, offers brands some great ways to engage their con­sumers.

There are some real­ly inter­est­ing meth­ods of dis­trib­ut­ing Card­boards. For exam­ple, in Chile, in con­junc­tion with Metrop­o­lis Films, we cre­at­ed a VR expe­ri­ence for alco­holic bev­er­age brand Beck­er Beer. The cam­paign allowed con­sumers to turn the pack­ag­ing of the 24-can box of Beck­er into a Google Card­board head­set. They could then watch two VR films we cre­at­ed for the cam­paign with Madre, the Buenos Aires branch of cre­ative agency Moth­er.

VR also has great uses as a sales tool. In one of our VR expe­ri­ences for Hon­ey­well, the solu­tion immers­es Honeywell’s trade show vis­i­tors into a vir­tu­al world to demon­strate its air­craft on-board prod­ucts and solu­tions. Where pre­vi­ous­ly it trans­port­ed a seg­ment of a plane to trade shows to demon­strate its prod­ucts, it can dis­pense with this using the Hap­py Fin­ish VR sys­tem. This has helped Hon­ey­well make huge sav­ings in trans­porta­tion costs and has boost­ed their sales offer­ing.

Over the next few years, hav­ing a VR strat­e­gy will become as impor­tant for brands as hav­ing a social media or mobile strat­e­gy. As ever, it will be the most engag­ing and cre­ative work that wins over con­sumers. With our wealth of 360-VR cre­ative sto­ry­telling exper­tise, Hap­py Fin­ish is well placed to help brands cre­ate these new immer­sive con­tent expe­ri­ences for their cam­paigns.

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