The art of creating emotional and impactful branded VR content
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From DutchVRDays: Peder Sandqvist, Creative Technologist Digitas LBi, talking about the art of creating emotional and impactful branded VR content, sharing lessons learned during the creation of the unique Volvo XC90 Virtual Reality experience that has been touring the world the past year. See the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATZsxJYqVBI&feature=youtu.be&t=25m36s
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The art of creating emotional and impactful branded VR content
- 1. Peder Sandqvist, Creative Technologist @psqv HELLO!
- 2. USA 2850 UK 900 EUROPE 1000 APAC 1100 6000+ PEOPLE 40 OFFICES 25 COUNTRIES NORDICS 250
- 4. ‹Nr.› CREATING A SWEDISH MOMENT Stepping into a virtual future with Volvo Cars
- 5. “We´re making a long term bet that immersive, virtual and augmented reality will become a part of people´s daily life.” - Marc Zuckerberg
- 7. How can we sell a car that doesn´t yet exist? GOING VIRTUAL
- 9. ONE CAR
- 10. ONE CAR
- 11. FOUR CARS
- 12. Designed Around You Swedish tranquility & solitude Exquisite detail EXPERIENCE DESIGN
- 14. What makes you feel most immersed are the small and nuanced details, that you can instantly relate to.
- 15. Dare to be gentle
- 17. Use hinting to guide the visitor
- 18. Make 3D sound part of the story
- 20. Introduce VR & the experience Prioritize hygiene and make visitors feel safe Align climate conditions Design the area to promote movement DON`T FORGET REALITY
- 22. 2 HOUR LINE 17 DAYS
- 24. CONSUMERS WILL EXPECT MEANINGFUL VR EXPERIENCES
- 25. USE VR ONLY WHEN AND WHERE IT MAKES SENSE
- 26. DARE TO BE GENTLE
- 27. MAKE THE PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE AS GOOD AS THE VIRTUAL
- 28. INVEST IN EXCELLENCE: PEOPLE LOVE GOOD VR, BUT CAN´T STAND BAD VR
- 29. BRANDS: EXPLORE & EXPERIMENT NOW TO BREAK GROUND AND BECOME A LEADER
- 30. DAWN OF AN ERA Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards
- 32. EXPERIENCE A SWEDISH MOMENT @ DEMO DAY Questions? Get in touch @psqv
Editor's Notes
- Hello! I am Peder. Daytime I work as a creative technologist at DigitasLBi, in Gothenburg, Sweden. At night I turn into really lousy but very enthusiastic tennis player. But I am very sorry to tell you that is all you will hear about my tennis career today. I've been invited to talk about our work creating branded Virtual Reality experiences. Big thanks to the team at Dutch VR Days for creating this great event, and for inviting me here to talk about something I´m very passionate about.
- DigitasLBi is a global marketing and technology agency that transforms businesses for the digital age. We help companies of all shapes and sizes decide what´s next… and then we take them there. We´re part of Publicis and we have over 6000 creative people bringing digital innovation to clients all over the world. Since joining DigitasLBi about 3 years ago I´ve been fortunate enough to explore the intersection of creativity and technology every day. Today I am going to share some insights from our work creating branded VR experiences as part of digital campaigns. I would like to start by showing a case video on the project I will highlight today:
- Volvo XC90 VR case video showing how we helped sell out of all 1927 early edition XC90 cars, exclusively online in 47 hours.
- We have been working with Volvo Cars for over 15 years. This means we have a deep understanding of their business, products and culture - which we believe is crucial to create great results together. Last year Volvo Cars launched the all new XC90. As you saw in the video, we built the digital launch campaign including the web, social media activation and e-commerce. This time we added a Virtual Reality experience, as a unique way to showcase the new car and let people experience Volvo like never before. Today I will share some useful things we learned along the way.
- The past few years, we´ve seen VR rise from the grave it was thrown into in the 1990:s, driven by advancing technology, new ideas and heavy investments. All the big tech players are joining the game, and Mark Zuckerberg made the following statement: “We´re making a long term bet that immersive, virtual and augmented reality will become a part of people´s daily life.” We couln´t agree more!
- In my industry we´re witnessing every day how new technologies transform how we interact with brands. As more of our brand interactions go digital and more products are sold online, there´s an increasing need to be let people experience and make emotional connections with products without physical interaction. With this in mind, a few years ago, we started exploring how we could place people inside a virtual car. Our first crude experiments were based on spherical 3D-renderings that we mapped to the inside of a sphere to simulate a car interior. The image you can see here is actually one of those experimental renderings. Even if the experience was pixelated and the feeling of immersion limited, we felt it was intriguing. So we decided to share our discoveries with Volvo. A few weeks later our friends at Volvo came back to us with a challenge:
- "How can we sell a car that doesn't yet exist?” The launch plan for the XC90 involved presenting the interior of the car prior to the exterior, then launch the full car a few months later and sell 1927 Early Edition Cars, exclusively online. Keep in mind that this is a 80 000 EURO product, which would be sold directly from the campaign website. This called for novel ways to present the product, and we believed a strong VR experience could be one way to do this. So we started thinking about the context in which our experience would live. We knew that one of the main context would be car shows. If there´s one way to describe the big car shows, it would be:
- Cars everywhere! Car brands bring their complete car lineups, put them up for show in combination with free drinks and some technical gadgets and pray for attention. So, how do you stand out in this cloud of conformity? You move in the the other direction.
- Volvo made bold bet by placing only one physical car in their huge Paris Motor Show area. There was just one star player on display - the all new XC90.
- In practice, this was a great success, and visitors flooded the Volvo area. This meant the one and only car on display was more or less swarmed by people throughout the show. People climbing all over the car, heat and commotion. Using VR, we could provide a compelling alternative, and put four more cars on display:
- Walk into a beautiful, quiet, perfectly climate controlled room. Escape to the tranquility of the Swedish countryside, and experience the XC90 like magic, in total solitude. But what kind of VR experience could support this vision?
- After a lot of creative discussions, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to do three things: Communicate the Volvo brand promise "Designed around you" in a new and unique way Teleport visitors to the tranquility of the beautiful Swedish landscape out of which every Volvo is born, in total solitude, without interruption Showcase the beautiful XC90 in exquisite detail
- Even though creating the VR experience was a tremendous challenge from a technology perspective, the creative side is where the real challenges lie. VR is very much a blank slate in terms of storytelling techniques. This one of the things makes VR so fun to work with right now. For branded VR experiences, we believe there are a few unique aspects that need to be considered that I would like to share with you today. To highlight our thinking I would like to talk about a butterfly.
- It might not look like a big thing here, but in our VR experience it´s paramount. It´s one of the things visitors relate to and remember. You want to reach out and touch it. We´ve seen this far in branded VR a fair share of high velocity game style experiences. Things like rollercoasters, quickly paced action experiences, explosions and high octane action. It´s expected and not surprising, since gaming is one of the main drivers of VR exploration today. Presented with the limitless opportunities of VR, one tends to want to do the most extreme. What we realized is that these are not the type of experiences that actually best trigger emotions that make you feel immersed. For premium brand experiences, we believe in creating more fine-tuned and nuanced moments of joy. What make you feel most immersed are the small and nuanced details, that you can instantly relate to. To get to this, it´s important to dare to be gentle.
- In our view, for first time VR users, just being in VR can be a profound experience in and of itself. Telling a story on top of that requires care and gentleness. When something´s not quite right in VR, you tend to react stronger than in other mediums. We constantly found ourself using the expression ”I´m feeling a bit scared” while building the experience and an idea did not work. Even the smallest of interactions can have profound emotional impact. It´s obvious that the effect VR can have on our emotional state is very strong. Therefore, as a VR creator, we believe its important to be mindful and brave enough to decomplicate and show care. Next thing to keep in mind is to Avoid camera motion.
- Doing a car VR experience, its almost expected to have some sort of ride and/or driving simulation. We decided early on to move in the other direction. Having your fans stand in line for hours eagerly awaiting a great VR experience, then feeling sick after 20 seconds is not a great way to promote your brand. We wanted to give visitors great first introduction to VR, so we made sure to design an experience with low risk of motion sickness by avoiding camera motion & acceleration, keeping frame rate above 75 FPS, and testing each VR idea we had on multiple subjects with low tolerance for motion sickness. For us, anything that can possibly induce motion sickness in VR, is instantly out of consideration. It´s also important to use hinting to guide the visitor
- There´s no default point of interest in VR. The visitor is just placed into a context and free to navigate, so hinting and visual guidance becomes hugely important to storytelling. We have seen that first time VR users sometimes become tense and static subjected to the overwhelming feeling of VR immersion. In the Volvo experience we have used a number of visual and audiovisual hints to direct attention. A good example is the butterfly above that flies in through the side window and trigger curiosity to look around inside the car as it flies past and around the back of the visitor. In VR, even small hints like this can have great impact on storytelling. Finally, make 3D sound part of the story
- 3D Sound is a huge part of achieving immersion in VR. With sound that´s not perfectly tuned and positioned in 3D space you can easily break the feeling of immersion. Sound also becomes paramount to the storytelling since hinting with 3D positioned sound is one of the best ways to direct attention. Creating VR experiences we tend to focus a lot on the virtual side of things. In all of this, its important not to forget about reality.
- Something that we feel is sometimes overlooked is the importance of a good physical space for successful event VR activation. Touring all the big car shows and a number of big VR events this past year it has been evident that brands that show care in their VR activation, bring more joy to the VR experience. In the Volvo project we went out of our way to design a physical experience, as good as the virtual. This ended up being a bigger challenge than we had thought. We found a number of important aspects to keep in mind:
- Introduce what VR is, what to expect in the experience and inform the visitors clearly about the steps ahead. Include a few small in-VR training sessions, to help people grasp the freedom of movement available in VR. To do these things, well educated hosts on site is key, so prepare to spend a lot of time on training. Make visitors feel safe and prioritize hygiene This is pretty self explanatory, but I´ve seen a fair share of public VR events where this was obviously not a priority. Align climate conditions between the virtual and physical experience Even small things that affect all senses have a great impact on immersion. Aligning temperature is easy but effective. Adding even more senses such as smell and touch done well can act as rocket fuel to a great experience. Design the area to promote movement Make turning easy, make cables slide out of the way, and make sure there´s nothing to bump in to.
- For the Volvo experience we ended up designing a complete VR room, with integrated cable management, tracking hardware and climate control system. We spent an huge amount of time training the hosts and hostesses that would welcome visitors and treat them to their first VR experience.
- We ended up seeing some tremendous results. As word of the unique experience spread, we ended up with a 1-2 hour line of fans eager to teleport themselves to Sweden. At Paris Motor Show, our first event, Volvo was awarded best in show, and the experience has continued to be a part of all major car shows Volvo has attended ever since, with a custom experience focusing on air quality introduced at Shanghai Motor Show.
- For mobile events, we designed a custom module, integrating all hardware and a real seat from the car. In this use case, we worked hard to match the positioning of the VR world to the physical dimensions of the car seat. The integration of tactile elements and VR is a great way to add additional layers of immersion to the experience. This system toured the world as part of the race village at all Volvo Ocean Race ports throughout the race. To summarize, I´d like to list what we believe are a few of the key take aways from this journey:
- Moving forward, we believe consumers will come to expect meaningful VR experiences
- But don't use VR for the sake of it, find a valuable use case and use VR only when and where it makes sense.
- Don´t be afraid to create subtle, nuanced and gentle experiences that spark a feeling of magic by focusing on immersion, presence and storytelling.
- Don´t forget about reality. When doing public VR events, make the physical event experience as good as the virtual.
- And make sure to invest in excellence: People love good VR, but can´t stand bad VR For brands, it will be key to invest in VR with a commitment to create excellent content. Anything else will actually be counter productive.
- Brands: Explore & experiment now to break ground and become a leader
- It´s not very common that new communication mediums appear. When the film camera was first invented, people would instinctively just film theatre. It would take several decades of iteration and experimentation to end up where we are today in terms of best practices for storytelling, and it´s still a work in progress. With VR we´re just beginning this exploration, and over time we believe VR will change how we think about communication. Right now it´s early days. VR exist in a space of dreamers, experimentation and new businesses being created. There´s also a fair share of nay sayers, skeptics, fear and preconceptions. All common when novel technology is about to disrupt existing businesses. We feel that it is a privilege to be part of this gold rush of Innovation. To sum things up I´d like to share one of our core takeaways from our VR journey this far: There´s this old saying that ”Seeing Is Believing”.
- We think it´s time to rephrase that into ”Feeling Is Believing”. In VR the viewer is not only a passive spectator, he or she is a visitor in a world of limitless imagination, that we can create. We believe VR has the power to instill empathy in a way we´ve not seen before. We are already seeing news organisations such as ABC News using VR to teleport viewers to war torn Syria and refugee camps in neighboring countries. We believe VR can be used to create all sorts of experiences that have profound emotional impact. We believe brands will adapt and find mindful ways to use VR we can´t even imagine today. All I can say is I think we´re in for a treat!
- If you want to experience A Swedish moment in-person, we will be on site demoing the experience at the demo day, Saturday. If you have questions, please reach out to me in old school Real Reality! I will be around throughout the event. Thank you!