2-D Strategies Ground Marketers In The 3-D Virtual World

Virtual reality is like a wrecking ball—in the best sense.

Virtual reality is like a wrecking ball—in the best sense.

VR demolishes the logistical walls of the real world that have always limited marketers. With VR, anything is possible. Want to take your customers to Mars? Done. Want to dance along the peaks of the Alps with your rock climbing customers? No problem. Want to make your donors feel the pains of refugees from around the world? That is happening.

VR is a new boundless world. The confines of two-dimensional screens are dissolved. How do marketers adept at practicing in a 2-D world adapt their marketing mindset to 3-D and 4-D worlds and shared multidimensional spaces, as well as augmented reality? Similar to VR, but not quite the same, AR overlays digital onto the physical world, opening an entirely new dimension for businesses to explore.

For example, who would have thought that an offline game popular in the 1990s would be a catalyst for the growth and engagement in AR? In the past few weeks, with the explosive launch of Pokemon Go, we’ve seen how quickly people embrace AR when it’s fun and easy to use. Restaurants, retailers, and more are jumping in as well, trying to engage potential prospects and connecting live commerce with the virtual game experience.

With VR and AR, marketers are standing on a precipice and staring out into a vast expanse. All that freedom can be as exciting as it is terrifying. These new worlds will test marketing’s creative chops like nothing else. But marketers should find comfort in knowing that traditional marketing principles from the 2-D world apply. Not only are our strategies and tactics transferable, we can achieve more toward our goals than we ever imagined possible if we keep those goals in mind as we enter this mind-bending world.

• Meaning: Smart marketers always strive to make meaningful connections with customers, and VR and AR offer opportunities for marketers to cultivate relationships with customers by having people walk in one another’s shoes. The hyper-reality of these empathetic-generating experiences stirs hearts, changes minds, creates unbreakable bonds, and alters behavior. Whether it’s chasing a creature, seeing a product in your own home, or sharing a journey, VR enables relevance like nothing else.
• Shared experiences: When we think of VR, we think about a single individual wearing a set of goggles. But technology companies are pushing the boundaries of VR further by creating shared virtual experiences. Shared virtual reality spaces, integrating the physical with the device or even a hybrid experience, will enable people to share the virtual experience, giving marketers opportunities to make virtual experiences viral.
• Partnerships: Big media companies are seeing VR as an opportunity to reestablish their relevance and win back paying customers. In doing so, they are providing marketers with exciting avenues to market their wares. The next generation of product placement and real-time coupling is here.
• Relevance: How many times have you left a 3-D movie and wondered why you even bothered wearing the glasses? There’s a risk that marketers will fail to fully leverage the wide expanse of this new medium. Virtual worlds are marketing’s dream come true, and they should think big and take complete advantage of this new medium.

To get started with VR or AR, the first thing marketers should do is play with the technology themselves, if they haven’t already. Then they should look to industries like gaming and entertainment that are considered pioneers in this new medium. In these new worlds, anything is possible, but standard marketing principles can serve to keep marketers grounded in reality and reaching revenue goals.