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9 VR Marketing Examples to Inspire You in 2022

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9 VR Marketing Examples to Inspire You in 2022

I won’t lecture you on the importance of incorporating virtual reality (VR) into your marketing strategy.

What I will do, however, is share a few fun facts about VR and show you nine examples of this technology used for marketing a product or a brand.

  • Consumer and enterprise VR market revenue is expected to reach $6.71 billion by the end of 2022, and $12.9 billion by 2024. 
  • Augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality market size worldwide is expected to jump by more than 220 billion dollars between 2021 and 2028.
  • By the end of 2022, it is estimated that virtual reality hardware and software sales will generate more than $6.4 billion dollars in revenue.
  • By the end of 2020, the number of VR headsets sold is predicted to reach 82 million — a 1,507% increase from 2017 predicted totals.

VR is growing in its adoption, and it’s worth considering adding it to your marketing channels in the coming year.

What Is VR?

VR, short for virtual reality, is software that immerses users in a three-dimensional, virtual interactive environment — usually by headset with special lenses — to simulate a real-life experience. Many VR experiences take place in 360 degrees. 

While movies, for example, allow audiences to experience the film as if they are a character in the scene, businesses use VR to demonstrate and promote their products to potential customers. In fact, many industries have found a use of VR to transport people to places they might otherwise have to travel to or simply imagine. 

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Before we dive into some examples of businesses that have used VR for marketing, it’s worth noting that virtual reality has a few key differences from another term you might’ve heard before in the same sphere: augmented reality. The video below runs through the key differences. 

 

 

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Seeking inspiration for your own VR marketing campaign? Look no further. Below are nine of our favorite VR marketing campaigns and how they served the company’s marketing strategy.

1. Gucci Town

High-end fashion house Gucci recently launched Gucci Town, a virtual world within the Roblox metaverse. Players can explore the town, learn about the house’s history, and connect with other people in the game. 

 

The interactive elements of Gucci Town are the mini-games, the browsable art exhibitions, and the Gucci store where people can purchase clothes for their Roblox avatars. When users wear the clothing they’ve purchased, they can spark conversations with others that are curious about the unique items and, as a result, are inspired to visit and discover what the town has to offer. 

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2. Sephora Try-on Kiosk

Beauty retailer Sephora has kiosks where visitors can virtually test makeup products on their face to ensure they’re satisfied with how it looks before making a purchase. These kiosks are a high-value marketing tool, providing a unique hybrid experience to help customers get the most out of their in-store visit. 

While Sephora does allow physical testing of its products, not everyone might want to do so, so the kiosks are an additional option. It’s also beneficial for customer satisfaction, as people can see exactly what the products look like ahead of time to ensure they spend money on one that works best for them and their needs.

3. Wendy’s and VMLY&R: Keeping Fortnite Fresh

Wendy’s created an engaging VR marketing experience within Fortnite’s virtual world, leveraging native gameplay related to its business: beef. Fortnite players would transport beef to freezers at nearby restaurants and earn coins when they were successful. 

To make it a more brand-relevant experience, Wendy’s tasked its marketing agency, VMLY&R, to create an avatar that resembled its mascot, Wendy. The firm then streamed on Twitch, where viewers could watch the new Wendy’s avatar break into restaurants and destroy freezers: 

 

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During the stream, mentions of Wendy’s on social media went up by 119%, and it was viewed for a total of 1.52 million minutes by a quarter of a million viewers. Viewers also began smashing freezers within their games, tweeting about the stream, and commenting in the feed’s comment thread. 

Like a commercial or native ad, the campaign’s goal was to remind audiences that Wendy’s makes an effort to serve the freshest beef to its customers, which is why it was so relevant that users received coins the faster they were able to transport beef to the freezers. 

4. A Tribal Past: Bear River, a Nation: What Can Eeling Teach Us? 

In partnership with Oculus, Jessica Cantrell created a 360° film project where tribal members shared their stories and reconnected young people with their community’s past. 

 

It was a form of community storytelling that leveraged an emerging VR tool to market the story and to help members of a historically marginalized community learn more about their culture. 

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5. Lowe’s: Holoroom How-To

Anyone who’s gone through the angst of being a first-time buyer knows the unfathomable power of paperwork and finances to undermine the fun of designing or decorating a new home.

That’s why Lowe’s decided to step in and help out homeowners — or recreational DIY enthusiasts — with a virtual skills-training clinic that uses HTC Vive headsets to guide participants through a visual, educational experience on the how-to of home improvement.

 

Now, customers can embark on their do-it-yourself renovation dreams without needing to pay for a professional and with the education, they need to succeed on their own. 

6. Boursin: The Sensorium

Cheese brand Boursin created a VR experience to take users on a multi-sensory journey through a refrigerator to shed light on its products’ flavor profiles, food pairings, and recipe ideas.

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The goal? To raise awareness among U.K. consumers of Boursin’s distinct taste and product selection.

 

While the VR installment was part of a live experiential marketing campaign, the rest of us can get a taste — pun intended — of the virtual experience via this YouTube video.

7. Adidas: Delicatessen

Adidas partnered with Somewhere Else, an emerging tech marketing agency, to follow the mountain-climbing journey of two extreme athletes sponsored by TERREX (a division of Adidas).

And what good is mountain climbing to an audience if you can’t give them a 360-degree view of the journey?

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Viewers could follow the climbers, Ben Rueck and Delaney Miller, literally rock for rock and climb along with them. You heard that right — using a VR headset and holding two sensory remote controls in each hand, viewers could scale the mountain of Delicatessen right alongside Rueck and Miller.

According to Somewhere Else, this VR campaign served to “find an unforgettable way to market TERREX, [Adidas’s] line of outdoor apparel & accessories.” What the company also did, however, was introduce viewers to an activity they might have never tried otherwise and instill an interest in the experience.

Check out the campaign’s trailer below.

8. Toms: Virtual Giving Trip

Toms, a popular shoe company, is well known for donating one pair of shoes to a child in need every time a customer buys a pair. This charitable developer found a new way to inspire its customers to give — wearing a VR headset.

Blake Mycoskie, the founder and Chief Shoe Giver of Toms, narrates Tom’s Virtual Giving Trip with one of his colleagues.

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As they describe the story of Toms’ founding, their VR experience takes viewers on a trip through Peru, where Blake and the shoe-giving team visit a school of children who are about to receive the shoes they need for the first time.

What Toms’ VR campaign does so well is something cause-driven organizations worldwide struggle to do: Show donors exactly where their money is going. Even without a VR headset, the video below gives you an intimate experience to put Toms on your list for your next shoe purchase.

9. DP World: Caucedo Facilities Tour

DP World is a global trade company that helps businesses transport goods worldwide. As the company opens new terminals, however, they need a way to show their customers what DP World’s property has to offer.

DP World’s Caucedo facility in the Dominican Republic is just one of several DP World properties using VR to promote its large and often mysterious ships and land masses as they suddenly appear in a community.

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Trade logistics is not an exciting industry for everyone, but that’s exactly why a 360-degree tour of DP World’s terminal is so valuable here. Show people just how efficient, safe, and crucial these properties are to certain businesses — without making them put on a hardhat and walk through the port itself — and you can gain massive community support.

Navigating VR in Marketing

As you read this, you might be thinking, “Why should a small-business marketer like myself be learning about high-priced VR campaigns?” 

Well, although VR might be too costly for many. marketing budgets, it’s getting more and more abundant in society, As it grows, we’re seeing a handful of brands leverage it for product promotion and virtual storytelling. And, while you might not be able to create a VR-based campaign, you can gather some great takeaways related to marketing innovation, content marketing, or visual storytelling which can give you other ideas of how to better interact with your digital audience.

Want to see how other emerging technologies will impact your marketing? Check out A Practical Approach to Emerging Tech for SMBs: AI, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, IoT, and AR/VR.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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