Creative Solutions was recently invited to present the company’s work at the Feel the Future; an Expo focused on innovative, digital solutions that will shape the future of business, education and personal lives. Here are our 5 key takeaways:
1. You need an attention grabber
With the exposition space filled with companies, there is nothing that sets you aside from competition in the eyes of the visitors. If you want to stand out, you need to grab their attention and show them something that will keep them entertained. But how do you differentiate when every company comes at the Expo with big screen TVs and promotional videos? In our case, the job was done by a Phillips TV showing off what users are currently doing in our showcased VR Experience. What the user saw in Virtual Reality, the passing visitors saw on TV. And together with watching the user having fun in VR, they all wanted to give VR a go. Our ‘attention grabber’ was working because it was different from the presentation of other companies. With a promo video, the visitor stops, checks out the video and moves on, while our VR stream was always dynamic, always changing, no visitor had the same experience as the previous one.
2. You need an easy-to-understand VR solution
There are two main limitations at Expos and Fairs. You have limited time for each passing visitor and the users don’t necessarily have experience with your products. That is why you need a high-quality, well-designed solution, that will make the experience fun for the user. That is especially true when dealing with innovative technologies, such as Virtual Reality. You don’t just need a simple, easy-to-learn VR experience that the user will love. You should also prepare an easy-to-understand explanation of what you do, what the technology is and how it helps. Overloading the visitors with the information they don’t necessarily understand quickly puts them off and they lose interest. Lucky for them, there are plenty of other companies who have their experiences perfected.
3. Awards automatically bring attention
As part of the Feel the Future Experience, organizers also prepared a competition for young, innovative companies. A technical jury hand-picked Creative Solutions as one of the top three innovative digital companies in the competition. Having won awards before, we were always aware that they make for a good marketing story, but we never realized how much credibility and recognition they bring as well. Just hanging the award at our booth encouraged people walking by to remember us from the award ceremony, congratulating us and asking about our work. Creative Solutions always liked the motto “if you want to do it, do it right” and seeing how people reacted to the award got us another confirmation that well made, high-quality, high-investment VR content always gets more recognition and better ROI in comparison to cheap, rushed VR content.
4. VR Experiences top VR Video every time
There were five companies with VR content at Feel the Future Expo and we have noticed a trend with the visitors. Only one company, other than Creative Solutions, offered custom VR content for visitors. And visitors took notice. Interactive VR content that offered a fun, immersive experience for the user attracted a lot more attention in comparison to a VR video experience, where the users only watched the video happening around them. Although the users had fun in a Video VR experience, their minds were completely blown when they learned they can walk around and interact with the world in our custom VR experience.
5. VR is bigger than you think
Although Virtual Reality is relatively new and not yet widely used, the vast majority of visitors were already familiar with VR and how it works. It was really nice to see that people never had any hesitations in trying our experience, and they have learned the controls and interactions fairly quickly. It was even nicer to see younger generations simply grabbing Oculus controllers and mastering them in a matter of seconds. VR is more popular than you might think. And it will only get better with the generations to come.
I want to learn more about VR for live events!
Andrej Persolja is a VR artist and a co-founder of Creative Solutions. Creative Solutions partners with creative agencies to help their clients raise the presentation of their products to the next level. Contact: andrej.persolja@creativesolutions.si