Technical

The obvious thing is technically what they pulled off.  Using multiple xbox sensors (I’m not sure how many) they are able to do full body tracking.  Because the user’s vision is completely obscured by the HMD, they can place the xbox sensors and light it to provide the maximum effectiveness for body tracking. Hand and head position most likely are sent via closed wifi to the gear.  From there its rendered in (Unity?). As you can see in some of the shots, not only is head positional tracking going on, you can see your hands on the rope as you walk across!

This is great. Now add wind, cold air and sound (notice there we saw no headphones so the sound was most likely piped in), and you have a very deep immersive experience,  Because the Gear VR is wireless, the user is not restricted by cables.  In fact, once you are immersed, and given all the other sensory input, your brain can have a real fight deciding what is real and what is VR.

Even better is the fact that you put on the HMD outside the room, (again as best I can tell) the user never saw the real bridge that was constructed, so the bran has no other cognitive interpretation of what is going on except for what they see. BTW, don’t misunderstand me, with exception to perhaps one person, they KNOW its a simulation and short of flinching and perhaps lowering one’s body, they are enjoying it for what it is.

Marketing

I would guess most people who watch this video, especially those in the VR world would mostly be thinking about how great of an immersive simulation this is, and move on. But what really caught my attention, and what I like and admire just as much about this concept, is how well this works from a marketing point of view. Remember, they are releasing a (new?) instant latte. The sell point for this product is you can enjoy a cafe quality latte anytime, simply by using a microwave.  Ok, so what are the customer scenario where they may want this?   Most likely at home and perhaps the office.  I think most offices offer coffee and if not, typically there is a cafe near most large office complexes.  But at home, not so much.

In the experience we saw in the video, you are asked to cross this long dangerous bridge on a distant exotic mountain top in a blizzard!  Many dangers face you on your trek to get to the other side where a microwave waits for you.  Each step on this old decrepit bridge becomes more dangerous as the winds increase, and rocks start to fall all round you!  Somehow, through perseverance and a bit of luck, you make it to the end where, you find a microwave, (yes people do randomly leave microwaves in the Himalayan Mountains, just go with it). You open the door and a wonderful hot beverage is waiting for you to warm you up, body and soul.

Now, think about a long snowy winter train ride come where you have to walk the last 3 or 4 blocks.  Not too different eh?  And if you like lattes then knowing you have a nice warm drink waiting for you could be that much better.  So the sell point here is to associate a tough trek with a warm reward.  This experience drives this idea to the customer is a very real and tangible experience. An experience they will not soon forget, and share with their friends, including the idea of the microwave latte and the branding that goes with it.

Execution

I have not experience this but having been doing VR for so long, and having tried everything from the CAVE to the wind bird simulation, its not hard for me to put myself there and have an idea of what this would feel like.  I love the fact that this experience really allows you to ‘walk’ through it.  Yes we have plenty of simulations where you can walk, but typically its flat ground.  But here you have a bridge, you have rope to grab.  As the wind starts to push you back, the IMU on the headset reflects the sublet changes in head position because of it.  As you walk, the scene walks.  With the xbox sensors and the very well lite room, body tracking can be very precise.  I’m sure a dedicated local wifi was running allow the fastest possible update time that can be done with current technology.  Based on the headset graphics it looks like Unity is running this, but again, because of all the various sensors being reinforced with the same cognitive interpretation; you are on a bridge, in a cold wind storm, with the proper sounds, the less than realistic graphics does not matter so much. For some people, its too much!

BTW< this could have been staged, not sure.

A small note here.  Notice no gloves on peoples hands.  They are asked to walk through this cold experience with no gloves.  What that means, and you can tell at the end when people come out, is that they are using the drink to warm themselves.  A GREAT bit a experience detail.  Even after the HMD is off your head, YOU ARE STILL COLD! The experience is still with you, and the reward of the hot latte continues to reinforce the benefits of buying this product.

Appropriateness

So here I want to reinforce something about VR and marketing.  Like I said, I have been around VR for a long time, 20 years plus.  I have seen MANY marking events that try to use a VR experience to create an association of “high tech” or “cutting edge” or “next generation” to a product, some successful, some not so much.  In all cases however the VR experience has little to no association with the value of the product. Further, once the VR experience was over, that was it.  I typically remember what I liked or was annoyed by in the experience, to date I cannot remember a single product from one of those marketing campaigns. This is different.  Even though I did not experience it myself, the whole idea of walking through a blizzard to be rewarded with a hot latte seems to stick.  As the more real the struggle to reward is, the more likely you will have a favorable memory of the reward. What is appropriate about using VR here is that VR has nothing to do with campaign.  It is simply the best tool to achieve the maximum positive reward association with the product. Not trying to be ‘new tech’ or ‘cutting edge’ or ‘cool’.  well ok, a bit cool.  But instead simple marking 101, create a positive association with your product, and VR in this case, was a great choice.

Now, check out the Video.

First, positioning technology requires that the consumer sees your technology as a member of a category.  You may not like this, but its unavoidable. Depending on your technology, some consumers may place your technology in different categories, for example, before the smart phone became recognized as its own category, there was a split between consumers asking; is the new iPhone a phone or a PDA or a very small portable computer?

Knowing this, you need to get out in front, decide what category you feel having your product provides the greatest advantage and reinforce your message accordingly.  Of course if your Technology does not actually belong in the category you have selected it will eventually backfire on you and your consumers realize that your technology either does not belong in that category or worse performs poorly.  You can also try to create your own category by defining the combination of 2 or more categories, as well the smart phone, however, that can quite difficult and very expensive since you have to train you target consumer group what this new category is and why your technology is such a good fit.

A challenge then is to try to determine what category your technology is best suited for, even if its crosses many categories. There are a parade of consultants that can help with this if you are either a very small team or if your marketing group cannot resolve the question.  So lets have a quick look at the five points Hugh brought up..

1): Brand positioning is not the same as business positioning, though they’re related.

Business positioning is an assessment of the firm’s assets, processes and aspirations relative to your competition. Business positioning as a process is the development of a plan to change these assets & processes to move to a better configuration relative to the firm’s competitors. Business positioning concerns all of the hard facts of the business model, which brand positioning does not.

ed: Keep in mind service CAN be thought of as a product if what your business does is specialize in the deliver of a category of product.  For example, say your firm installs solar panels, then the marketing efforts around selling the product can be applicable to the business, but this is a rare case.

2): Brand positioning is deciding how the consumer will view your brand, and thus how the brand will connect to the knowledge they already have in their minds. Consumers will not give you very much time, so presenting yourself to them clearly, consistently is obviously critical. But consistency just means you’re on the ‘same page’ internally. The magic happens when your positioning appeals to how consumers think – how they view the category of which you’re a part, how they view the categories you’re probably borrowing from to make your new-to-the-world product, and most importantly, how these things you’re saying all add up to a distinct offering that they can understand easily but also offers something different enough to be compelling.

3): Categories are fundamental to how we view the world, because a category label brings with it immediate inferences that simplify processing a messy reality. When I see pieces of wood nailed together, and classify them as chair, immediately it has a place in my world and I know what to do with it

Consumers will resist assessing your product attribute by attribute, and this is precisely where an engineer’s mind-set creates a blind spot: what makes one a good engineer is the affinity for breaking things apart to understand their parts and how they work together, so its hard to realize that most people don’t do that for most things. Experts and aficionados do that, but only in a narrow sliver of categories and that’s not who your market is.

4): Most products draw from multiple categories and they will contradict each other. When I see a brand and I classify it as a watch, I know what to do with it. When I see it and I classify it as a PDA, but it’s on my wrist, I get worried that the cross-categorization of watch and PDA will bring the size of a PDA to my wrist and the functional limits of my watch to my PDA.

That is the positioning challenge. How to bring multiple categories together such that the benefits of each are not cannibalized by the others. And it is often quite hard, and always means some things you’d like to emphasize simply cannot be.

5): Resolving category contradictions is what positioning strategy is. And here is where specialized consultants/agencies help. I find that there are ‘strategists’ who can help define the problem, and the intuitive, holistic approach of creative professionals is often indispensible. The strategy must be right, must be grounded in how consumers really view your category and sub-categories, including where they’re naturally going to see contradictions, but the solution, the resolution, is actually one of the clearest examples of a creative act I can think of.

Nice Custom Pebble from reddit.com/user/Exhumed

But I said they stumbled.  How? They have a good watch and a good start with an ad campaign. They made business decisions that basically made the watch appealing to only a very small segment of the population.  First the watch has everything but the kitchen sink making it costly. What is great about the Pebble is how simple it is. In fact many Pebble users customize the watch with decal surfaces and nice watch bands.  Second they made a very odd decision to have the watch only work with a few (two at the time of this writing) devices instead of allowing it to work with any modern device. Crazy.  I just do not understand.

There is no technical reason it cannot work with other Android devices even if some features might not work. Instead it was a business decision to only support one phone and one tablet. What I was expecting to happen was the Gear would be released with basic functionality across any Android device with a modern OS version, Samsung devices would have extended features, and new devices would have even more extended features.  This would allow for the greatest market uptake as well as encourage people to make Samsung devices their next device. Also, I would have made my entry device at least at the $200 price point again to capture as much as the market as possible; and that could have been accomplished be removing some of what many consider unneeded features.  I was excited to get the Samsung Gear, now I’ve lost interest in getting one.  Instead, I’m looking forward to what is going to come out next.

So here we have this market that Pebble has already proven and have plenty of copy cats coming out.  Now we hear Google is pushing hard to get a watch out.  Perhaps to beat out Apples iWatch and get a few people to jump from Apple to Android.  It could happen.  The difference between an iPhone and a good Android is not that great anymore.  Heck, the fact the Pebble did not work well with the iPhone was the tipping point for me to jump ship off iPhone. Google and Apple are not the only ones who will enter the smart watch game; Sony has been here before and even Qualcomm has a watch coming out called that Qoq, but here is the Question; of these big player’s, who is going to create a good simple watch that can work with ANY device like the Pebble.  I already know the iWatch will only work with iPhones and iPads, but will Google’s watch work with a iOS devices?  Will Google try to pack the kitchen sink like Samsung? Will they create good adverts like Samsung and I’m sure Apple, or will they have a bunch of dancing fools like Microsoft and try to push a watch with 10 extra unneeded features driving up the price? I’m thinking given Google propensity for simplicity that will not happen, but you never know. However, Samsung’s poor business decisions have left open the door, who of the major players is going to walk through?

Once you sign in, the app will take your information, mostly pictures, and populate a pretty cool 3D animation using Flash. Yes, again if you are on iPad or iPhone, NO VIDEO FOR YOU!  I will post an animation later tonight or tomorrow.  The one thing I have to do is remove the sounds track.  UG.  When you do this, turn the sound off and play something soothing from your own collection. As you can see from the image at the top, or not, all those little images are from my facebook account.  Coolness.

Check it out.

Ok, Video uploaded.  Sounds reduced but not yet removed. The video is not as smooth as the real experience.  Something else I need to fix.

Check it out below.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU7FVcsbyNU