Co-author: Jenya Lugina
At least once a week, a version of the following article pops up in one of our feeds: [Brand] announces they are experimenting with VR with the release of [content]. When I check out the content, no matter what the quality, one thing is almost always consistent — it has nothing to do with the brand’s current messaging strategy. Sometimes it tells a story, sometimes it’s a gimmick, but more often than not, it just reads as an experiment. The message has nothing to do with the brand; rather, the message is, “we heard VR was a cool new thing we had to do, so we threw some money at folks who may or may not know what they’re doing, and they made a video that we probably don’t really know how to promote. We weren’t solving a business challenge or creating a coherent narrative; we were doing a thing we had to do, probably badly, and using that as an excuse to not do it again.”