After the video completes, the Metaracer, Metasprint and Metarise running shoes come into view. A video screen is also in view, giving users a run-down of the company's history. It opened in the Asics Virtual Innovation Lab, a white room and in the distance a glass case containing the running shoes. Amid this, all three companies were contending with the same business pressures as many others in the UK and beyond, and were working around the clock to keep the wheels turning under lockdown.Īgainst the odds, Solarflare developers were able to quickly create the content (see above) that would sit at the heart of the VR experience. We were having two or three calls a day to co-ordinate with teams in Japan, the UK, the Netherlands… it was intense.”ĭevelopers, planners, account managers and marketers from Asics, Edelman and Solarflare worked in 24-hour shifts – a day team and an evening team – to try and manage the workload and ensure the various elements were signed off quickly. “The whole thing moved incredibly quickly. In this case, it was condensed into a matter of days. To put it simply the process of client discussion, concept development, storyboarding and feed back would normally take several weeks. Then the deadline was set for the 24 March.” “Then we had conversations with in the second week in March. “We had initial conversations with Edelman in early March,” says co-founder and chief client officer Jay Short. It was briefed to create the Asics world in which users would be immersed – a major project for a fledgling agency. Through a chance email between two old colleagues, Edelman was introduced to the team at Solarflare Studios, a specialist agency founded last October following the sudden closure of renowned virtual and augmented reality agency Inition. However, in this case the tech was the perfect vehicle to facilitate a tangible, realistic, walk through a showroom while interacting with sports scientists, as well as giving viewers a chance to view the shoe in up-close detail. The technology has historically been used because it can be, not necessarily because it should be. Marketers' use of VR has been given a bad rap. Inspired by its first trip to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, Edelman and Asics landed on the idea of using VR. We couldn’t get the shoes to the journalists so we had to make them feel like they can reach out and touch it. And as soon as everything fell through it was really hard to think of something that would land both the product story and the Asics brand story. ![]() “By bringing local media to Japan we were going to be able to take them on a brand experience. “At one point we considered a livestream but there were language barriers and there’s only so long people will tune in for,” says Edelman director Jonathan Halliwell. With options for what the brand could potentially do changing by the day, and no indication for how long lockdown in various countries would extend, the agency was instead tasked finding a solution that would give Asics the big ticket event it needed without a physical presence. ![]() Lockdown logisticsĪsics had been working with PR agency Edelman on its ambitious launch plans. Delaying for just a few months would have a knock-on effect for the shoe range, already in the design phase, to launch in 2021. Besides, the company has a strict timeline in which it can design, manufacture and market a product before work starts on the next one. ![]() “These were three of the best products we’d ever produced so there was an element of pride in wanting to keep going with this,” she explains. Indeed, according to IAB research, over a quarter of brands have chosen to stop any marketing activity until the third quarter of the year.īut Berwick said it wasn’t an option. At this point, most marketers with a highly prized product to promote might opt to postpone launch activity. Japan went into lockdown, swiftly followed by France and the UK. “But within days of that plan, it changed again.” “We still thought we’d have a domestic event and then started planning a live-streaming event around the Paris Marathon which sponsors,” she recalls.
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