On Tuesday, VRJournal covered a new eMarketer report that highlights and underscores the power of virtual reality for branding and marketing.
When Eloi Gerard, a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and current CEO of Shanghai-based virtual reality (VR) content studio Crow’s Nest was interviewed by eMarketer’s David Green about VR commerce, Gerard had many interesting things to say.
For starters, Gerard believes VR is not just for games and experiences — it’s highly suited to commerce.
“In our view, the main way people are going to use virtual reality and interact with a brand will be in VR commerce,” he is quoted in the VRJ report. “Even if we are doing brand awareness, we help them shape their VR commerce.”
It’s still true, according to Gerard, that VR is still unmapped marketing territory — complete with insufficient supporting data.
“Right now there are no strong metrics for VR,” Gerard said. “Let’s face it, there is absolutely nothing. There are no figures, no ROI. You cannot prove anything about VR, and those who say they can, I would be quite surprised if they could.”
But the preliminary stats are impressive.
“We have some really good data, but it’s still not significant enough. For example, we have a travel client who says when you sell something through VR, it’s increased sales by 180 percent. But it’s just too small to be significant, though it is very promising.”
Travel marketers could be among the winners in the coming VR advertising ecosphere.
“Zanadu is trying to lead [having opened a VR concept store in Shanghai] but there is no ecosystem yet despite many people having invested a lot of money,” Gerard noted. “There will be one major actor at some point. Maybe it’s going to be Airbnb, but at the moment we are at an in-between stage and there is plenty of room for new ideas.”
To review the eMarketer report in full, click here.
