Htc: Virtually Dead [image]

Credits & Description:

Agency: Omd Uk London, United Kingdom
Client: Htc
Product: Htc
Entrant: Omd Uk London, United Kingdom
Title: Virtually Dead
Product/Service: Htc
Idea Creation: Omd Uk London, United Kingdom
Media Placement: Omd Uk London, United Kingdom
Account Executive: Robert Wigman (Fuse Sport & Entertainment)
Website URL: http://virtuallydead.co.uk/
The Campaign
Purchase demand for VR products outside of the tech community is low. Online demo videos would not be interesting enough for an audience who had a low brand engagement score with HTC.
We knew that when people put on the headset and experienced the technology and virtual reality in all its glory, the novelty turned interest into actual sales.
Finding the right ‘experience’ for our audience, a discerning early adopter, would have to be as disruptive and creative as the product itself. The target audience’s fascination with immersive theatre would be an inspiration behind creating an exciting experience that would blur the lines between reality and a virtual world.
By impressing a few influential millennials with an interactive, immersive experience, we could drive sharing and understanding of Vive with many.
Creative Execution
A paid for brand experience, tickets came from Noma Labs who pushed 6 teaser videos re-targeting the same audience with different edits via Facebook and in-app promotions via their Dojo App. Tube posters went live in London for 2 weeks, promoting the event.
On the day, attendees were picked up by an army truck and taken to the venue in a secret location in East London. The secret training facility was entered through a dank warehouse that stretched over a kilometre, immediately becoming immersed in the storyline. Eventually the players would take on the living dead in a 360° bespoke virtual reality version of Arizona Sunshine on an HTC Vive headset.
Post event, we followed up with attendees via email inviting them to pre-order the headset and continue experiencing the pioneering tech in their front rooms.
After showing the first teaser video on Dojo channels, tickets for the London event sold out in just over a week. We extended the time period and put on more shows to meet the demand: 900 shows over a three-week period from 19th March to 3rd April, which is the equivalent to a popular West End show running for over two years.
Reducing the CPA by three quarters in London and half in Paris. Smashing targets and creating space in the minds of millennials for HTC.
15m video views, 9,553 trials, 4 members of Rudimental, one Jonathan Ross and one Fat Boy Slim attended generating £1m+ PR value across the mainstream media with a total reach of the Virtually Dead experience of over 150M globally.
Our influencers paid to take part, making their experience worthwhile and exclusive in their minds, elevating their advocacy to an unprecedented level for HTC.
HTC Vive's target audience is the definition of the experience economy. We knew that traditional media didn't work in driving engagement with VR amongst this group.
We partnered with a millennial experiences specialist, Noma Labs, conducting focus groups to identify zombie shooting game, Arizona Sunshine, as Vive's best suited 360° room scale VR context.
Their insight also told us our target were more engaged by paid for experiences, so Virtually Dead became an exclusive, ticketed event.
Tickets sold out in one week after one teaser video, exceeding our KPIs by 91% and delivering a global campaign reach of 150+ million.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea
In order to boost brand engagement, drive product trials and eventually sales, HTC would offer people the opportunity to experience an apocalypse, but still get up and eat their cornflakes the next morning: Virtually Dead. It was an immersive zombie experience where attendees would be faced with a deadly virus and a mob of flesh eating zombies to contend with.
We engulfed participants in this world with the help of a cast of 35 actors, various scary moments and tunnels to navigate, eventually allowing the cutting edge technology of HTC’s virtual reality to push the boundaries of realism. The players would shoot, bash, slash and explode their way through hoards of the undead that would be close enough to touch in a 13 minute VR experience.