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virtual reality experience is now being Get your
shown to potential customers at various
events, including golf tournaments. BBA / BCom

EVOKING EMOTION degree
According to Hendri Lategan, CEO of South
African digital content marketing agency, · Marketing
Barbarossa Media, one of the things that · Supply Chain
makes VR so exciting for marketers is the · Business
‘holy grail’ of being able to evoke emotion
among consumers and tie that feeling to Visit us today
their brand message or product.

“In a way, VR can be seen as the
ultimate empathy machine. It will allow
creators to induce feelings of familiarity,
serenity, fear, claustrophobia – all by
leveraging the sense of presence you feel
when immersed in these virtual worlds,”
he said on the website Media Update.

However, he believes that virtual reality
still has a long way to go. “We still have
so much that we need to learn about the
language of storytelling in this new format,”
Lategan said. “There is no telling where it
might go next. One thing that is for sure;
it will take what we understand to be
‘engagement’ to an entirely different level.”

POKÉMON GO
Also achieving engagement is the
Nintendo mobile game Pokémon Go,
which has become wildly popular in a
short timeframe. Players walk around
real-life neighbourhoods to hunt down
and capture virtual cartoon characters
on their smartphone screens.

Already it’s turning out to be a massive
tool for retail marketers, who can buy
‘Lures’ at an hourly rate to drive foot
traffic from players looking to capture
characters located in their stores.

However, the game relies on augmented
reality. What’s the difference between the
technologies? According to the website
Investopedia, augmented reality entails
the enhancing of a real-world scenario with
elements that are created by computer.
Virtual reality, however, is based entirely on
a computer-simulated view of the world.

August–September 2016 strategicmarketing 49