Distributing VR/360 content to the masses: A case study in India
With a boom of VR/360 productions in several journalism, media and communication sectors over the past couple years, all of us, experts and non-experts, are wondering if we actually have an audience and if they’re ready to watch and enjoy our hyped VR/360 experiences.
The answers to these questions lie in effectively thinking about a distribution model while we’re still in the early stages of film production. A film’s impact and success not only depends on the script quality or using the latest technology. It also depends on connecting to an issue that matters to our audience. This might sound obvious, but we’ve all worked with time and budget constraints that push “reaching our audience” to the bottom of the priority list.
Also, when do we really get to engage directly with our public to research and understand their content and tech needs? When do we even think that co-production with them might sound like a good idea? When do we ever embrace the design thinking methodology in our journalistic work to help us create better and more effective media products?
Case study: Unprecedented distribution of a VR/360 experience in India
In the beginning of 2017, NowHere Media produced a VR/360 experience in India on the topic of intimate partner violence for a media NGO, Love Matters India. I would like to share some of the lessons learned regarding distribution and impact.
“Is This Love? (Kya Yahi Pyar Hai)” narrates the story of Anuja and Manoj, an unmarried couple in their early twenties living in Mumbai, India. Intimate partner violence is still a taboo topic in India, as well as in many other places around the world; the goal of this video was to create awareness among Indian youth of this type of violence — extreme possessiveness, economic control or sexual violence. The film was done in 2D, with spatial audio, 6:58 minutes in Hindi.
When we first pitched the idea to Love Matters India, we realized that despite the buzz around VR/360 videos in the NGO world, there’s still not a full understanding of what producing such an experience entails and how it differs from producing a linear film. And despite the initial state of excitement, we soon learned that the NGO had to achieve quantitative impact; in other words, Love Matters India had to push for views. And this could easily become a problem for several reasons.
First of all, many viewers are not familiar with the technology of VR and they might be scared off or not even realize what they have to do. The innovative aspect of it, which can be an asset in promoting your product as disruptive, can also backfire if your audience does not know what to do with it.
Secondly, if we think that the percentage of people with VR headsets at home in the Western world is low, imagine the percentage in a region with low internet and tech penetration. Despite the large base of internet users in India, internet penetration is still as low as 34.8 percent, according to 2016 data from Internet Live Stats.
So the odds were not playing in our favor. Our big challenge was to find our audience and take the VR/360 experience to them. And the key was in offline distribution.
Importance of cross-field partnerships
We were lucky to have a fully committed team from the NGO. They were involved in the distribution strategy and, being based in New Delhi, they were largely responsible for making the ground contacts.
Our experience told us that to have success in India you have to make it big and create a product that can be distributed offline to the masses, in both urban and rural locations. Our brainstorming sessions yielded very creative results: shopping malls, partnerships with fashion brands and Bollywood stars, universities, gyms, a big bus caravan touring across the country…
In the end, we launched the 360 campaign video simultaneously in the two biggest Indian cities, New Delhi and Mumbai. When we wrapped up the campaign, over 5,000 people had watched the 360 video at offline public installations over 10 days, using only six headsets.
This is largely due to two key partnerships: with Social Offline, a popular and hip chain of pubs/restaurants in Mumbai and Delhi, where we hosted a screening event along with a panel discussion, attended by media and stakeholders in the sexual health and rights field; and with the Delhi Metro, where we set up viewing booths across 10 metro stations.
It’s important to mention that all viewing booths were branded and included NGO staff who directly and proactively engaged with the target audience, provided tech and emotional support, and handed in surveys monitoring and evaluating the experience.
Understanding budget and technological differences
We were lucky to collaborate in a partnership with mutual trust. That certainly made the difference when it came to making choices and “dancing the tango” of the producer-client relationship, especially when negotiating equipment and budget.
We could not rely on internet connectivity or electricity for our distribution. We decided to distribute the VR/360 video at the installations with mobile-based VR headsets. But at the metro stations, we could not stream the video, nor could we assume that there would be electricity sockets around the corner for charging the mobile phones. We advised the NGO to buy or rent a whole set of equipment — 12 VR headsets and 12 Samsung phones, which would allow for equipment rotation on the ground. We even advised partnering with Samsung or another tech company that would provide free equipment. All of this advice failed!
The truth is that this equipment is just way too expensive for a midsize organization — and even more expensive to buy in India! Also, what could the NGO do with 12 VR headsets and phones after the campaign was over?
In the end we reached a compromise. The NGO bought six headsets and smartphones from a cheaper and lower-end brand that had replaceable batteries! “Think smart, this is India,” they told us, as we cringed out of suspicion and mistrust at the prospect of using equipment that was not “endorsed” by the latest VR/360 gurus.
That definitely was a valuable lesson!
