Virgin Media VIVID House Party
Telling a brand story using Virtual Reality
Overview
Virgin Media’s VIVID House Party was the first VR experience from a U.K. brand that aimed to tell a story using the medium. The VR experience was showcased in stores, and the 360-degree video on YouTube was viewed 3.2 million times to fantastic feedback.
The Brief
To create a solution that brought VIVID Broadband to life using mobile.
The Work
To excite our target audience about Virgin Media’s Superfast VIVID Broadband, we twinned the most important platform for reaching them — mobile — with a new technology that could place them into the centre of our brand story. Complimenting the TV spot which ran in tandem, we re-created the Virgin Media VIVID House Party for VR with a fresh narrative. Shot first-person in a single take, this two-minute long piece placed the user into a House Party powered by Virgin Media, and made them the star of the piece.
The Results
The VR experience used Samsung Gear headsets across selected Virgin Media stores to create a talking point with customers. The 360-degree video on YouTube, showing the same content, was viewed over 3.2 million times and became Virgin Media’s most liked and shared YouTube video ever.
The Client’s View
“With 360 video and virtual reality technology we’re taking our communication to the cutting edge and creating immersive experiences we know resonate with our audiences. Virtual reality will play a huge part in the future of advertising helping customers do more and experience more with our brands and our products.”
Kerris Bright, Chief Marketing Officer, Virgin Media
The Awards
Best Use of VR — Marketing on Mobile Awards (MOMA) 2017
The Press
Viewers save the day at the Virgin Media VIVID house party— virginmedia.com
Watch: Behind Virgin Media’s first virtual reality campaign — Campaign
My Role
- Strategy
- Ideation
- Creative development
- Production, working with production companies Jaunt and Vision3
- Customer Experience
My View
With Virtual Reality still ultimately in it’s early stages as a technology, this project was a fascinating exploration of how narrative could work using the medium. When the viewer can look wherever they wish, the camera cannot zoom in or out, and (in this case) there are no cuts, how do you attempt to tell a story? Answering these questions made the process of creating this piece as exciting to be involved in as the final output. Thankfully — and owing to working with some super production partners — that final result was extremely positively received by viewers, with many enjoying content in a form unlike anything they had seen before. Rather than just telling a linear story, we achieved something more fitting for both the brief and the medium: evoking the feeling of being at the party.
