A driving force in focused marketing

With affordable technology, VR could transform influencer-led marketing

Imagine interacting live with one of your favourite influencers, walking by her, checking out her new furniture if you are into interior decoration or following a cooking class with her if you are a foodie; and on top of that having a real-time conversation with her without stepping out of your house. This is what real-time VR (virtual reality) coupled with influencer marketing is about.

Influencer marketing is all about building a connection between consumers and influencers. While the practice took off in 2016, it is limited by the fact that consumers think influencer-led content is also brand content and maybe akin to shutting it off.

Influencer marketing’s biggest strength is authenticity and we need to bring that back to the stage and encourage real-time interactions between influencers and their followers.

Influencers have been meeting their followers in real life for the longest time to build stronger relationship, but due to space and time constrictions these meetings have always been happening with small groups. Obviously, small gatherings are always good to strengthen relationships and keeping it real but let’s imagine at what level we could bring this with VR. Influencers could have a privileged interaction with a large amount of followers at the same time and followers from very different places could hang around with their favourite influencers. Live streaming always helps to increase engagement and digital activity. By leveraging live streaming, real-time VR will allow brands to reach the heart of their consumers through influencers.

Let’s imagine what we could do with this technology. Influencers could be directing real-time VR sessions with their followers by:

• Creating virtual viewing rooms, the followers would have the feeling that they enter the influencer’s world.
• Answering questions real-time by streaming comments publicly.
• Taking followers to festivals and events, which they would be attending with the influencer.

This technology does not only help enhance user experience and build authenticity but also represents a way to fight the FOMO (fear of missing out) experienced by consumers. From any place, they could attend the real-time session led by the influencer which is also interesting for brands as it means a much broader attendance. But, the technology coupled to influencer marketing is still at its beginning considering the high cost of the devices (HTC Vive and Oculus Rift). As of now, consumers will most likely experience VR outside of their homes.

Then, marketers need to figure out where would be the best place to set up a VR booth that allow more interaction and the best user experience? Pop-up booths and experiential marketing exhibits should be settled in high frequency foot-traffic locations like airports, shopping malls and cinemas.

One should also think if the main goal of real-time VR coupled with influencer marketing is to strengthen the sense of authenticity, and put the consumer in the influencer’s world in a less curated way, the approach of creating pop-up booths and experiential marketing exhibits could have the opposite effect on consumer.

The dream about being able to bring consumers to any event and make them hang out with the influencer of our choice from their own sofa will come true. VR and AR (augmented reality) social platforms will soon represent the new driving force in influencer marketing but as long as the technology is not affordable for the masses, it will only allow us to target a few privileged consumers.