Educating students to the possibilities of 360degree video and virtual reality
Recently 360Dgrees’ Ivan Ghirlanda took a trip to Academy Xi, an educational institution based in Sydney that focuses on the skills of user experience, service design and virtual reality. As part of his visit, Ivan addressed students who are currently studying virtual reality design.
Ivan was invited as an expert in the field, to share his knowledge of 360 degree video with the students, who ranged from entrepreneurs to corporate marketing experts and small business owners. As well as sharing the steps to effectively produce a 360 degree video using the latest available equipment, Ivan reminded the students taking the course that they also have to focus on distribution and commercialisation in order to make their efforts sustainable and valuable for return on investment.
To demonstrate 360 degree video to the students, Ivan shared three case studies, including the incredible KitKat ‘Take a Virtual Break’ campaign, that allowed users to literally fly away into space, or to take a leap off a cliff and parachute through a canyon.
Also detailed were 360Dgrees’ experience of filming a training session with 2016 ARL Premiers the Cronulla Sharks and an interactive experience that was produced in collaboration with real estate website www.domain.com.au.
As Ivan and Jeremy Brown, who developed the 360 degree video platform for the Rio Olympic Games, presented to the class, one of the most common questions amongst students was “How can I make money with 360 degree video?”
It’s a great question, because unless you are creating art for art’s sake, you do need to have a goal with using virtual technologies to be able to leverage it to improve the success of your business.
“How can I make money with 360 degree video?”
The answer to the question of monetising VR and 360 video does depend on your business and your goals. However if you are able to set goals and to align a 360 degree strategy with those goals, then you should be able to effectively draw return on investment from your video creations.
For example: The KitKat virtual break campaign was designed to encourage people to sit back with a KitKat in one hand and their Google Cardboard in the other.
- At Domain, encouraging users to ‘step inside’ a house from anywhere in the world and take a tour creates competition between buyers, boosting agent results and improving their satisfaction with the Domain brand.
- The owners of a retail store may invite shoppers to come in and browse, helping to enhance the online shopping experience and encouraging them to ‘order now’.
- A museum could charge entry fees to people all over the world instead of those who physically walk through the doors.