Nokia has taken the opportunity to create what may be one of the very first immersive virtual reality advertisements for a product that isn’t a VR headset or accessory. The advertisement was initially shown at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and is appropriately titled, Healthier Together. It’s also live on YouTube now at Nokia’s official channel, showcasing a variety of connected, smart health products and accessories. Moreover, Nokia products can be purchased through interactions with the media itself. The ad was created using Nokia’s own technologies – in conjunction with a marketing firm, Brandwidth – and has been included below, as well as another video showing how the ad was made from behind the scenes for anybody interested in checking it out.
Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the newest innovations in advertising is how effective it could feasibly be. The VR environment in the ad is centered around four rooms in a home with the VR “sphere” split between those rooms. Actors go from room to room, using Nokia’s health products at various points throughout a somewhat sped-up timeline – with parts of the day being skipped over or sped past in order to showcase the products themselves. It does a great job of showing how the array of very different products – which include a smart thermometer, wearables, a smart scale, and a home air quality monitor that includes two-way communications via a mic, speaker, and camera – can interconnect to provide a better overall picture of health within a household. That connection is portrayed through on-screen overlays that mimic the aesthetics of the company’s Health Mate app, which is used to bring the technologies together. Throughout the video, unintrusive pop-ups appear that allow users to link over to Nokia’s website and actually purchase the products being shown in the presentation.
While clicking an ad to get to its product page is not new by any stretch of the imagination, being able to click across a variety of products in a VR setting is fairly innovative. The ad’s creators utilized Nokia’s OZO+ camera and Creator, with its associated depth mapping capabilities, to “seamlessly” place CGI elements that are interactive and informative. That innovation could lead to further immersion in advertising techniques and, eventually, a substantial uptick in VR’s profitability. According to Brandwidth’s Head of Moving Image, Matt Littler, it marks a significant “shift” in how advertising is done because advertised products can be seen in “real time, first hand!” Users can then purchase the products thanks to built-in e-commerce and payment functionality.