It began as a storytelling platform for activists to call audiences to action, but following its acquisition by AOL earlier this year, Ryot — now called HuffPost Ryot — is emerging as an innovator in virtual reality storytelling, providing new opportunities for brands to experiment in the developing medium.
The immersive media company was on hand at Marketing Magazine’s Marketing Live event to demonstrate the power of virtual reality in storytelling. Visitors were strapped to a smartphone-connected headset and taken deep into sub-Saharan Africa, to the shores of Europe swelling with refugees and deep-sea diving with dolphins.
“It allows you to become the story, it allows people to feel connected to what they’re watching,” said Michelle Zauzig, HuffPost Ryot’s director of partnerships. “That’s the catalyst for change — educating people on what’s going on, making them become a part of something and allowing them to do something.”
While the media company still produces content in print and linear video, Zauzig says VR is quickly becoming the preferred medium for immersive storytelling. Following its acquisition by AOL and the Huffington Post this past April, HuffPost Ryot now utilizes the resources of a major international media brand, but it hasn’t distracted from their initial mandate.
“We want to educate people, we want to tell a story in a way that’s engaging, and it just really made sense for Huffington Post to finish off and make a little more robust the way we can tell a story,” said Zauzig. “Now we have the capabilities of Huffington Post while being able to put people in the story.”
Though HuffPost Ryot maintains its activist roots, Zauzig explains that these efforts aren’t mutually exclusive with marketing and branding opportunities. The company provides marketers with custom creation, editorial alignment and branded content opportunities across its immersive media platforms, including AR, VR and 360-video.
“You want to tell a story and have a reaction. That’s what we’re doing and what advertisers are doing,” said Zauzig. “You just have to find that balance between telling the stories that are in our veins but that are representative of a client.”
Though there are still limitations with regards to VR headset adoption, AOL and Huffington Post are hoping the acquisition will position the company as a leader of the new storytelling format.
“The reason Huffington Post acquired them is because they want to create the world’s largest 360-degree news network, and so every one of our global offices has the ability to film in VR and 360,” said Sarah Armand, the director of content partnerships for Huffington Post and AOL.
As an example, Armand says the publication’s Toronto office captured a 360-degree video from atop a float in this summer’s Pride Parade. “What we’ve seen from the Huffington Post platform is that our users really want to be immersed in the story, and the more we allow them to get inside of it, the more it drives connections and share-ability,” she said.
Armand added that marketers looking to experiment with the emerging video-platform should take a consumer-first approach in order to understand its unique capabilities and limitations.
“Understand how the consumer is consuming content on these mediums, how they see their brand interacting or being part of these mediums when you take this consumer-first perspective, and we can grow from there,” she said. “Let’s work together and collaborate on developing a recommendation that leverages these technologies.”
