When it comes to getting consumers excited about British Columbia’s amazing mountain vistas and ski experiences, sometimes simple pictures or video just aren’t enough. Looking to lure skiers to the slopes, Destination British Columbia has gotten a bit more interactive.
Its agency partners — Jungle Media, Camp Pacific and Addictive Mobility — have released an immersive mobile experience that takes consumers to the peak of the Whistler Mountain.
Appearing as either a rich media expandable banner or interstitial, the ad unit launches users into a 360-degree virtual reality experience.
Users can pan around the scene and interact with a handful of hotspots, said Lindsay Ellis, marketing manager at Addictive. “Each of those line up to where a different ski run actually is.”
Clicking a hotspot launches a point-of-view video of a skier completing the run. “You see the front of the skis, you’re whooshing through the snow, so you have the experience of going down the hill,” she said.
Ellis said Camp Pacific and Jungle Media provided Addictive Mobility with storyboards and flat panoramic images, which the mobile in-app advertising technology company converted into an immersive virtual reality experience.
Ellis suspects more virtual reality and immersive 3D experiences could be on the horizon in the mobile marketing industry.
“Everyone knows how hard it is to capture attention, so there’s no reason why these sorts of experiences won’t become commonplace,” she said.
In the meantime, however, Ellis believes this sort of ambitious virtual reality project will remain relatively exclusive to larger organizations. At the moment, it is only a viable option to those who have access to both the necessary talent and resources, adding that there is a finite number of people within Canada who are able to create this type of experience for the in-app ad world.
“I see no reason why the big players wouldn’t be able to do it,” she said. “It all comes down to being able to work with a creative agency who is going to be able to produce those types of assets for you.”
