Member Article

Green Light For Oculus Rift Road Safety Campaign

Independent Events have blended immersive technologies with experiential marketing this summer, developing the UK’s first Oculus Rift safe driving simulator for Road Respect, a road safety campaign in the North East of England.

The Oculus Rift driving simulator focuses on driver behavior, the dangers of drink-driving and has been designed to incorporate iconic North East landmarks such as the Angel of The North, Newcastle Quayside and The Stadium of Light. Users are able to not only don a piece of technology that most have never experienced before, but they’re able to test their driving ability and compare scores with friends and family via social media integration on Facebook and Twitter. Within the simulation users are confronted with various distractions on the road such as a mobile phone ringing or rogue pedestrians running from behind vehicles and they’re judged on a score at the end of the experience. Prizes are available to the highest scores of each day which is displayed on the campaign’s official website as a league table. The experience has two modes; sober or drunk, so the users can compare their reactions while under the influence.

The virtual reality driving experience is housed within a new specially customised exhibition van called “Roadi” which has flat screens fitted both on the inside and out to allow the OR experience to be broadcasted to onlookers and create extended engagement, this will be the prominent feature of the 42 day summer long #SpotRoadi campaign. The campaign hit key events and areas across the North East this summer, with brand ambassadors all provided by Independent Events to ensure the message is spread as efficiently as possible.

The first key element of importance within the experience is the immersive and personalised feel to this brand new technology which allows users to feel more engrossed in the experience. The gaming element working alongside the leaderboard not only encourages the sharing of their scores, the leaderboard and the brand, but reinforces and spreads the notion that doing good things on the road is better than bad, a re-imagining of the philosophies of the more widespread and popular games like Grand Theft Auto. The social media element posts users scores and photos of their crash reactions directly to the Road Respect Facebook page and to user email addresses where they can then share their scores to their own social media profiles and find a link to the leaderboard. The integration of social media acts as the final element of this three pronged approach, increasing the reach of the live activations and working alongside the campaign’s other digital outputs to create a 360° use of this technology for an experiential series of events.

This isn’t the first time IE have incorporated immersive technologies into their experiential marketing campaigns, previously opening up a series of Road Respect popup shops around the North East’s largest shopping centres, highlighting the dangers of drink driving with augmented reality store front which featured a car smash through the main window when the experience was triggered by a specifically designed Road Respect augmented reality app.

IE Director Danae Abadom said “We really wanted to move forward road safety driving simulation which we felt has remain the same for a number of years, we felt that Oculus Rift was the perfect platform, blending that with iconic landmarks really help to engage with the campaigns target demographic of 17-24 year olds and with the addition of social media integration it added massive reach to the campaign, we had amazing feedback and it has become the most successful road show Road Respect has undertaken”.

Jeremy Forsberg from Road Respect said, “Road Respect has always tried to keep at the front of innovation and new technology to make the biggest impact with road users – The Oculus Rift virtual reality technology and Roadi is the next step! Providing an immersive driving experience and correcting behaviour from our events is a great way to engage and educate. Roadi with Oculus Rift working with our awarding winning events team is another step to making the road better in the North East.”

You can keep up to date with all the events and where to #SpotRoadi at www.roadrespect.org

Vimeo Link: https://vimeo.com/144738243

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by James Russell .