Every time I pretend to be remotely interested in advertising and marketing, that is, read a trade mag or article online, virtual reality seems to be the only thing people are talking about. Ok, that’s an overstatement. Lack of women in senior management roles is the other. I predict a lack of virtual reality females will be the next topic of conversation.
I personally have always thought ‘reality reality’ isn’t a bad thing, if you ignore war, poverty, the female wage gap and Donald Trump in his presidency campaign. But who cares what I think? The marketing forces that be are busily sitting at their 3D desks putting “consider VR” at the top of their briefs so I too shall don a headset and jump on the proverbial VR bandwagon to replicate a scene from Divergent.
VR would be ‘a monte’ for a large multinational instant coffee brand. Strapping that stupid VR contraption (which I liken to the angry, impregnating alien in John Carpenter’s The Thing) to their faces, the consumer is abruptly transported to Coffee Utopia Land.
Ethnic minorities parade past our god-like consumer, whispering (insert brand name) in their native language. The Aboriginal with red hair, the female factory worker, the Asian, the male creative (because there are no female creatives in senior positions), all raising a mug of that freeze-dried flavour to their pursed lips. But where is the Aussie farmer that brings you those precious freeze-dried granules?
He’s astride a gleaming red tractor in Papua New Guinea of course. Children run beside him in slow motion, laughing and giggling (they’re probably in on the joke). It’s the perfect scene and so on brand. None too subtle client branding will be everywhere, hell, even the client’s in the background astride a white steed (painted red).
In Coffee Utopia Land the sun is always shining, children never cry, dogs have learned to stand on their hind legs to use the toilet, blah blah, blah. The one benefit I do see is in this virtual world is the consumer doesn’t have to drink the coffee at all. The downside? The ridiculously goggled bloke blindly stumbling around the company cube farm spilling scalding hot coffee over an intern. Or how about a Virtual Beertopia World promoting sustainable farming, responsible consumption and preservativefree? Yay, I hear you scream, but all the things that alcohol is supposed to promote, like having sex with strangers or facilitating reckless absurdity isn’t part of the virtual beer world. That’s the ‘reality reality’ world.
In the virtual world, the goggle-eyed punter has to sit through a two and a half-hour responsible drinking seminar, tested rigorously on the benefits of genetically modified tetra hops and only allowed 1.15 schooners of mid-strength blandness before virtual lockout. Interestingly, the preservative-free idea, which most of the Beertopia VR idea is based on, is a complete oxymoron.
It’s all fake people. A virtual pub with no beer would be the stuff of nightmares to the average punter, but boy the VR execution would tick all the corporate social responsibility boxes.
To be honest, all this talk of virtual reality is making me long for ‘reality reality’. And a beer.
I like using all my senses in full reality where I can see, touch, smell, and decide for myself what is a virtually unpalatable marketing campaign. Plus, I don’t have to look like an angry alien ‘Thing’ is trying to impregnate my face.
Grant Rutherford is a creative at large.