A Bath-based marketing consultancy has been launched to support virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) businesses better communicate with their audiences about the power of immersive content.
Set up by Dr Matthew Freeman, Reader in Multiplatform Media at Bath Spa University, Immersive Promotion Design builds on pioneering work in the West of England on extended reality (XR), which combines real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions.
The firm, the first spin-out business from the university’s Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, also taps into the output of the StoryFutures Academy, the UK's national centre for immersive storytelling, and Bristol+Bath Creative R+D, which brings together the universities of Bath Spa, Bath, Bristol and UWE with Bristol digital creativity centre and media hub Watershed to create new opportunities and drive innovation.
Last year the research team behind Immersive Promotion Design partnered with The National Gallery, Watershed-based interactive and immersive experiences firm Anagram and Studio McGuire, a mulita-media art firm based in Bristol’s Stokes Croft area, to build research-led and audience-tested promotional campaigns for live VR and AR experiences.
This led to the creation of new promotional strategies, prototypes, industry bibles and teaching resources for how immersive experiences can be better marketed to today’s audiences.
Matthew said: “Many people have recognised the enormous potential of immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality to transform the creative industries as we know them.
“Up until now, however, the immersive sector has struggled to reach bigger, more mainstream audiences – the kinds of people used to streaming Netflix but not yet interested in VR headsets.
“The challenge is obvious: How do you communicate the magic of being in a VR experience via social media, posters and trailers? Immersive Promotion Design provides a step towards establishing a new promotional language for VR and AR, opening the door to a bigger, more diverse immersive audience. We are very excited to see where this journey takes us.”
Immersive Promotion Design is now working with Bath Spa University, the BBC VR Hub, Watershed-based firms Limina Immersive, which provides audience insight, and Raucous, which describes itself as an ever-evolving collective of theatre makers, technologists and designers who investigate how theatre can be made more immediate, urgent and immersive for an audience – and London-based StoryCentral, a firm that works with filmmakers, writers, publishers, broadcasters, storytellers and technology start-ups.
