Data-driven marketing agency Starmark created a VR company meeting to help unite its employees amid the pandemic.
Objective:
After a full year of working remotely, Starmark's workflow was strong, but the connecation between its team members was suffering. The company's employee surveys showed that "Starmarkers" were longing to re-engage in a way not possible through video meetings. Starmark's objective was to find a way to bring its team back together and improve morale across its entire team.
Target Audience:
The Starmark team is a diverse group, ranging in age from 22 to mid-60s, from a variety of backgrounds and upbringings. One thing that every team member has in common is an innate curiosity for new things. Starmark decided to tap this shared curiosity to launch a new engagement initiative.
Creative Strategy:
Since this was an internal campaign, everything was customized and delivered directly to its employees. Starmark purchased an Oculus Quest 2 for every employee and delivered each one wrapped like a gift. Each package contained a teaser note and a training guide. By leveraging Oculus Quest 2's VR technology, the company hoped it could make its team feel united again and inspire them to ideate for this growing medium.
Context:
This entire campaign was an experiment born out of the brand's Innovation Lab. The hypothesis was that VR would help the Starmark team feel more together by leveraging shared-space meetings as the company's meeting venue.
Overall Campaign Execution:
This entire experience was built around a new type of VR mobile experience. The vast majority of the budget went to mobile to cover hardware costs for Oculus Quest 2 units for the whole team. The remaining costs were for in-house production of training materials and shipping.
Setup for the Oculus Quest 2 was completed via a mobile app, and the device itself is untethered and mobile, making it the ideal choice for exploring VR in any space.
Mobile Execution:
This campaign wouldn't have been possible without mobile technology. Starmark chose the Oculus Quest 2 due to its wire-free portability to use in any type of home and eventually in shared office spaces. Each employee was sent a package with an Oculus Quest 2 and a cryptic note. The inner package also contained a custom instruction book with tips to get started along with an invitation to join Starmark for a virtual meeting. As the devices arrived, people popped into the virtual room.
Prior to this effort, Starmark's monthly employee surveys showed that interpersonal connections were one of the things Starmarkers felt they were missing. While most work was humming along as well or better than ever, collaborative ideation wasn't quite as fun or rewarding via video and voice chat. Moreover, the brand's eNPS (employee Net Promoter Score), while considered good, was not where the company wanted it to be.
Results:
By every metric, quantitative and qualitative, the campaign achieved its objective.
After the success of the program, Starmark's experience director took up 360-degree video production, and one of the brand's front-end developers began exploring how to create for Engage, a virtual communications platform. This effort, and the resulting ideas, also landed the brand in talks with three new client VR projects. The company also hosted those new client meetings in VR.
