How Unity Partnered With Facebook For New PC Gaming Platform

Unity Technologies, which makes one of the most popular game development tools in the world, recently announced a strategic partnership with Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world. With a new streamlining tool in the upcoming version of Unity (5.4), developers will have new ways to reach and engage with an audience of over 650 million gamers by publishing games directly to Facebook. Additionally, they’ll have access to the new Facebook PC gaming platform that is currently in development with Unity.

A Unity spokesperson spoke with [a]listdaily about how the new streamlined process will help developers access this massive channel for discovery and monetization.

When asked about how the partnership was started, Unity stated that: “We’ve had a longstanding relationship but this is the first formal strategic partnership. Making sure our developers have access to the most relevant platforms is core to our principles of solving hard problems and enabling success. With its massive audience, Facebook presents an exciting opportunity for developers.

Facebook.com has always been one of the platforms that Unity developers publish their games on (take a look back at the Facebook Unity SDK). With this alliance, Unity and Facebook are now working closely together to introduce a new export functionality within the Unity Editor for developers to easily export their games on Facebook, including to a brand-new Facebook PC gaming platform currently in development. Initial access is limited to a select group of developers building in Unity version 5.4.”

The new Facebook PC gaming platform is still under development, so Unity was unable to discuss how it would help developers with discoverability and whether or not the platform would support VR games, given how Facebook owns Oculus VR. However, Unity did state that, “the streamlined development and exporting functionality will make it much easier for developers to publish to Facebook.”

Although the gaming platform will be focused directly on players on PC, it is not being built to be in competition with existing video game services such as Steam. “The new Facebook PC gaming platform is still very early in development, and Facebook is not in competition with other game services,” said the Unity spokesperson. “Facebook is bringing new and exciting games from both web and mobile, and across many different genres. Unity is excited to add Facebook’s new PC gaming platform, as it will add to our to our list of more than 25 supported platforms, furthering our approach of allowing developers to ‘author once, deploy everywhere.'”

Given Facebook’s massive audience, we asked Unity what the most exciting part of building a new gaming platform was. “The PC market is still a big business, with free-to-play and social games becoming increasingly important segments,” said Unity. “With this partnership, Unity developers will be able to easily reach the more than 650 million gamers already playing Facebook-connected games every month. In fact, the export functionality that we will build into the engine will allow developers building in Unity 5.4 to push their games onto Facebook with little-to-no code changes from directly within the Unity editor.

“For developers who hadn’t considered Facebook or PC as a target platform, or want to expand their existing platforms, the ability to unlock additional business opportunities by going cross-platform onto a new PC gaming platform offers a huge upside with very little effort. It’s exciting to think they will now have the chance to participate in the Facebook platform, an ecosystem that paid out over $2.5 billion to just web-game developers in 2015 alone.”

The partnership with Unity is the latest and perhaps one of the biggest moves by Facebook to strengthen its engagement with the gaming community. In June, the social media giant announced a partnership with Blizzard to include Facebook Login and Facebook’s API into all its games, including blockbusters such as Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. Later that month, Facebook hired former pro gamer Stephen “Snoopeh” Ellis as the company’s first eSports strategic partnerships manager, tasked with helping to grow eSports content on its video streaming platform.

Explore ‘Don’t Breathe’ In Snapchat’s First 360-Degree Video Ad

Sony Pictures Entertainment is the first company to use 360-degree video within a Snapchat ad, offering an interactive push for its upcoming thriller, Don’t Breathe. Coming to theaters August 26, Don’t Breathe tells the story of three would-be burglars who target a blind man, but get far more than they bargained for. The blind man pursues them through his house, where they stumble upon dark secrets that tell a much more sinister story.

The 10-second Snapchat ad, rolling out in the United States, allows users to swipe up and explore environments within the movie. The ad will also be shown in the United Kingdom and Australia.

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“Audiences increasingly expect more from us,” Aaron Wahle, senior vice president of international digital marketing at Sony Pictures Entertainment, said in a statement. “And, as a result, digital marketing departments now have more access to provide higher quality content to satisfy this thirst for engaging content through the mobile phone. This, in turn, means that more thought must be put into activities across the board—it’s not just about one-sheets and trailers anymore, but about creating incredible experience.”

Sony is also utilizing the power of influencers to promote Don’t Breathe. On July 28, online influencers from around the world united in Spain for an event to relive the experience of the horror film. Welcomed by director Fede Alvarez, the internet stars walked through a recreation of Don’t Breathe environments with night vision and GoPro cameras, with the aim of finding money that was hidden in different locations, under a strict timeline. Influencers were also introduced to the new Snapchat ad campaign.

For 360-degree experiences, it’s quickly gaining popularity as a means to promote films and television. Netflix offered a 360-degree and VR experience for Stranger Things, and EPIX created a fully-interactive 360-degree experience for Berlin Station, a spy thriller coming this fall.

Allowing would-be viewers to explore environments and scenarios creates personal experiences that audiences can take with them. This example of frontline marketing creates memories, and therefore, emotion-based buying decisions.

Stan Lee’s ‘Cosmic Crusaders’ Comes To Life In Virtual Reality

 

At 93-years-young, revered comic book scribe Stan Lee is still learning the tricks of the trade, and producing comics that generations of fans have learned to love.

The creator of Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the X-Men, et al, is now introducing immersive storytelling in virtual reality to his distinguished dossier for his new animated series Stan Lee’s Cosmic Crusaders.

Lee, the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics and a 75-year veteran of the film industry, designated full-scale solutions firm Legend VR to create episodes for his new property.

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“I can’t wait for everyone to see what the wizards at Legend 3D created for our new series Cosmic Crusaders,” said Lee, who edited and voiced himself as one of the show’s main characters. “Turning me into virtual reality, wow, what will they think of next? This is truly a unique experience for both me and comic book fans.”

Cosmic Crusaders begins by following Lee while he’s having writers block and trying to come up with a new comic; he meets seven aliens who have crash-landed in the US and eventually helps them learn how to access and use their powers as superpowers on Earth. Cosmic Crusaders is co-produced by Genius Brands International and written by Deadpool co-creator Fabian Nicienza.

Will Maurer, vice president of business development for Legend VR’s standalone VR and VFX divisions, previously cut his teeth at Deluxe converting 2D theatrical content into stereoscopic 3D imagery on such projects as San Andreas, Point Break, X-Men: Days of Future Past and Mad Max: Fury Road.

Maurer joined [a]listdaily to discuss why Cosmic Crusaders has been his favorite VR project to date. 

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Why was the collaboration with Stan Lee’s Cosmic Crusaders a good fit for the Legend VR company profile? How was the partnership formed?

With over fifteen VR projects under our belt, Legend VR is a full-service VR creative agency that creates, develops and produces VR projects from inception through final deliverables. The Cosmic Crusaders project came to us from a meeting with Deb Pierson and Mark Young at Genius Brands International. They saw what we’re doing in VR and were looking for a team that could pull off 2D-motion comic animation at a high level, with a quick turnaround. VR was almost an afterthought for this project given the compressed timeframe to turn something around for Comic-Con, but we knew we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to create Stan Lee’s first VR experience. Our team came up with a truly innovative way to tell the Cosmic Crusaders story in a VR format, and we were even able to incorporate the Legendary Stan Lee into the finished product—how many people can say that?

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How was the debut of the episodes received at Comic-Con? Take us through what the experience is like.

The Cosmic Crusaders VR experience was very well received. A new episode premiered each day of Comic-Con on the Hindsight VR app, and those fortunate enough to attend Comic-Con got to see a teaser of the first episode on the Samsung Gear VR headset. A seemingly never-ending line of fans of all ages formed at our booth from open to close of the convention each day to try the experience. The most echoed comment was ‘oh my God, I’m sitting right next to Stan Lee!’

What was your assessment of the overall VR craze at Comic-Con? What’s one thing you learned?

There was a large appetite for VR at this year’s Comic-Con, with crowds waiting upward of four hours to try the most anticipated VR experiences like Cosmic Crusaders, Suicide Squad and Mr. Robot. I’m predicting that next year will be the tipping point where more content will premiere in VR than traditional media. 

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How do you successfully translate comic book storytelling to VR? What’s the special sauce that makes it work?

The thing that most excites us about original content for VR is the ability to reimagine traditional comics into a fully immersive VR experience. A lot of research and development have gone into crafting an unparalleled 360-degree experience that allows the user to experience the action jumping off the page and playing out all around them. Timing and layout of the action in a 360 space with ambisonic audio and innovative transitions from scene to scene are all key factors that play into a memorable VR experience.

Are partnerships, like the one you secured with The Hollywood Reporter, a trend we’ll see developing between VR creators and media companies? What makes such a union work so well?

Exceptional VR content is hard to come by, and a lot of our competitors that are producing VR content are still trying to figure out the technology, post and storytelling aspects that make for a great VR experience. At Legend, we started our research and development in the VR space two years ago, which is light years ahead of other companies in our space. Since then, we’ve worked on projects for clients such as WB, Apple Music, Tidal, Annapurna Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Stan Lee, MasterCard and Patrón, to name a few. Media, branding and marketing partnerships have been a large driving force for VR content in the early stages. Brands and media companies come to us to create a memorable experience around their product, and we work with them every step of the way through the process. And quality and cost efficiencies are just as important to us as it is to our clients, which creates a sustainable relationship.

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How would you describe the current consumer appetite for VR content? What kind of an experience works best for the platform?

Giving VR demos of Cosmic Crusaders at Comic-Con was a good case study for the appetite and reaction to VR. Everyone who saw the Gear VR headsets immediately wanted to try them. A good amount of people at the show—roughly 75 percent, I’d say—had not yet tried any form of VR, which surprised me, especially for a Comic-Con crowd. I gave demos to people ranging from 4-to-70-years-old, and regardless of age, they universally shared the same excitement and positive reaction to what we’d created. It reaffirms my passion for this medium when I see the smiles on the faces of the people who just had their first VR experience. Until the resolution on smartphones gets better, and tethered devices become more widespread, the best VR experiences will combine both CG and live-action hybrid. You have the ability to fully immerse a viewer in a new environment, so why not make it something they’ve never seen or experienced before? I also like the incorporation of ambisonic audio and 3D conversion, both of which we at Legend are proficient in. These elements really take VR to another level of immersion.

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What is currently the biggest challenge for marketing VR?

VR’s biggest challenges are the low resolution of smartphones and the fact that the most widely used viewing device is the Google Cardboard. The distribution platforms are also riddled with low-quality productions with poorly stitched or produced content and storytelling, which requires users to sift through a lot of bad content in an effort to find something compelling and visually pleasing.

What is your favorite VR project to date that you’ve worked on?

We have so many great projects in the hopper, but non-disclosure agreements prevent me from discussing them now. Hands down, though, my most memorable project has to be the Cosmic Crusaders VR experience. The opportunity to meet and collaborate with Stan Lee was a dream come true. In person, he’s just as captivating and enchanting as the superheroes he’s famous for creating.

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How does Stan Lee editing and voicing himself as one of the show’s main character help put the project on the forefront? What is it like working with him?

Stan Lee participating as a character and narrating the series gives the series that edge that only he can provide. Stan wanted to go for an edgy, adult vibe with Cosmic Crusaders, and we wanted the motion comics to mirror the tone of the writing. We went for dramatic shadows and exaggerated colors, with an overall stylized cinematic look and feel to each scene. We learned on the day of the shoot that it was the first time Stan had done VR, and boy was that an experience. He put the headset on and we showed him a rough of the 360-degree CG environment, with the storyboards playing on a futuristic projector within that environment. As soon as Stan saw himself on the boards, he shouted, ‘hey, there I am—look at how handsome they made me look!’ Needless to say, the room erupted with laughter at his enthusiasm and passion for what we had created. We tried a few different techniques on set to get the best performance for his intros and outros, and when we told him to improvise, the scenes came to life. Stan said, ‘just say action and I’ll take it from there.’ He spent the next hour ad-libbing lines with energy that rivaled some of the most famous superheroes he’s created.

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How does Legend VR plan on continuing to expand capability in the space?

Legend has had a focus of staying at the forefront of trends and technology, which gives us a competitive edge. We’re always working with clients and other VR companies in a collaborative manner to help address the technology, storytelling, production and post-related challenges that are prevalent in these early days of VR.

Follow Manouk Akopyan on Twitter @Manouk_Akopyan

Trump Tower Climber: Livestreaming As Large-Scale Conversation Piece

It is a curious time when the top news story of the day during the Olympics has nothing to do with the 2,000-plus-year-old sports event, but a different kind of stamina-testing stunt: a 20-year-old man with giant suction cups scaling the Trump Tower.

No, you are not watching a Super Deluxe livestream. This is real life.

After hours of successfully evading any rescue attempts, authorities finally caught up with Stephen Rogata of Virginia, pulling him into safety through the window of a shoe store in the building. A planned feat, Rogata had posted a video the day prior addressed to the building’s namesake, Donald Trump himself.

“The reason why I climbed your tower, was to get your attention,” said Rogata, who was reportedly looking to meet with the Republican nominee.

What transpired during and after the stunt will live on in viral infamy. On the same day, The New York Times reported that a Facebook stream on the local WABC-TV’s page had already reached 4 million views. Our own sleuthing has counted over 360,000 mentions across Twitter, forums, blogs, news sites and videos.

Of course, the memes have trotted out.

It had the lawlessness of a car chase, the seat-gripping suspense—it had you rooting for someone who, while risking their life, has set out to not just make a statement, but a spectacle. This is the kind of stuff that prior to Facebook, would have gotten a plum spot on local TV, and maybe been picked up as a noteworthy story in other papers days after. But these are different times, and we’re constantly fiddling with our phones as every push alert vies for our attention.

According to the American Press Institute, 88 percent of millennials get their news from Facebook. For a platform that has put emphasis on its livestreaming capabilities as of late, it was a matter of time before this collided with news.

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This was Facebook Live’s moment to shine that wasn’t just Chewbacca mom making you giggle for a moment, or Buzzfeed‘s exploding watermelon, but actual news as it broke (however silly it was), distributed and viewed via a medium we’re only just getting a grasp on.

What the Trump Tower climber shows us is that Facebook Live presents the ability to push messages of immediacy to an audience of scale more quickly than ever before. Given an outlet, the Trump Tower climber, as a young person, intimately understands this. By manufacturing the next conversation, he was able to command our attention, and by extension, Donald Trump’s, at an unprecedented level as we saw the event collectively unfold before us in our News Feeds.

Why Facebook Is Declaring War On Clickbait And Bad Ads

Advertisers love Facebook for its on-board analytics, optional tie-in to Instagram and of course, its 1.6 billion users. While Facebook allows those users to be bombarded with ads, the social media giant has granted additional control over which ads each user wants to see.

“We’ve all experienced a lot of bad ads: ads that obscure the content we’re trying to read, ads that slow down load times or ads that try to sell us things we have no interest in buying,” Facebook stated on its official blog Tuesday. “Bad ads are disruptive and a waste of our time.” Internet users agree and are downright tired of these types of ads on Facebook and beyond. In fact, a recent study shows that 408 million people use ad blocking programs as of March 2016.

Facebook’s updated ad preferences tools allow users to block certain types of ads or certain companies who have added them to a list. Users can even swap unwanted ad topics for interesting ones. For example, if you have no interest in an organic food company but want to see more cats, well there you go, problem solved.

“Facebook doesn’t want to deter its users from spending time on the site, which too frequent and/or irrelevant ads quite often do,” explains Lindsey Buchanan, director of social media for Ayzenberg. “By making ad preferences easier, Facebook is putting the user back in the driver’s seat. They have to. Because at the end of the day, ads can’t survive if there aren’t users to see it. Both are critical mass to Facebook’s ecosystem.”

This way, Facebook doesn’t eliminate ads, but puts the control in the hands of users to make the process more enjoyable. That means it’s survival of the fittest for advertisers, assuming that users actually utilize the new tools.

“When they’re relevant and well-made, ads can be useful, helping us find new products and services and introducing us to new experiences—like an ad that shows you your favorite band is coming to town or an amazing airline deal to a tropical vacation,” Facebook explained. “But because ads don’t always work this way, many people have started avoiding certain websites or apps, or using ad blocking software, to stop seeing bad ads. These have been the best options to date.”

Facebook is also cleaning house on the news feed, creating a filter that targets common clickbait phrases like, “I was shocked when I saw . . .” and “You’ll never believe . . .”

The latest update, rolling out over the next few weeks, will continue Facebook’s pursuit of quality control. The company is handling annoying ads and headlines as a parent would to the temper tantrum of a small child. Louder and clickbait-y content won’t cut it anymore. Either marketing teams and online media outlets deliver engaging and relevant content . . . or be ignored.

Why Patrón Partnered With Amazon’s Alexa To Create A Cocktail Lab

Stay-at-home bartenders and conquistadors of the cocktail, rejoice, because consuming tequila and making craft drinks is a whole lot cooler and digital now thanks to the creation of the Patrón Cocktail Lab.

The tequila maker has paired with Amazon’s smart speaker Echo to deliver over 150 cocktail recipes, as well as recommendations and tips ranging from perfect pairings for food to proper ways to shake and strain Mexico’s favorite spirit. Think of it as a tequila-specific robotic sommelier who mixes more than just a margarita through the Alexa app on Amazon Alexa and Amazon Echo.

In addition to housing recipes in an interactive cocktail recommendation site, Patrón is pioneering voice-enabled devices technology by becoming the first luxury spirit brand on the Amazon Alexa platform.

Lee Applbaum, Patrón’s global chief marketing officer, joined [a]listdaily to discuss how the tequila brand is becoming a digital tastemaker in a variety of platforms including social media and virtual reality.

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Why was the Patrón Cocktail Lab a smart next step for the company?

First let me set up some context for what we’re doing—we’re not a technology company. So this isn’t an endemic move; this is a means-to-an-end move. We’re very fortunate at Patrón because we have exceptional brand equity, really high brand awareness, a brand with a lot of caché and swagger. As a marketing organization, we’ve been spending a lot of our time to better tell authentic stories. We developed the Cocktail Lab as a very consumer-centric view of accessing different recipes, and voice had to be an important part of it. Echo and Alexa became an immediate way to showcase our interest in voice-driven engagement, but by no means is this the end of the story.

Why was Amazon Echo the perfect partner for this activation? What does their platform allow you to accomplish that others don’t?

I think Amazon has done a very nice job to quickly create an easy-to-use product for consumers. It’s a seamless process to engage with Alexa. The hardware is industry leading and the interface is simple. Amazon is so ubiquitous that I think they’ve gotten a lot of traction quickly. For us, it was a no-brainer in terms of our first foray into this platform. In terms of scale, obviously iOS and Siri have nearly 50 percent operating system share of market. Siri makes a lot of sense as well. By Apple’s own admission, there’s a lot of room for Siri to continue to enhance its functionality. We saw Amazon as a more mature platform to be able to jump into very quickly. There’s a lot of buzz around the platform right now. There’s that visible hardware component of Amazon Echo that we saw as an easy way for people to be able to engage with. Then there’s an entertaining side to Amazon Alexa. You’ve got this cool piece of hardware sitting on your desktop. For Patrón, it’s about useful engagement because we’re not trying to do this just for the entertainment aspect. We want it to be a fulfilling and educational, and ultimately, give consumers entertaining content. We’re a tequila brand, for goodness sake! We’re not solving the world’s problems.

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Lee Applbaum, Patrón’s global chief marketing officer

Why did Patrón decide that using consumer-aimed voice recognition services like Alexa is crucial to growing the brand profile?

I think we want to cohabitate with consumers. By that I mean we want to present our brand story, describe product attributes, or in this case, better communicate versatility in a way in which consumers want to engage with us, rather than forcing them to do it the way we wanted to. For us it was just a logical decision to say, ‘this is how consumers are engaging with content and we want to do it in the most seamless way possible.’ The other thing is, for us, innovation is a very important part of our DNA. Twenty-seven years ago, we created the ultra-premium tequila category—we didn’t create tequila. Innovation in marketing and technology is just an extension. It showcases our interest and our commitment.

What’s the plan to track visitation, engagement and measure overall success for Patrón Cocktail Lab?

Analytics are better used to shape the experience. We like to look at everything from where consumers spend their time, how much time they’re spending, where they’re abandoning. We don’t have the shopping cart path-to-purchase metrics that Amazon has. There isn’t a commerce-engaged function. We do expect that to come eventually, where a consumer could identify the cocktail they want, and then conceivably through Amazon’s shopping platform, buy the cocktail ingredients. That doesn’t exist today, so for us it’s really about being able to better understand the consumer’s migration through the Cocktail Lab to enhance functionality and better deliver recipes and solutions. That’s obviously the beauty of the digital ecosystem. For us, Echo is really the first step. Our vision, if we take a step back, the richer the data that we can get, the better that we can be a part of creating memorable experiences for consumers. It’s not just about selling more tequila—it’s about hoping to make more memorable experiences. It’s a matter of aggregating the data and having the algorithms on the back end that allow us to think, the recommendation engine, about how do we take all these inputs and give you back useful cocktails that make sense for you.

The Patrón Cocktail Lab campaign is supported with social media, including Facebook and Twitter. Patrón is largely considered to be the top Tequila brand on social. How do you separate yourselves from other competitive brands with your social platforms?

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We’re very fortunate that we have a brand that is loved. We have a near 70 percent market share of ultra-premium tequila in the US. If you look at our numbers, they’re near incomparable in terms of brand affinity, awareness and attention. Part of that is consumers love our brand. They love to talk about our brand, share stories with us—there’s an organic interest with Patrón. Social gives us a way to syndicate those moments. Our interaction is the ability to help curate and re-share those moments that consumers may post. It’s amazing . . . we were virtually uninvolved with social three years ago when I arrived at the company. We had no social practice. We weren’t even on Twitter or Instagram. We had a nascent presence on Facebook, yet consumers were already engaging with us. We had a relatively easy task in that our job was just to jump in to the conversation, help curate it, but not force it. That’s how we sort of went from zero to hero.

How will you be further marketing the Patrón Cocktail Lab moving forward?

This isn’t an above-the-line, traditional media play. We’re not selling Amazon Echoes. We’re really talking about this broader idea of the versatility of tequila and the way of accessing that content through Cocktail Lab and Alexa. We see it as a very organic conversation. However, we do have a significant amount of social and digital media behind this, which makes sense given that this is a digital product. Globally, we’re the largest spirit in social media. We’re No. 1 on Twitter, and a top-five beer, wine or spirit brand on Facebook and Instagram. We have nearly five million consumers across our social media channels, which is huge when you think about age-gating for consumers over 21—and they’re highly engaged. Social media is a big piece of the marketing. There’s an incredible interest in our brand, incredible interest in the ultra-premium category, so creating easy ways for consumers, and engaging ways for consumers to interact with the content, is fabulous.

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Last year you launched “The Art of Patrón” virtual reality experience. What was your integrated marketing strategy for that specific brand implementation? What are some results you can share?

I think we were very thoughtful about VR and making sure we jumped in at the right time, and place. It had to do with technology and making sure the hardware was ready. We were quite early to the table. By Oculus’ own admission, we were the first to take live-action plus CGI and combine it, and do so in a very educational and entertaining way. It wasn’t just about some mind-blowing, cool experience. It was about an experience that told our brand story. For us, we have all the brand swagger in the world—it continues to be about telling our authentic story. We said ‘if we could get every consumer, or every bartender to see how Patrón was made, forget about 70 percent market share, we think we’d have 100 percent market share’ because it’s a really unique experience. The next closest thing for us is virtual reality. The one-on-one engagement with a bartender through VR, and educating them, is crucial because they’re the gatekeepers. For all of the marketing we might do—for us, better educating the gatekeepers with our brand is key. The ability for them to learn through VR is huge. It’s an amazing opportunity for them to engage with the hardware, and then to better engage with our brand. The results are difficult in terms of hard numbers, meaning ‘what did this do for sales? Or, what did this do for brand perception?’ Overwhelmingly, anecdotally, we see at all of these events, the takeaway that consumers have is that ‘wow’ factor. More importantly, consumers are walking away with this ‘a-ha’ moment about our brand. That’s the moment for us when we know the job is done. I have zero concern about the longer-term ROI in terms of brand perception, and ultimately sales. They’re on the back end of everything that we’re doing. I have zero concern about that.

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How does using immersive experiences best position Patrón’s marketing efforts moving forward? Are you looking at testing out new platforms?

This is just the beginning and we’re working to build out capabilities with things like iOS and Siri, Cortana, and obviously, continue to expand with Echo and Alexa. This is our first foray into it. I think Amazon has rapidly built an amazing base with the hardware and software, which is why we launched with it. Today, it’s a very useful and engaging experience. Tomorrow, we see things like aggregating different kind of inputs like the menu, weather and schedule for a more enriching engagement. That is unquestionably where we’re headed. We’re not an entertainment company, but clearly opportunities exist where you could see platforms like augmented reality becoming much more important for brands like ours. The ability to do a guided tasting, where you’re tasting tequilas, and through AR, getting the brand story, or the production story behind each of the different glasses you’re tasting, is great. We’re not out to prove how dazzling VR, or AR, or voice command is. What we want to do is find useful ways for technology to enable consumers to engage with the brand. I think those are some fascinating things. It provides a halo for our brand, and we’re going to continue to do that.

Follow Manouk Akopyan on Twitter @Manouk_Akopyan

Baby Brawler ‘Bebylon Battle Royale’ Blends Gaming, Social And Story Into Virtual Reality

If you have an insatiable appetite for nutty and narcissistic babies who seemingly stepped off the set of Mad Max to brawl in colosseums, consider yourself blessed because Bebylon Battle Royale is one step closer to becoming a reality—in virtual reality.

Cinematic VR studio Kite & Lightning’s radical, comedic social game has secured $2.5 million in seed funding led by Raine Ventures to bring the experience of immortal baby gladiators competing against one another in front of a live VR spectator audience for status and fame; players will be able to venture outside of the mishap future setting to socialize, experience shows and take virtual rides in what will be the Los Angeles-based studio’s first immersive gaming experience.

The brainchildren behind Bebylon Battle Royale are founders Ikrima Elhassan and Cory Strassburger, veterans in VR whose credits include VR experiences for brands such as Lionsgate (Insurgent), NBC Universal (The Voice) and GE (Neuro).

“Kite & Lightning has been pushing the envelope in cinematic virtual reality for three years, and we are thrilled to be partnered with this industry-leading creative team,” said Gordon Rubenstein, managing partner at Raine Ventures. “Their upcoming title, Bebylon Battle Royale, is the most impressive social gaming experience we’ve ever seen, and we believe is only the beginning of a unique metaverse that will captivate gamers and audiences for years to come.”

Ikrima Elhassan, co-founder and CEO of Kite & Lightning, joined [a]listdaily to talk about how they plan on blending gaming, social and story to create an emotionally transformative experience.

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The $2.5 million in seed funding you received will surely grow your two-person team. How do you plan on further building out capability?

We’re looking forward to expanding the team size. We’ve already expanded to four and are still looking to hire multidisciplinary, passionate people who are looking to work in VR.

The origin of your story is a unique one. Why was it important to come back to the US after a year abroad? How is VR different outside of stateside confines?

Los Angeles is the epicenter of VR, even more so than Silicon Valley. We left for a year abroad for a creative sabbatical and to focus on laying the groundwork for the Bebylon universe. Outside of the US, VR is definitely more nascent but attracts a small group of super-dedicated people. I think the VR scene in Paris is making the best headway in VR cinema. We always intended to return after a year, but it’s great to interact with folks outside the US in VR.

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What does operating a hybrid film and gaming studio allow you to do when it comes to combining cinematic storytelling with interactive gaming?

I think this is just our focus on what we think make compelling VR experiences. We say what theater was to film, VR is to film. Just like theater still exists in modern-day society, completely passive VR experiences will exist in the future. But, the most compelling experiences will be a meld of interactive/gaming and narrative.

Can you explain your pillars of gaming, social and story, and how it all comes together? Why is this combo critical for a great VR experience?

Our world is set in a future where humanity discovers an immortality pill; the downside is that no one ages past the baby stage despite being mature adults on the inside. At the core of this world is the Super Smash Bros.-esque style game where baby gladiators compete against each other for status and fame. So as a player, you can be a gamer and partake in these arenas and try to become the most famous, narcissistic baby gladiator. But, you can also go attend and spectate the matches as all of the stages occur in colosseum-style arenas. As a spectator, you can also cheer, boo or even toss items into the ring that players can use in their fight. And then outside of the arenas, there exists the entire mini-MMO universe of Bebylon Battle Royale where you can experience the history of Bebylon as well as attend shows, go on rides and socialize with other players. So, we like to say, ‘come for the game, stay for the social narrative.’

How can gaming experiences, specifically ones that are social, turn from a one-to-one to a social one?

For us, it’s been designed as an integral part from day one. ‘Let’s play’ is already a huge phenomenon in gaming with Twitch and YouTube and we feel that it’ll be more important in VR. With Bebylon, we wanted to take ‘let’s play’ one step further by allowing interactive spectating where you can also affect the outcome of the matches by throwing items and sponsoring different gladiators.

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Bebylon Battle Royale is a world built around competitive spectator gaming. Can you tell us a little more about how the idea sparked, what the VR experience will entail, and how it differentiates itself?

The idea sparked from an insight we had years ago. During the course of creating VR experiences for the last three years, we knew that some of the most compelling moments in VR was when we combined interactive elements from gaming while transporting you to surreal environments. And then from there, we immediately wanted to have our friends there with us. But when we had the original groundwork for this idea years ago, it was way too ahead of its time and the VR ecosystem was too small. Now we have the resources as well as an eager, rapidly growing audience to bring this to life.

What have you learned along the way about creating engaging VR experiences? What’s your special sauce? 

I’d say keeping an open mind and constantly experimenting is the secret to creating engaging VR. The medium is so new that there are no experts, and for every best practice that someone spouts, there’s a great counter example.

What is the best way brands can use 360-degree video and VR for their integrated marketing strategies?

I don’t think 360-degree video is a good way for brands to utilize VR in their marketing strategies. I think 360-video is a small ephemeral stepping stone that will quickly go away. I think people gravitate toward it because it’s the lowest common denominator and requires the lowest technical barrier to entry, but I don’t think the best compelling VR experiences come from 360 VR. The Martian is a great example of what I think is a great integrated brand marketing strategy.

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What is the hardest part about marketing VR?

It’s really difficult to convey how awesome something is in VR when you only see a trailer of it in a 2D version. Some people have done some cool innovations with mixed reality videos but at the end of the day, if you’ve never tried VR, you’re just not going to understand. Trying to convey VR to someone is like trying to convey how awesome your favorite song is through pictures.

Are consumers ready for VR today? Do you think they are clamoring for it? Or are they coiled?

Absolutely; we’re constantly surprised by how fast the VR audience is growing and how everyone we’ve ever shown VR to wants to buy a headset. We still think it’ll be two years before VR goes wide mainstream, but it definitely will.

Follow Manouk Akopyan on Twitter @Manouk_Akopyan

How Brands Are Marketing “Stories” Through Instagram’s Latest Feature

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Snapchat should be touched by Instagram’s latest initiative. On Tuesday, Instagram introduced “Stories,” a new way to share updates that expire in 24 hours.

The disposable Instagram Stories appear in a special section on a follower’s feed as a slide show. Instagram says the ability to post these messages will alleviate the worry of overposting. “Instead, you can share as much as you want throughout the day—with as much creativity as you want,” according to the site.

Brands are already jumping on board to test out the Instagram Stories feature, including General Electric (GE), Arby’s and Red Bull. Ironically, GE is using Instagram Stories to promote a Snapchat video series featuring a data-driven exploration into Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua.

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In celebration of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Arby’s set about making the book’s character, Golden Snitch, out of sandwich packaging.

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Red Bull let followers decide which epic photos to add to their feed in its first Instagram Stories campaign, with the winner, Pro MTB racer Finn Iles, shown below:

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While Stories may be exciting for the average Instagram user, the new feature was no doubt aimed primarily at would-be advertisers. The numbers show that over one in four digital marketers have a plan to invest more money in Instagram over the next twelve months, per Business Insider. Snapchat, as popular as it is with its millions of viewers, is still the less-preferred choice for advertising, the study shows.

In other words, brands are more likely to invest in Instagram’s “snappy” new feature, as opposed to the social platform that inspired it. The photo-sharing app exceeds 500 million users and shares access to Facebook’s pool of three million advertisers who have the option to extend Facebook ad campaigns to Instagram.

Snapchat, although a valuable tool for marketers on its own, is considered less user-friendly when it comes to calculating return on investment due to the lack of on-board analytics tools.

The Instagram Stories tool is still very much in its infancy, so brands will need to experiment with campaigns to find what works.

Studio Wildcard Exec Discusses Future ‘ARK’ ESports Opportunities

Indie developer Studio Wildcard has done a lot of things differently. The Seattle-based start-up self-funded ARK: Survival Evolved for $2 million using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 and got the game into Steam Early Access last June. Since then, the game has grossed $150 million and has remained in the top-five bestselling games on Steam. And that’s been done with no downloadable content.

“We purposely wanted to get the game out before Jurassic World hit theaters last summer, and that definitely helped us get the word out in the early days,” said Jesse Rapczak, co-founder and co-creative director at Studio Wildcard. “People love dinosaurs and there’s never been a game that lets you play with dinosaurs like ARK does. You can play a dinosaur shooter or a dinosaur simulation game, or none of them. Not unlike Minecraft, people are learning different ways to play ARK with dinosaurs.”

The ARK community has steadily increased from an average of 40,000 concurrent players a year ago to an average of 55,000 concurrent players today on Steam. Peak concurrent users between Xbox One and PC have exceeded 130,000 users at times.

While the company has been focusing on finishing the final version of the game, it’s also grown from 12 to 25 employees. And the studio has stepped into eSports through a separate mod version of the game, Survival of the Fittest, which has taken off on its own.

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ARK originally didn’t have a competitive mode other than player-versus-player,” Rapczak said. “There wasn’t a short, time-scaled competitive mode until Survival of the Fittest, which introduced a Hunger Games-type competition. We created that mode as an example for the mod kit community, so other people in community could create other stuff.”

While the PC community has created over 4,000 mods, Wildcard ended up with a separate fan base through the stand-alone, free-to-play game that pits up to 72 players in a “last man standing” setting. Earlier this year, Wildcard launched the Survival League, which is based on rankings and cash prizes. The company recently flew the top eight teams from around the globe to compete in the $40,000 Summer Cup in China, which took place during ChinaJoy.

The competition spanned two days and was livestreamed on Twitch. Wildcard flew in top shoutcasters for the event and had support from local Chinese partners as well Reverb Communications.

Rapczak hopes to do future competitions at ChinaJoy, and his company is currently looking at TwitchCon as another prime show to host a Cup around.

“Seeing giant dinosaurs chasing people around is entertaining even if you don’t know all the rules,” Rapczak said.

ESports is on-going for the game through monthly tournaments with cash prizes. This Saturday, the July Survivor League Championship pits the top ranking ARK: Survival of the Fittest teams in each of three game modes against each other for more than $65,000 in prizes.

To date, the big established eSports teams haven’t made the move to ARK yet.

“We want those teams to come over and play ARK, but we haven’t seen a big influx from those teams yet,” Rapczak said. “The audience isn’t there yet in terms of the number of people playing the tournament rankings. We have a spectator mode and the ability for team identity to carry though tournaments.”

Rapczak said Wildcard is looking at new things to get players into the game like more maps, more tournament modes.

“A lot of players have requested more structure,” Rapczak said. “Having monthly finalists moving on to the next stage has been working. We could have more structured tournament mods and automated rules, where you win and move on to the next. We’re thinking about the Winter Cup now.”

Wildcard is also launching a paid mod contest targeting eSports next month.

“We want the community to come up with mods for eSports that include great new ways to play the game that might attract new players,” Rapczak said. “It will be our third mod contest. We usually give away $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 for the top three mod winners. In a way, the contest is an eSport in itself.”

Rapczak said the studio found in developing Survival of Fittest that they got the best feedback from the players themselves in terms of changes in the way the game plays and balances, opening up new strategies, and making the competition more fierce.

“We’re opening it up to community to let them do more things with the content and see where the eSports mode of ARK is going from here,” Rapczak said. “Our central team is working on finishing Survival Evolved.”

In order to focus on the main game, Wildcard has brought Survival of the Fittest back into the paid fold. Anyone who owns the free-to-play mod previously can continue to play it, but new gamers will need to purchase ARK: Survival Evolved to receive the eSports mode. This also allows gamers to mod the Survival of the Fittest for the first time.

“Going forward, we want players to have the tools to change things around,” Rapczak said. “With this mod contest we’ll see what happens with new things we want to do around the console release.

ARK: Survival Evolved will launch this winter across all platforms. Rapczak said his team is launching new content over the next month and getting the final features into the game.

“We’re looking at the final phases of bug fixing and polish,” Rapczak said. “We’re looking at both digital download as well as a retail launch.”

 

US Marketers Ramping Up On Social Video Campaigns

Video has become a major platform for US marketers, particularly on Facebook. According to a recent survey by Animoto, a cloud-based video creation service, 70.8 percent of respondents said they plan to invest in social video ads, including ads to boost content in the next 12 months. Facebook is most likely to benefit from these plans, as 65.8 percent of those who planned to do social video advertising expressed plans to use the platform. Following as the number two choice for social marketing was YouTube at 42.3 percent.

The study by Animoto was conducted between April and May of 2016 and shows an increase in Facebook interest over a similar study in December 2015. The December study, conducted by Advertiser Perceptions, showed that 72 percent of US marketers anticipated using Google and YouTube campaigns, compared to 46 percent who said Facebook.

Mobile advertising is a natural platform for video marketing, and brands are taking full advantage. Facebook earned 84 percent of its ad revenue from mobile during the last quarter and earlier this year, Google stated that it is now serving more search queries on mobile than on desktop. A new report from Mixpo reveals how popular Facebook’s video has become. The report shows that 50 percent of companies have launched some form of video campaign on the site, a huge jump compared to the 31 percent on YouTube, and even bigger than Twitter (17 percent), Instagram (13 percent) and Snapchat (2 percent).

At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International Summit in London this year, Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, predicted that the social media platform “will be definitely mobile” and “probably all video” in five years. Mendelsohn also said she believes video is a better way to tell stories and predicted that 360-degree video will move beyond its current novelty status.

Facebook is well aware of its popularity among video advertisers, and has made plans accordingly, including the signing of many media partners and celebrities, along with a recent partnership with Blizzard to help connect friends better with the competitive shooting game Overwatch. The medium is just getting started, as more and more marketers are finding the best ways to utilize video, including new formats like 360-degree video—a very friendly format for virtual reality.