Dive Brief:
- Post has launched its first virtual reality content through a VR campaign for its Pebbles cereal brand.
- As part of the brand's "Yabba Dabba Doo" campaign, viewers of the 30-second pre-roll ad debuting next week will experience various colorful activities, such as being sprayed with water guns or painting a mural. The ad will run on cross-platform apps VirtualSky and StartApp.
- Taking a different approach to VR ads, Post is offering a more guided and deliberate campaign rather than the more exploratory, unlimited experience other brands have pursued.
Dive Insight:
Pebbles' senior brand manager Oliver Perez told Ad Age that the VR content is meant to parallel the "overload sensory experience" of seeing and eating the cereal itself.
But though the brand is "overloading" viewers' senses, the marketers can use heat-tracking technology to determine exactly what elements of the experience consumers are most focused on or attracted to. That provides insights the brand can apply to future campaigns—VR or otherwise—using reactionary data that companies normally don't have access to from TV, desktop, or even mobile-based ads.
The question remains whether users and Post cereal buyers will partake in the VR experience.
"Even tech-savvy people have families and they have kids and they're eating breakfast," Perez told Ad Age. "So this is a way for us to expand our targets and try and reach new demographics."
By tapping VR technology, Post could be enticing more adults and parents to consider buying Pebbles for themselves or their children. Post is the latest of a number of food and beverage companies that have pursued VR campaigns, from the Jim Beam virtual whiskey shot's journey through a distillery to Coca-Cola's packaging that folded up into a cardboard VR headset.