Page 18 - Communicate

Q1 2018 | EVENT

Things we learned at CES 2018

Five things each about AR & VR, the future of auto and the connected home by Megan Graham & Brian Braiker

AR & VR home decor company, has an app that gives
Overheard at CES: “It’s spring for AR – and winter customers the opportunity to preview a potential
for VR.” purchase by superimposing furniture into their
While that may be a gross simplification, it’s homes. “This is just scratching the surface,”
clear here on the ground in Las Vegas that aug- says Mike Festa, head of research for Wayfair
mented reality is having a moment. Next, the company’s innovation division.
VR and AR are, of course, two different things.
A broad-brush breakdown for the neophytes: virtual 2. Still, no one really knows where it’s going to
reality is an immersive, virtual, non-real world end up. “Anybody who tells you anything about
experience, most often accessed with a headset immersive VR is lying – including myself,” says
like Occulus Rift. AR is augmented reality: digital Perkins. The medium is not TV, he says, and
items overlaid on photos or videos of the real world, it’s not cinema – it’s its own thing. “People are
usually on your phone. Think Pokémon Go. At CES going to try different things. You’re going to
this year, we’re also hearing terms like MR (mixed start to see traditional methods of delivering
reality) and XR (extended reality). Where there’s shattered and broken.” It is, he says, going to
emerging tech, there’s a lot of jargon. get funky.
We discussed the topic with some of the top The next iteration of tech, says Festa, will
content creators, distributors and thinkers in the not only allow someone to see how a couch
medium. Here are a few takeaways for brands, might look in a two-dimensional rendering of
agencies and publishers alike: your living room, you’ll be able to anchor that
digital display on the screen and virtually walk
1. There are current, practical consumer uses around it for a 3D preview.
for AR. Pokémon Go was more than fun and
games. Miles Perkins, vice-president of Mar- 3. The phone will likely drive the evolution. The
keting Communications, Jaunt VR, says it got tipping point is going to be mobile computing
his 10-year-old son off the couch, and outside power, predicts Will Wiseman, chief strategy
and walking. “He had me drop him off three officer of media agency PHD. “The biggest bar-
miles away!” says Perkins. Pokémon Go was rier to the growth of AR and VR has been that
also proof of concept. the technology environment that the everyday
There are, it turns out, more practical uses consumer lives in and is native to doesn’t sup-
for augmented reality than grinding it out to port it,” he says. “Two years from now we’re
catch ‘em all. For example, Wayfair, an online gong to be talking about 5G from a mobile

18 I Communicate