Fresh off of SXSW, dreary-eyed and with some good old fashioned Austin stink on us. What is there NOT to love about SXSW? It is the ultimate confluence of brands, experiences, ideas, music, creativity, technology and people (you can’t forget the people!). And this year did not disappoint at all. It is very clear that the VR/AR wave and the AI market are both poised for great things and explosive growth.
I hopped into the VR Hub at Capital Factory and checked out the HTC Vive setup they had going on. There were some pretty amazing gaming capabilities and interactive experiences on display. I can only imagine what the power usage was like in there. Probably something like that scene from Christmas Vacation when Clark W. Griswold turns on his Christmas lights that cover his entire house and it causes blackouts across town. Then I cruised over to the National Geographic Further Basecamp being held at Vulcan Gas Company. What a buzzing place with many different flavors of VR/AR going on. Especially super cool was the iPad experience where you would point an iPad at a picture and the picture would animate and come to life in 3D. Truly rockin’ stuff.
But VR/AR offers amazing opportunities for better storytelling for all companies and their products or services. Can you imagine a B2B company demonstrating how a piece of data moves through the supply chain because of their software? That would be a wild ride. It would be like watching The Matrix on steroids. Or what if you could use an Alexa to answer customer questions in a retail store while waiting for a sales person? “Alexa, what sizes does this couch come in?” or “Alexa, what’s the earliest available delivery date for this couch?” We can see and feel it here at Yalo! And we are excited to help clients jump on board with this amazing technology.
Oh and of course, we held our 4th annual Get Plugged In event at Bat Bar (and 8th one overall). Every year I am amazed at how our team is able to push the envelope for our event. Two years ago, we had 5 bands play ala a mini-Lollapalooza and had nearly 800 registrants. Last year, we went big with Biz Markie and doubled our numbers to 1550 registrations. This year we were fortunate to have some of the best new bands in America while also putting on a VR experience for our attendees, with the outstanding support of our sponsors HTC Vive, ASUS, Skullcandy, and Google. We even live streamed the event for those who were not in Austin with the help of another key sponsor, Cinamaker. The result was 6,200 registrants and over 1,500 through the door. We appreciate everyone who came out to experience marketing, tech, VR and music YALO STYLE.
Watch out 2018! We are already spinning up new ideas to blow the roof off next year! With our new Virtual Events platform as a service, Yalo is proud to be a creative agency in Atlanta ready to blow fuses both real and virtual. Contact us and allow us to show you what VR can do for you and your brand in this brave new world.
