This week’s podcast interview was originally scheduled to take place live on stage at SXSW. Unfortunately, a nasty pandemic got in the way of this. However, I still wanted to talk with VR expert Ashley Crowder about her work as CEO and Co-Founder of VNTANA, a company that helps brands build out new online realities (which may be more relevant now than ever before!). We discussed all of this and more on this week’s episode of the On Brand podcast.

About Ashley Crowder

Ashley Crowder is the co-founder and CEO of VNTANA, the industry-leading platform that automates the conversion of physical products into 3D Web, AR, VR & hologram e-commerce experiences. She has worked in the mixed-reality space for over 7 years, creating unique hologram activations for Fortune 1000 brands including Adidas, Lexus, Intel and more. Prior to co-founding VNTANA, she gained valuable engineering experience at Gulfstream, Northrop Grumman and BP, now leveraging her engineering background to guide VNTANA’s overall direction and technology development to shape the future of e-commerce. Under her leadership, VNTANA has released the fastest and easiest way to create, manage, and distribute 3D assets for the web, AR, and VR in an end-to-end CMS, making it easy to create a 3D version of every product in the world.

Ashley has given talks on the future of mixed reality and how to incorporate it in enterprises today at prestigious venues including SXSW, Digital Summit, Internet Summit, Augmented World Expo, TEDx Venice, the World Economic Forum’s Global Growth Companies & Technology Pioneers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, The Montgomery Summit, Siemer Summit, Digital LA, and others. Ashley was featured as one of USC’s leading engineering CEOs of 2016 and is a part of the Microsoft Early Developer Program. She earned her BS in Industrial Systems Engineering and MS in Engineering Management from the University of Southern California.

Episode Highlights

Why is VNTANA such a good brand name? As a brand builder, I had to start with this great brand name, which comes from the Spanish word for window, ventana. “We’re giving people this view into another world,” explains Crowder of her company and its brand name.

“Every brand needs to create their online twin for the VR, 3D spatial computing web.” We’ve come along way from those “brochure websites” we laughed about during the podcast. Perhaps taking the metaphor too far, I asked Ashley if it was an identical twin we should be striving to create online? She said responded, “It’s getting close …”

“Results are everything.” Crowder shared stories about IKEA and Shopify using VR and AR to achieve significant results. IKEA created a 3D virtual catalog and saw a 35% increase that they could attribute to this. Shopify found customers were twice as likely to purchase after using their AR support feature.

What brand has made Ashley smile recently? “Chipotle!” She shared a story about Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics pranking rookie, Romeo Langford, along with some help from their local Chipotle. This one will literally make you smile!

To learn more about Ashley Crowder and VNTANA, check out VNTANA’s website.

Until next week, I’ll see you on the Internet!

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