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It’s Okay to be Small, with Virtual Reality Marketing’s Terry Proto
Don’t let his
impressive stature fool you; Virtual Reality Marketing CEO Terry
Proto knows that, in an industry where there’s a ton of use cases and
many roles to fill, it doesn’t hurt to be small. Heck, it usually
pays to be! Terry joins Alan in a chat about how companies can best
find their niche in the XR realm.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is the
one and only: Terry Proto. He’s the CEO of Virtual Reality Marketing.
Terry is an award winning digital imaging and digital games producer.
He has over 15 years of production and sales experience in the US,
Europe and Asia. And he’s been creating images since the very first
version of 3D Studio back in the 90s, and has evolved over the years
working on myriad projects, including agency work and other products
and project endeavors. In a previous life, he struggled with getting
clients and visibility consistently for his own creative studio,
despite the quality of his work. And after connecting with a lot of
CEOs in the XR space, he realized that his problem was a widespread
problem. So for the past two years, Terry and his team have been on a
mission to help studios and brands better connect for everyone’s
benefit. To learn more about his company, Virtual Reality
Marketing.com, go to virtualrealitymarketing.com. It is my absolute
pleasure to welcome Terry to the show.
Welcome to the show, Terry.
Terry: Hey, Alan. Well, thank
you very much. I love the intro. It’s really an honor to be on your
podcast today.
Alan: Thank you. It’s such an
honor to have you on the podcast. I know we finally got to meet in
person for the first time at AWE — Augmented World Expo — what,
about three weeks ago now?
Terry: Yeah. We connect with so
many people, and it’s all digital and it’s all remote. So it truly
feels good to shake someone’s hand now. [chuckles]
Alan: I got a hug from you,
which was awesome.
Terry: [laughs] Exactly.
Alan: You are a very strong man.
I don’t know if you’re benchpressing Volkswagens in your spare time,
but those of you who know Terry; he’s a very large, solid dude. Not
just in physical stature, but in mindfulness and everything. And his
passion shows through in the work that he does. I really want to
start digging into that. So tell us about Virtual Reality Marketing,
and talk about how you got into this.
Terry: I think you nailed it in
the intro. It really started with my problem as a producer. And you
know, when you’re a producer, you’re in your own silo and you’re
working on those products and you’ve got your clients, your team,
you’re flying around for business meetings and events. And you
connect with people, but it’s more superficial. And when I stopped
being a producer, I took a step back and I started talking to a lot
of people. And that’s when I realized that my problem was — I
wouldn’t say everyone’s problem, but very common problem — and I
looked around and I couldn’t find a solution for myself for years.
And I figured it would be time to hack all this and solve this for
everyone.
Alan: So what is the solution
that Virtual Reality Marketing is doing? You’re connecting agencies
and big brands with studios. Is that correct?
Terry: Yeah, exactly. Simply
put, Virtual Reality Marketing, we’re the most comprehensive
directory of AR, VR, 360 studios. And we are also focusing on
building the largest XR case studies library. Right now we’re close
to 150 on the site, and we are on track to have 500 by next year. The
problem that we try to tackle is that… I like to analogize, I like
to say that VR is an hydra, as in it as many heads, and you don’t
know what to do with this thing. And VR is still very much a unicorn,
as in everybody talks about it, but few people have actually seen it.
And that’s where we come in. So on one hand, we have brands and
advertisers and anyone who’s interested in XR, to get involved in
immersives. At this point, those guys realized they need to get
involved, but they don’t know where to start. And it’s difficult for
them to find partners they can trust. And when you’re spending, I
don’t know, $50,000 on a budget for XR project, you want to make sure
you’re spending your money at the right place.
Alan: Agreed. That’s one of the
problems that we are trying to solve with this very podcast.
Terry: Exactly.
Alan: Let’s unpack that. If
you’re a brand that wants to start using virtual augmented reality
for marketing, what’s the first thing that you would recommend to
them?
Terry: Well, the first thing is,
get informed. It’s knowing about the studios. And that’s the focus we
have on the case studies right now. It’s all about this. It’s like,
say, I’m a brand or a company because it works for… say I’m a
training company, and I’m working in medical. And I want to build
this project. I don’t know if it’s possible. I had the case literally
last week. Clients are coming, they’re like, “Hey, we’ve got
this idea. We don’t know if it’s possible. Is it realistic? Is it
unrealistic?” So, first step: looking for the case studies of
what are people doing around us. And right now, it’s not like two
years ago. We’re in this world where we have the case studies. We
have the experience. We can demonstrate the ROI. We can demonstrate
the benefits. And we’re collecting all of this information to share
it easily. So short answer to your question: first step, see the
relevant case studies in your industry, it’s going to inspire you,
and answer tons of questions. Start from there.
Alan: I just noticed — I was
scrolling through the site as you were talking — and one of the
companies that we invested in, 3D Food And Drink, is on there.
Terry: Yeah, so… [laughs] It’s
one of the cool things of what we do. It’s like I said, we connect
with so many people and then we are like, I’m talking with you and
you’re like, “Hey, this is our product.” And I’m like, “Oh,
wow, we didn’t even know about it, but great.” That’s the whole
point. I love when I hear that. It means we’re doing a great job.
Alan: So how do you monetize?
What is your business model?
Terry: In terms of business
model, we really do two things. On one hand, we have the content
creators. We have them connect with studios. So we have them through
the websites. We can give them more visibility through the website
with several packages, share more content, be on top of the list
beyond the home page. We have also a consulting offer, where we can
dive deep with a studio. It’s not for everyone. It’s for select
studios who are solving mission-critical problems for their clients.
There, we can build an advanced lead-generation strategy, connect
with a large number of leads. It’s really basically taking all of
your business developments and we’re handling this for you, starting
from the strategy, all the way to the living leads to the studios.
For brands and advertisers, it’s really
all about connecting with relevant companies they can trust. We’ve
got brands, advertisers — again, anyone interested in using AR and
VR — connecting with us and saying, “we’ve got this project. We
don’t even know if it’s realistic or not. But tell us.” And
based on what they share with us, we can make a recommendation of,
those are the right studios that you want to work with, because
they’ve got the track record; because they’ve got the expertise;
because they’ve got the portfolio. And then we work on commission for
the recommendations.
Alan: Ok. That’s pretty awesome.
What about companies that are just starting out? How do the smaller
studios and startups start to build that book of business and case
study library?
Terry: That’s a good question.
And you know what? It’s still a world of small VR companies. So the
first thing I should say is, it’s OK to be small. I know we’ve been
small for a long time and in France — so not in the US — and we’ve
kind of got that small company complex. It’s okay. It’s okay to be
small. There are so many things to do in this industry. Everyone is
starting, and you need to start somewhere. The most important [thing]
is focus and relevance. You don’t want to be everything for everyone.
“The jack of all trades, master of none?” That’s something you
see a lot in VR. You want to focus on one problem and become the
expert at solving this problem for your clients with AR, VR and other
tech, you don’t need to restrict yourself to VR. Actually, the most
successful companies are integrating VR into a larger vision.
Alan: What would an example of
that be?
Terry: Location-based
entertainment. You have your VR experience, and it’s the center and
the core experience. But at the same time, you’re selling t-shirts
and you’re selling drinks, which is completely low-tech and has
nothing to do with VR. But it’s okay for your clients. If it’s Friday
night and I want to go with my friends for some high-tech
entertainment, and I start to do a laser tag and then I’m going to do
VR. And then it’s Friday, so we’re going to have drinks. And the
experience was cool, so I’m gonna get a t-shirt and gift it to my
friends. It’s a holistic experience. It’s not just about VR. It’s
about them, what they get from it.
Alan: I’ve seen a lot of
location based entertainment facilities where they just set up some
small square rooms with a VIVE in it. And that’s great. But what
really blew me away was when I was in Dubai at VR Park, and they
built the whole experience around each activity. So it may be the
same VIVE as you would play in a small 10×10 room. But for example,
the John Wick VR experience, and there’s like a bank vault and you’re
actually going into a physical set. People don’t think about that
when they’re setting up these experiences. And I think it’s really
important to just get everybody really excited about this technology
before they put it on their heads. And it just adds to the whole
allure of it.
Terry: Exactly, exactly. It’s
not just about VR. It’s about the overall experience and the overall
service for your clients. And it works everywhere. You’ve got this LB
example, but you have your training example on the other side of the
spectrum, where you’re training people. And what matters is that they
get the best experience, so some of the information you will want to
have on iPhone and iPad. Some of the reporting you will want to have
on the Web and some of the most expensive, most complicated, most
dangerous experiences you will want to do in VR. But again, it’s a
whole. And it’s not just VR. It’s also everything else.
Alan: Yeah, absolutely. So in
the last month, what’s the best virtual reality or augmented reality
marketing experience that you’ve seen?
Terry: Ok. So, you know, in our
case, our job is to pretty much see all of them, at least as much as
possible. So it’s really a difficult question for me to answer
because I have to pick one.
Alan: That’s why I picked the
question!
Terry: [laughs] But if I have to
pick one, I’ll give you… for instance, I tend to prefer the ones
that are smart, and fun, and really solve a problem. So in the last
few weeks, we got this experience from a Brazilian studio, VZ Lab,
and it’s the VR vaccine experience. And I love it because it’s clever
and funny and it’s solving a real problem. It’s the problem of
vaccination with children. Huge problem for the parents; they’re
fighting with the children. And the children, some of them are
literally traumatized by the things, they’re crying. Problem with the
nurses, because you have to deal with conflict day in and day out.
Long story short, the studio created
this experience, which is synced with what the nurse is doing in real
time. So for the children, they are plunged into this immersive
adventure all in 3D, it’s beautiful. And they’re going to be given a
shield. The children is being warned that he’s gonna be bitten by
something and it’s gonna be okay. And in real time, the nurse is
doing the injection. It works like a charm. It’s beautiful. And you
ask the children, they’re like, “oh, my God, that was amazing. I
loved it.” No cries. No screams. No nothing. And it’s 180
degrees of something that is a huge problem for everyone. And it’s
been turned into a fun, cool experience. It’s incredible.
Alan: My daughter, she’s 11, and
she is literally terrified of needles.
Terry: Like I said; smart, fun,
really solving a problem. It’s great. But just to give you another
one, on the other end of the spectrum. Children again. So this one
not as glamorous, but super useful. This time we’re talking about a
therapeutic training tool and it’s about understanding the changes in
the brain of a child who was suffered childhood trauma. And I think
this one is built by UK studio, Ignition. And basically you’re living
the experience through the eyes of the child, and you see your
parents fighting, and the isolation, and the tears and everything.
And in the meantime, it’s superimposed with the brain activity and
you see how the brain is being restructured in real time, based on
the experiences the child has lived.
Alan: Wow.
Terry: And you get a different
brain. So it’s really understanding and showing you how every little
detail in your family life is impacting your children and how to
change those behaviors, because especially when you’re young, the
brain is plastic. And those are very strong connections that are
really difficult. Or nearly impossible, I should say. So, another
great one.
Alan: They’re on such wide
spectrums of the technology. One of the things that I think is it is
an issue with our industry in general — and I think maybe you can
address this — is these are great experiences, but how are companies
measuring the success of these? Are they doing it through earned
media captures? Are they doing it through number of people that
they’ve put through the experience? What are you seeing as far as the
analytics and metrics around this?
Terry: It’s a good question. And
I think the best answer I can give you is there’s no
one-size-fits-all answer. I think in training, one of the best
metrics you can get is… I’ll give you one of my favorite points. I
think it’s PIXO VR, they are doing some of the best of the safety
training, like first responders training, firefighters training. And
it’s something that’s simply really difficult and dangerous to
experience in real life. So success here is just having the
experience, they’re building this amazing cinematic experience, which
is exciting. It’s really literally like being in a movie. But it’s
useful. It’s saving lives, because you’ve got a better team. They are
better trained. You can’t train those people like this in real life
because you would be putting their lives in danger. And because
they’re better trained, they’re saving more lives. So that’s one of
the best ROI use case I can give you. Quite literally, because you
were able to be trained in a simulated dangerous environment,
realistically, you know how to handle those situations. You get all
of the experience that you would build a lifetime of being in danger.
And that’s allowing you to save lives. That’s all the ROI you can
get.
Alan: When you put it that way.
I mean, what’s the ROI on a life? The last podcast I did today was
with Dr. Walter Greenleaf, and Dr. Greenleaf has been in this
industry for 33 years, talking about the medical use cases. He kind
of broke it down into five key parts: training, assessment,
intervention, health and wellness, and then the democratization of
care. As we move to more precision medicine and proactive medicine,
VR stands to create unlimited potential for people in underserved
areas.
That’s medical; when you take it to
education, it can unlock the full true democratisation of learning,
globally.
Terry: Absolutely. You know
what? We did have a case — I have to pay attention to what I can
tell you about it — but we did have a case two weeks ago of a
company in medical, working on this training for medical, and that
they want to deploy in developing countries. So Latin America,
Eastern Europe, Asia, and basically it’s about training medical
personnel, and they’ve got tons of problems to do so, because right
now it’s a physical training. So it’s costing a fortune, and you need
to physically move people all around the planet, literally. And then
you also need to work with the local people. But they keep changing,
so you don’t know of their standards. And sometimes you need to have
them rise to your own standards in order to deliver good training, as
opposed to VR where you can get it right once and then make sure
everyone gets the right content. It’s infinitely cheaper to send to
experience once again, yeah, of course.
Alan: One of the things that I
keep thinking; my kids are in grade school, and one’s in high school
now. And if you think about the teachers that are there — they’re
wonderful people — but by no means are they the world’s expert in
anything they’re teaching. And being able to harness the best
possible trainer every time, that’s essential. And I think that’s
really what STRIVR’s doing well, as well. They’re a company based in
San Francisco that’s doing virtual reality training, and they’re able
to capture the best trainers and spread them across the entire
enterprise. Whereas before the best trainer, maybe you could train
20, 30 people at a time or maybe a couple of hundred throughout a
year. But when you’re talking thousand employees, it’s just not
scalable. You can’t send somebody on a plane to visit every employee.
But in VR, you’re just setting a headset.
Terry: Absolutely.
Alan: So what industries are you
seeing that are using this the most?
Terry: Right now, I would say
we’re seeing obviously the most traction is coming from training.
It’s coming from medical. It’s coming from marketing as well. But
marketing is a different beast, because whereas in training and in
medical it’s really about – again — solving those mission critical
problems. In marketing, often it’s more into nice-to-have cool
experiences, so you see trends. For instance, VR for trade shows was
a huge trend two years ago. And this winter we had like the big AR
craze; AR everything. But that’s a big one. That’s still a very big
one.
Not so big ones: travel, real estate–
like, real estate, surprisingly, what we see is that the obvious case
study — it’s selling your house; I want to see the house. I want to
be in the house. VR technology of presence being the house. No
brainer, right? Well, actually, no. And people in real estate right
now, they’re focused on interactive, meaning that the interactive
part of the VR is great. And so interactive presentation of condos,
building developments, and on a large number of platforms. So you
want to show them in your big interactive screen, a table, in a sales
center or you want to have it on your iPhone or iPad, obviously, and
you want to do the VR.
But like, for instance, I talk with
some companies as it is. I’ve got the whole range of services, from
the interactive screens to iPad to VR. And what they see in terms of
use is that… for instance, the sales people on the move, on the go,
will use more iPad or will use more Bigtable, because you can connect
with several people at the same time, convenience, conviviality,
being able to have several– like, me and my wife looking at the
screen, at the same thing, at the same time. So VR is cool, but it’s
like this one thing that you’re doing, but then you fall back to iPad
because it’s more practical.
Alan: VR headsets are dropping
in price. But it still comes down to the fact that every single
person has a phone in their pocket.
Terry: Exactly.
Alan: Just from a scale
perspective, being able to use AR technology on a mobile device, and
the stat that I keep reading is there’ll be over two billion
smartphones that are AR enabled by the end of. This year. That’s real
scale.
Terry: [chuckles] Yep.
Alan: If we’re looking at mobile
phone-based things, what are some of the coolest things you’ve seen
on mobile phone-based AR? I just saw one the other day that was, you
could put the Space Shuttle in your backyard in real size.
Terry: You do have a lot of AR
apps at the moment. Let me think. Well, I’m a big fan of the try-ons.
Alan: Yeah, I love it. I wrote a
whole article on this.
Terry: Yeah, I saw it, and I
like, for instance, at AWE, there was this company and the CEO was
basically barefoot for the whole show — not kidding — because he
was doing a demo of their iPhone try-on and for some reason they
needed to not have shoes. [laughs] And so you take your phone and you
see your sneakers. You can select the colors and everything. And I
must say, it’s a really compelling experience, because when you’re
buying shoes online, you never really know — especially the designs,
the colors or whatever — seeing it on you like this, it’s much more
than gimmick; it’s really useful.
Alan: Yeah. No. You’re
absolutely right, and I think Google just rolled out this virtual
try-ons right in the Google Lens and everybody’s starting to work on
it, which is pretty interesting. There’s a whole bunch. There’s
makeup, watches, shoes, glasses, hats, beards — see what a beard
looks like on you.
Terry: I was talking to also —
it’s funny; the same week of AWE, I was talking to a partner, and she
was getting engaged, and I told her about the try-ons. And so she was
super excited about the jewellery try-ons. And she’s obviously a
woman. And she was like, “oh, my God, you can try and you can
see on your iPhone. And, wow, I need your address. Send me your
address like right now.” Once again, it all comes down to the
case study. She doesn’t care it’s AR or VR; she gets what she gets
out of it.
Alan: Exactly. And it’s
interesting you pointed it out, because Snapchat uses AR all the time
and for everything, for face filters and real world filters and stuff
like this. But nowhere do they mention the words “augmented
reality.”
Terry: Yeah. But, you know, I
think it’s one of those things… I really liked an analogy of the
world of AR and VR right now. And it was like, you know what? I think
we’re kind of the Web, circa 2003 or something, when people were
building websites. And back in 2003, when you were asking someone,
it’s like, “what are you doing?” “Well, I’m doing a dot
com.” “What is your website? What is it doing?” “We don’t
care so much. I have a website; it’s amazing!”
Alan: “What do you mean? I
do AR!”
Terry: Exactly! You see where
I’m going. And now it’s kind of the same like “hey, I’m doing
VR!” “Yeah, but what are you doing?” “Yeah, I don’t
care so much, but I’m doing VR,” or “I’m doing AR!” And at
the end of the day now, yeah, of course you have a website. Amazing.
Extraordinary. Everyone has a website. We don’t care about the
website. We care about what’s going on on the website.
Alan: Exactly. By the way, if
anybody is listening to this and wants to learn, we have a website!
Terry: Alan, we have two
websites.
Alan: Oooohh! What are your
websites? You have virtualrealitymarketing.com; what’s the other one?
Terry: Virtualrealitymarketing.com.
And we have uberealagency.com, and that’s the consulting for studios.
So two fully-functional websites.
Alan: Holy moly! You are way
ahead of the game! [laughs] We also have our pitch for XR Ignite,
which is actually in VR and AR as well. Through a platform called
VRAVO.
Terry: And that’s something
that’s very interesting I’d like to pick on, is that I find that one
of the best ways to evangelize about AR and VR is actually using
it.
Alan: You think?
Terry: Yeah. But, you know, it’s
so funny in what we do, it’s all about the simple things. But so many
people overlook the simple. Everyone is like, “AR and VR, it’s so
amazing and everything.” You know what? How about we actually use
it? One of our clients, they are this Finland company called Glue and
they’ve got this amazing remote presence tech. And they really strive
to do their meetings in Glue with their tech.
Alan: Yeah, yeah. Kalle
was on our show.
Terry: Oh, OK. So, yeah, you
know them. Small world. But things are amazing. I think what’s out
there is beautiful. I had a blast playing with the tech at AWE. AWE
was the place to be this year.
Alan: It was amazing. There was,
I think, 6,000 people they said this year?
Terry: I don’t know, but you
felt like everyone was there.
Alan: By far and away, it is
probably the most important VR/AR conference in the world. Mainly
focused on augmented reality, but–
Terry: A lot of VR as well.
Alan: When I was there I said to
somebody, “if this building collapses, the entire VR industry is
gone.”
Terry: Exactly.
Alan: This year I ran the
startup track, and I did a panel on supercharging your marketing,
actually, with the head of XR for Nestle, Richard, and Mohammed from
Macy’s, and Jason
Yim from Trigger Global. And there was one more I can remember
off my head. But yeah, it was really amazing. This year was just a
beautiful experience, getting to meet you and seeing what you think
of all my friends. It was really cool.
Terry: Yeah. Ours was the same.
We’ve got clients everywhere. In the US, in Europe, as far back as
Finland. And you’re on the floor, and you have everyone. And you–
all those people that you connect on the phone away from everything,
you can shake hands again. And just that was– And most importantly,
the density of smart, talented, dedicated, passionate people. The
density of conversations that you have, really interesting
conversations. You turn your back and, “Oh, yeah. So we are
doing this and that.” That was amazing.
Alan: Yeah. Every single person
you met was doing something revolutionary.
Terry: Exactly.
Alan: I got home and it took me
three days to write my post report.
Terry: [laughs] I’m surprised.
Alan: Yeah, I met over 100
people in this short amount of time. So anybody listening, go to
Augmented World Expo. It’s definitely worth going to next year. And I
think there’s another one in Europe, as well.
Terry: There is one in Europe, I
think like Q3, like September or something.
Alan: And then there’s a VR Days
in Amsterdam as well, which is coming up, I think in October, I’ll be
speaking at that. And that one’s another great one.
So let’s get back to use cases for a
second, because one of the things that I’m starting to see — and
maybe you’re seeing it as well — is, like the virtual try-ons, we’re
starting to move over to more utilitarian use cases of this
technology. One of them that I thought was really cool was, I believe
it’s Dulux, the paint company. They figured out how to segment your
walls. You can put your phone on the wall and change the paint colors
and they look real depending even on the lighting that’s in your
room. So you can see it in the daylight and see what it looks like,
and then see it at night. Being able to do that, that’s an impressive
use case.
Terry: You’re talking about
something really important right there. Back when VR really started
in 2015-16, everybody was super focused on entertainment, games, and
all the things you can do with it. And I’m not saying games are
uninteresting. You can do plenty of things with games and everything.
But the business side of things was, “it’s business; it’s
boring.” Turns out, right now the most successful companies in
VR tend to be solving mission-critical problems for their clients and
business, so a lot of those utilitarian cases. And what we like best
— what I personally liked best — is that you can do smart and you
can do sexy, if you want to. Meaning that, you can be utilitarian,
but especially with VR, you can do it in an exciting and engaging and
just cool way. And that’s great, because the cooler or the more
exciting your utilitarian app is going to be, the more people will
want to use it, the more it is going to solve problem for plenty of
people. We want more of that, and there’s money doing that.
Alan: Yeah, absolutely. The
Triple A gaming market is what people expect now. They expect that
level of quality. So we have to — everybody, the whole industry —
has to step up their game to create experiences that not only solve
problems, but wow people.
What is the most important thing
businesses can do right now to leveraging the power of XR? What would
you recommend as their first step?
Terry: Very simple. It’s the
same first step for everything: it’s get started now. It’s
always about the simple next step you can do to get started and for a
lot of people — especially with XR — it’s very intimidating. We’ve
talked about this many times. And no matter where the company is, now
we live in this world where it’s not so much about “eh, XR. Is
it a fad? This is going to go.” It’s here to stay. And no matter
what you do, it’s going to probably help your business.
So now it’s all about, you know, get
started. Get your hands dirty. Build a project, doesn’t have to
be big. And build your own understanding and experience, fully
understand the impact, the ROI, the benefits for your company.
Because it’s not going to be the same as for this other company, this
other [garbled]. So it’s all about you. And become smarter, become
more efficient through VR and then you repeat the process. And with
each new step, you get bigger and more ambitious, but it’s all about
the first step. Get started.
Alan: That’s some great advice.
So, last question: What problem in the world do you want to see
solved using XR technologies?
Terry: We did talk a lot about
training and I’m going to talk again about training and education. I
think VR is great at helping people understand the world better and
understand others better. And I also think that, on the other hand,
ignorance is often the root of fear. And knowledge and understanding
is often helping to connect with people, and I think that right now
in this world we could use more of that.
View all episodes
By Alan Smithson from MetaVRse
4.5
1212 ratings
Don’t let his
impressive stature fool you; Virtual Reality Marketing CEO Terry
Proto knows that, in an industry where there’s a ton of use cases and
many roles to fill, it doesn’t hurt to be small. Heck, it usually
pays to be! Terry joins Alan in a chat about how companies can best
find their niche in the XR realm.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is the
one and only: Terry Proto. He’s the CEO of Virtual Reality Marketing.
Terry is an award winning digital imaging and digital games producer.
He has over 15 years of production and sales experience in the US,
Europe and Asia. And he’s been creating images since the very first
version of 3D Studio back in the 90s, and has evolved over the years
working on myriad projects, including agency work and other products
and project endeavors. In a previous life, he struggled with getting
clients and visibility consistently for his own creative studio,
despite the quality of his work. And after connecting with a lot of
CEOs in the XR space, he realized that his problem was a widespread
problem. So for the past two years, Terry and his team have been on a
mission to help studios and brands better connect for everyone’s
benefit. To learn more about his company, Virtual Reality
Marketing.com, go to virtualrealitymarketing.com. It is my absolute
pleasure to welcome Terry to the show.
Welcome to the show, Terry.
Terry: Hey, Alan. Well, thank
you very much. I love the intro. It’s really an honor to be on your
podcast today.
Alan: Thank you. It’s such an
honor to have you on the podcast. I know we finally got to meet in
person for the first time at AWE — Augmented World Expo — what,
about three weeks ago now?
Terry: Yeah. We connect with so
many people, and it’s all digital and it’s all remote. So it truly
feels good to shake someone’s hand now. [chuckles]
Alan: I got a hug from you,
which was awesome.
Terry: [laughs] Exactly.
Alan: You are a very strong man.
I don’t know if you’re benchpressing Volkswagens in your spare time,
but those of you who know Terry; he’s a very large, solid dude. Not
just in physical stature, but in mindfulness and everything. And his
passion shows through in the work that he does. I really want to
start digging into that. So tell us about Virtual Reality Marketing,
and talk about how you got into this.
Terry: I think you nailed it in
the intro. It really started with my problem as a producer. And you
know, when you’re a producer, you’re in your own silo and you’re
working on those products and you’ve got your clients, your team,
you’re flying around for business meetings and events. And you
connect with people, but it’s more superficial. And when I stopped
being a producer, I took a step back and I started talking to a lot
of people. And that’s when I realized that my problem was — I
wouldn’t say everyone’s problem, but very common problem — and I
looked around and I couldn’t find a solution for myself for years.
And I figured it would be time to hack all this and solve this for
everyone.
Alan: So what is the solution
that Virtual Reality Marketing is doing? You’re connecting agencies
and big brands with studios. Is that correct?
Terry: Yeah, exactly. Simply
put, Virtual Reality Marketing, we’re the most comprehensive
directory of AR, VR, 360 studios. And we are also focusing on
building the largest XR case studies library. Right now we’re close
to 150 on the site, and we are on track to have 500 by next year. The
problem that we try to tackle is that… I like to analogize, I like
to say that VR is an hydra, as in it as many heads, and you don’t
know what to do with this thing. And VR is still very much a unicorn,
as in everybody talks about it, but few people have actually seen it.
And that’s where we come in. So on one hand, we have brands and
advertisers and anyone who’s interested in XR, to get involved in
immersives. At this point, those guys realized they need to get
involved, but they don’t know where to start. And it’s difficult for
them to find partners they can trust. And when you’re spending, I
don’t know, $50,000 on a budget for XR project, you want to make sure
you’re spending your money at the right place.
Alan: Agreed. That’s one of the
problems that we are trying to solve with this very podcast.
Terry: Exactly.
Alan: Let’s unpack that. If
you’re a brand that wants to start using virtual augmented reality
for marketing, what’s the first thing that you would recommend to
them?
Terry: Well, the first thing is,
get informed. It’s knowing about the studios. And that’s the focus we
have on the case studies right now. It’s all about this. It’s like,
say, I’m a brand or a company because it works for… say I’m a
training company, and I’m working in medical. And I want to build
this project. I don’t know if it’s possible. I had the case literally
last week. Clients are coming, they’re like, “Hey, we’ve got
this idea. We don’t know if it’s possible. Is it realistic? Is it
unrealistic?” So, first step: looking for the case studies of
what are people doing around us. And right now, it’s not like two
years ago. We’re in this world where we have the case studies. We
have the experience. We can demonstrate the ROI. We can demonstrate
the benefits. And we’re collecting all of this information to share
it easily. So short answer to your question: first step, see the
relevant case studies in your industry, it’s going to inspire you,
and answer tons of questions. Start from there.
Alan: I just noticed — I was
scrolling through the site as you were talking — and one of the
companies that we invested in, 3D Food And Drink, is on there.
Terry: Yeah, so… [laughs] It’s
one of the cool things of what we do. It’s like I said, we connect
with so many people and then we are like, I’m talking with you and
you’re like, “Hey, this is our product.” And I’m like, “Oh,
wow, we didn’t even know about it, but great.” That’s the whole
point. I love when I hear that. It means we’re doing a great job.
Alan: So how do you monetize?
What is your business model?
Terry: In terms of business
model, we really do two things. On one hand, we have the content
creators. We have them connect with studios. So we have them through
the websites. We can give them more visibility through the website
with several packages, share more content, be on top of the list
beyond the home page. We have also a consulting offer, where we can
dive deep with a studio. It’s not for everyone. It’s for select
studios who are solving mission-critical problems for their clients.
There, we can build an advanced lead-generation strategy, connect
with a large number of leads. It’s really basically taking all of
your business developments and we’re handling this for you, starting
from the strategy, all the way to the living leads to the studios.
For brands and advertisers, it’s really
all about connecting with relevant companies they can trust. We’ve
got brands, advertisers — again, anyone interested in using AR and
VR — connecting with us and saying, “we’ve got this project. We
don’t even know if it’s realistic or not. But tell us.” And
based on what they share with us, we can make a recommendation of,
those are the right studios that you want to work with, because
they’ve got the track record; because they’ve got the expertise;
because they’ve got the portfolio. And then we work on commission for
the recommendations.
Alan: Ok. That’s pretty awesome.
What about companies that are just starting out? How do the smaller
studios and startups start to build that book of business and case
study library?
Terry: That’s a good question.
And you know what? It’s still a world of small VR companies. So the
first thing I should say is, it’s OK to be small. I know we’ve been
small for a long time and in France — so not in the US — and we’ve
kind of got that small company complex. It’s okay. It’s okay to be
small. There are so many things to do in this industry. Everyone is
starting, and you need to start somewhere. The most important [thing]
is focus and relevance. You don’t want to be everything for everyone.
“The jack of all trades, master of none?” That’s something you
see a lot in VR. You want to focus on one problem and become the
expert at solving this problem for your clients with AR, VR and other
tech, you don’t need to restrict yourself to VR. Actually, the most
successful companies are integrating VR into a larger vision.
Alan: What would an example of
that be?
Terry: Location-based
entertainment. You have your VR experience, and it’s the center and
the core experience. But at the same time, you’re selling t-shirts
and you’re selling drinks, which is completely low-tech and has
nothing to do with VR. But it’s okay for your clients. If it’s Friday
night and I want to go with my friends for some high-tech
entertainment, and I start to do a laser tag and then I’m going to do
VR. And then it’s Friday, so we’re going to have drinks. And the
experience was cool, so I’m gonna get a t-shirt and gift it to my
friends. It’s a holistic experience. It’s not just about VR. It’s
about them, what they get from it.
Alan: I’ve seen a lot of
location based entertainment facilities where they just set up some
small square rooms with a VIVE in it. And that’s great. But what
really blew me away was when I was in Dubai at VR Park, and they
built the whole experience around each activity. So it may be the
same VIVE as you would play in a small 10×10 room. But for example,
the John Wick VR experience, and there’s like a bank vault and you’re
actually going into a physical set. People don’t think about that
when they’re setting up these experiences. And I think it’s really
important to just get everybody really excited about this technology
before they put it on their heads. And it just adds to the whole
allure of it.
Terry: Exactly, exactly. It’s
not just about VR. It’s about the overall experience and the overall
service for your clients. And it works everywhere. You’ve got this LB
example, but you have your training example on the other side of the
spectrum, where you’re training people. And what matters is that they
get the best experience, so some of the information you will want to
have on iPhone and iPad. Some of the reporting you will want to have
on the Web and some of the most expensive, most complicated, most
dangerous experiences you will want to do in VR. But again, it’s a
whole. And it’s not just VR. It’s also everything else.
Alan: Yeah, absolutely. So in
the last month, what’s the best virtual reality or augmented reality
marketing experience that you’ve seen?
Terry: Ok. So, you know, in our
case, our job is to pretty much see all of them, at least as much as
possible. So it’s really a difficult question for me to answer
because I have to pick one.
Alan: That’s why I picked the
question!
Terry: [laughs] But if I have to
pick one, I’ll give you… for instance, I tend to prefer the ones
that are smart, and fun, and really solve a problem. So in the last
few weeks, we got this experience from a Brazilian studio, VZ Lab,
and it’s the VR vaccine experience. And I love it because it’s clever
and funny and it’s solving a real problem. It’s the problem of
vaccination with children. Huge problem for the parents; they’re
fighting with the children. And the children, some of them are
literally traumatized by the things, they’re crying. Problem with the
nurses, because you have to deal with conflict day in and day out.
Long story short, the studio created
this experience, which is synced with what the nurse is doing in real
time. So for the children, they are plunged into this immersive
adventure all in 3D, it’s beautiful. And they’re going to be given a
shield. The children is being warned that he’s gonna be bitten by
something and it’s gonna be okay. And in real time, the nurse is
doing the injection. It works like a charm. It’s beautiful. And you
ask the children, they’re like, “oh, my God, that was amazing. I
loved it.” No cries. No screams. No nothing. And it’s 180
degrees of something that is a huge problem for everyone. And it’s
been turned into a fun, cool experience. It’s incredible.
Alan: My daughter, she’s 11, and
she is literally terrified of needles.
Terry: Like I said; smart, fun,
really solving a problem. It’s great. But just to give you another
one, on the other end of the spectrum. Children again. So this one
not as glamorous, but super useful. This time we’re talking about a
therapeutic training tool and it’s about understanding the changes in
the brain of a child who was suffered childhood trauma. And I think
this one is built by UK studio, Ignition. And basically you’re living
the experience through the eyes of the child, and you see your
parents fighting, and the isolation, and the tears and everything.
And in the meantime, it’s superimposed with the brain activity and
you see how the brain is being restructured in real time, based on
the experiences the child has lived.
Alan: Wow.
Terry: And you get a different
brain. So it’s really understanding and showing you how every little
detail in your family life is impacting your children and how to
change those behaviors, because especially when you’re young, the
brain is plastic. And those are very strong connections that are
really difficult. Or nearly impossible, I should say. So, another
great one.
Alan: They’re on such wide
spectrums of the technology. One of the things that I think is it is
an issue with our industry in general — and I think maybe you can
address this — is these are great experiences, but how are companies
measuring the success of these? Are they doing it through earned
media captures? Are they doing it through number of people that
they’ve put through the experience? What are you seeing as far as the
analytics and metrics around this?
Terry: It’s a good question. And
I think the best answer I can give you is there’s no
one-size-fits-all answer. I think in training, one of the best
metrics you can get is… I’ll give you one of my favorite points. I
think it’s PIXO VR, they are doing some of the best of the safety
training, like first responders training, firefighters training. And
it’s something that’s simply really difficult and dangerous to
experience in real life. So success here is just having the
experience, they’re building this amazing cinematic experience, which
is exciting. It’s really literally like being in a movie. But it’s
useful. It’s saving lives, because you’ve got a better team. They are
better trained. You can’t train those people like this in real life
because you would be putting their lives in danger. And because
they’re better trained, they’re saving more lives. So that’s one of
the best ROI use case I can give you. Quite literally, because you
were able to be trained in a simulated dangerous environment,
realistically, you know how to handle those situations. You get all
of the experience that you would build a lifetime of being in danger.
And that’s allowing you to save lives. That’s all the ROI you can
get.
Alan: When you put it that way.
I mean, what’s the ROI on a life? The last podcast I did today was
with Dr. Walter Greenleaf, and Dr. Greenleaf has been in this
industry for 33 years, talking about the medical use cases. He kind
of broke it down into five key parts: training, assessment,
intervention, health and wellness, and then the democratization of
care. As we move to more precision medicine and proactive medicine,
VR stands to create unlimited potential for people in underserved
areas.
That’s medical; when you take it to
education, it can unlock the full true democratisation of learning,
globally.
Terry: Absolutely. You know
what? We did have a case — I have to pay attention to what I can
tell you about it — but we did have a case two weeks ago of a
company in medical, working on this training for medical, and that
they want to deploy in developing countries. So Latin America,
Eastern Europe, Asia, and basically it’s about training medical
personnel, and they’ve got tons of problems to do so, because right
now it’s a physical training. So it’s costing a fortune, and you need
to physically move people all around the planet, literally. And then
you also need to work with the local people. But they keep changing,
so you don’t know of their standards. And sometimes you need to have
them rise to your own standards in order to deliver good training, as
opposed to VR where you can get it right once and then make sure
everyone gets the right content. It’s infinitely cheaper to send to
experience once again, yeah, of course.
Alan: One of the things that I
keep thinking; my kids are in grade school, and one’s in high school
now. And if you think about the teachers that are there — they’re
wonderful people — but by no means are they the world’s expert in
anything they’re teaching. And being able to harness the best
possible trainer every time, that’s essential. And I think that’s
really what STRIVR’s doing well, as well. They’re a company based in
San Francisco that’s doing virtual reality training, and they’re able
to capture the best trainers and spread them across the entire
enterprise. Whereas before the best trainer, maybe you could train
20, 30 people at a time or maybe a couple of hundred throughout a
year. But when you’re talking thousand employees, it’s just not
scalable. You can’t send somebody on a plane to visit every employee.
But in VR, you’re just setting a headset.
Terry: Absolutely.
Alan: So what industries are you
seeing that are using this the most?
Terry: Right now, I would say
we’re seeing obviously the most traction is coming from training.
It’s coming from medical. It’s coming from marketing as well. But
marketing is a different beast, because whereas in training and in
medical it’s really about – again — solving those mission critical
problems. In marketing, often it’s more into nice-to-have cool
experiences, so you see trends. For instance, VR for trade shows was
a huge trend two years ago. And this winter we had like the big AR
craze; AR everything. But that’s a big one. That’s still a very big
one.
Not so big ones: travel, real estate–
like, real estate, surprisingly, what we see is that the obvious case
study — it’s selling your house; I want to see the house. I want to
be in the house. VR technology of presence being the house. No
brainer, right? Well, actually, no. And people in real estate right
now, they’re focused on interactive, meaning that the interactive
part of the VR is great. And so interactive presentation of condos,
building developments, and on a large number of platforms. So you
want to show them in your big interactive screen, a table, in a sales
center or you want to have it on your iPhone or iPad, obviously, and
you want to do the VR.
But like, for instance, I talk with
some companies as it is. I’ve got the whole range of services, from
the interactive screens to iPad to VR. And what they see in terms of
use is that… for instance, the sales people on the move, on the go,
will use more iPad or will use more Bigtable, because you can connect
with several people at the same time, convenience, conviviality,
being able to have several– like, me and my wife looking at the
screen, at the same thing, at the same time. So VR is cool, but it’s
like this one thing that you’re doing, but then you fall back to iPad
because it’s more practical.
Alan: VR headsets are dropping
in price. But it still comes down to the fact that every single
person has a phone in their pocket.
Terry: Exactly.
Alan: Just from a scale
perspective, being able to use AR technology on a mobile device, and
the stat that I keep reading is there’ll be over two billion
smartphones that are AR enabled by the end of. This year. That’s real
scale.
Terry: [chuckles] Yep.
Alan: If we’re looking at mobile
phone-based things, what are some of the coolest things you’ve seen
on mobile phone-based AR? I just saw one the other day that was, you
could put the Space Shuttle in your backyard in real size.
Terry: You do have a lot of AR
apps at the moment. Let me think. Well, I’m a big fan of the try-ons.
Alan: Yeah, I love it. I wrote a
whole article on this.
Terry: Yeah, I saw it, and I
like, for instance, at AWE, there was this company and the CEO was
basically barefoot for the whole show — not kidding — because he
was doing a demo of their iPhone try-on and for some reason they
needed to not have shoes. [laughs] And so you take your phone and you
see your sneakers. You can select the colors and everything. And I
must say, it’s a really compelling experience, because when you’re
buying shoes online, you never really know — especially the designs,
the colors or whatever — seeing it on you like this, it’s much more
than gimmick; it’s really useful.
Alan: Yeah. No. You’re
absolutely right, and I think Google just rolled out this virtual
try-ons right in the Google Lens and everybody’s starting to work on
it, which is pretty interesting. There’s a whole bunch. There’s
makeup, watches, shoes, glasses, hats, beards — see what a beard
looks like on you.
Terry: I was talking to also —
it’s funny; the same week of AWE, I was talking to a partner, and she
was getting engaged, and I told her about the try-ons. And so she was
super excited about the jewellery try-ons. And she’s obviously a
woman. And she was like, “oh, my God, you can try and you can
see on your iPhone. And, wow, I need your address. Send me your
address like right now.” Once again, it all comes down to the
case study. She doesn’t care it’s AR or VR; she gets what she gets
out of it.
Alan: Exactly. And it’s
interesting you pointed it out, because Snapchat uses AR all the time
and for everything, for face filters and real world filters and stuff
like this. But nowhere do they mention the words “augmented
reality.”
Terry: Yeah. But, you know, I
think it’s one of those things… I really liked an analogy of the
world of AR and VR right now. And it was like, you know what? I think
we’re kind of the Web, circa 2003 or something, when people were
building websites. And back in 2003, when you were asking someone,
it’s like, “what are you doing?” “Well, I’m doing a dot
com.” “What is your website? What is it doing?” “We don’t
care so much. I have a website; it’s amazing!”
Alan: “What do you mean? I
do AR!”
Terry: Exactly! You see where
I’m going. And now it’s kind of the same like “hey, I’m doing
VR!” “Yeah, but what are you doing?” “Yeah, I don’t
care so much, but I’m doing VR,” or “I’m doing AR!” And at
the end of the day now, yeah, of course you have a website. Amazing.
Extraordinary. Everyone has a website. We don’t care about the
website. We care about what’s going on on the website.
Alan: Exactly. By the way, if
anybody is listening to this and wants to learn, we have a website!
Terry: Alan, we have two
websites.
Alan: Oooohh! What are your
websites? You have virtualrealitymarketing.com; what’s the other one?
Terry: Virtualrealitymarketing.com.
And we have uberealagency.com, and that’s the consulting for studios.
So two fully-functional websites.
Alan: Holy moly! You are way
ahead of the game! [laughs] We also have our pitch for XR Ignite,
which is actually in VR and AR as well. Through a platform called
VRAVO.
Terry: And that’s something
that’s very interesting I’d like to pick on, is that I find that one
of the best ways to evangelize about AR and VR is actually using
it.
Alan: You think?
Terry: Yeah. But, you know, it’s
so funny in what we do, it’s all about the simple things. But so many
people overlook the simple. Everyone is like, “AR and VR, it’s so
amazing and everything.” You know what? How about we actually use
it? One of our clients, they are this Finland company called Glue and
they’ve got this amazing remote presence tech. And they really strive
to do their meetings in Glue with their tech.
Alan: Yeah, yeah. Kalle
was on our show.
Terry: Oh, OK. So, yeah, you
know them. Small world. But things are amazing. I think what’s out
there is beautiful. I had a blast playing with the tech at AWE. AWE
was the place to be this year.
Alan: It was amazing. There was,
I think, 6,000 people they said this year?
Terry: I don’t know, but you
felt like everyone was there.
Alan: By far and away, it is
probably the most important VR/AR conference in the world. Mainly
focused on augmented reality, but–
Terry: A lot of VR as well.
Alan: When I was there I said to
somebody, “if this building collapses, the entire VR industry is
gone.”
Terry: Exactly.
Alan: This year I ran the
startup track, and I did a panel on supercharging your marketing,
actually, with the head of XR for Nestle, Richard, and Mohammed from
Macy’s, and Jason
Yim from Trigger Global. And there was one more I can remember
off my head. But yeah, it was really amazing. This year was just a
beautiful experience, getting to meet you and seeing what you think
of all my friends. It was really cool.
Terry: Yeah. Ours was the same.
We’ve got clients everywhere. In the US, in Europe, as far back as
Finland. And you’re on the floor, and you have everyone. And you–
all those people that you connect on the phone away from everything,
you can shake hands again. And just that was– And most importantly,
the density of smart, talented, dedicated, passionate people. The
density of conversations that you have, really interesting
conversations. You turn your back and, “Oh, yeah. So we are
doing this and that.” That was amazing.
Alan: Yeah. Every single person
you met was doing something revolutionary.
Terry: Exactly.
Alan: I got home and it took me
three days to write my post report.
Terry: [laughs] I’m surprised.
Alan: Yeah, I met over 100
people in this short amount of time. So anybody listening, go to
Augmented World Expo. It’s definitely worth going to next year. And I
think there’s another one in Europe, as well.
Terry: There is one in Europe, I
think like Q3, like September or something.
Alan: And then there’s a VR Days
in Amsterdam as well, which is coming up, I think in October, I’ll be
speaking at that. And that one’s another great one.
So let’s get back to use cases for a
second, because one of the things that I’m starting to see — and
maybe you’re seeing it as well — is, like the virtual try-ons, we’re
starting to move over to more utilitarian use cases of this
technology. One of them that I thought was really cool was, I believe
it’s Dulux, the paint company. They figured out how to segment your
walls. You can put your phone on the wall and change the paint colors
and they look real depending even on the lighting that’s in your
room. So you can see it in the daylight and see what it looks like,
and then see it at night. Being able to do that, that’s an impressive
use case.
Terry: You’re talking about
something really important right there. Back when VR really started
in 2015-16, everybody was super focused on entertainment, games, and
all the things you can do with it. And I’m not saying games are
uninteresting. You can do plenty of things with games and everything.
But the business side of things was, “it’s business; it’s
boring.” Turns out, right now the most successful companies in
VR tend to be solving mission-critical problems for their clients and
business, so a lot of those utilitarian cases. And what we like best
— what I personally liked best — is that you can do smart and you
can do sexy, if you want to. Meaning that, you can be utilitarian,
but especially with VR, you can do it in an exciting and engaging and
just cool way. And that’s great, because the cooler or the more
exciting your utilitarian app is going to be, the more people will
want to use it, the more it is going to solve problem for plenty of
people. We want more of that, and there’s money doing that.
Alan: Yeah, absolutely. The
Triple A gaming market is what people expect now. They expect that
level of quality. So we have to — everybody, the whole industry —
has to step up their game to create experiences that not only solve
problems, but wow people.
What is the most important thing
businesses can do right now to leveraging the power of XR? What would
you recommend as their first step?
Terry: Very simple. It’s the
same first step for everything: it’s get started now. It’s
always about the simple next step you can do to get started and for a
lot of people — especially with XR — it’s very intimidating. We’ve
talked about this many times. And no matter where the company is, now
we live in this world where it’s not so much about “eh, XR. Is
it a fad? This is going to go.” It’s here to stay. And no matter
what you do, it’s going to probably help your business.
So now it’s all about, you know, get
started. Get your hands dirty. Build a project, doesn’t have to
be big. And build your own understanding and experience, fully
understand the impact, the ROI, the benefits for your company.
Because it’s not going to be the same as for this other company, this
other [garbled]. So it’s all about you. And become smarter, become
more efficient through VR and then you repeat the process. And with
each new step, you get bigger and more ambitious, but it’s all about
the first step. Get started.
Alan: That’s some great advice.
So, last question: What problem in the world do you want to see
solved using XR technologies?
Terry: We did talk a lot about
training and I’m going to talk again about training and education. I
think VR is great at helping people understand the world better and
understand others better. And I also think that, on the other hand,
ignorance is often the root of fear. And knowledge and understanding
is often helping to connect with people, and I think that right now
in this world we could use more of that.