VR Events and VR for Marketing - OneBonsai

There’s no denying it: Extended reality has become a significant part of doing business in the 21st century. Today, VR training is near-ubiquitous among companies looking to make their training processes as efficient as possible. VR meetings and prototyping have thrived in enterprise settings, as well. Taking all that into account, the worldwide net economic benefits of VR and AR could reach $1.5 trillion by 2030.

Still, there’s one other VR use case your enterprise should know about—namely, VR events and marketing. Adding virtual and augmented reality to your overall marketing strategy can make your promotional efforts more immersive (and more effective) than ever before. Keep reading for a closer look at the benefits of VR marketing (and a few real-life examples of what this cutting-edge marketing method can look like in practice).

The Benefits of VR Marketing

Understanding the basics of VR marketing is easy enough—this term describes any marketing campaign that incorporates virtual reality technology in some way. Beyond that, it’s crucial to know a few concrete reasons why VR events are worth the investment. By prioritizing VR events and marketing, your company can:

Deliver Total Immersion

Immersion is VR’s signature feature, and it should come as no surprise to learn that this makes it a highly effective marketing tool. When potential customers put on a VR headset, they’re no longer in the “real world.” Instead, they can fully engage with a digital world of your creation, all but eliminating potential distractions in the process.

Get a Head Start on Marketing Trends

As of the 2020s, VR is no longer the “technology of the future”—instead, extended reality is a present-day reality. Even so, virtual reality is one of the newest marketing platforms available to today’s businesses. If you want to stand out from the competition while grabbing consumers’ attention in a big way, VR marketing can help.

Make Personal Connections

One of the best things about VR experiences is that they don’t have to be “one-size-fits-all.” Instead, you can fully personalize your VR events to fit the needs and interests of different audiences.

VR Events and Marketing Case Studies

At OneBonsai, we excel at creating industry-leading XR training solutions. On top of that, we’ve put our skills to use to deliver several memorable, engaging VR events and marketing experiences. Some of our most prominent accomplishments in this field include:

MSC Crane Simulator

Trade show booths are an excellent place to utilize VR marketing, just ask MSC, which hired OneBonsai to create a virtual crane simulator for their booth. This project had some overlap with our training solutions, as it had to deliver a certain level of realism. However, that wasn’t MSC’s only goal for the simulator, it also needed to be entertaining and accessible enough to engage visitors without a technical background.

In the finished product, visitors to MSC’s booth could sit in a harbor crane and control it with a joystick, just like they would in real life. Visitors who had never worked with heavy equipment in their lives gained a better understanding of what MSC does from this experience, giving the company a perfect entry point to start talking to these people. And while we developed this VR solution over a short period of time, OneBonsai worked closely with experts in the field to ensure a high level of accuracy.

VR Warehouse Packing Training

OneBonsai helped Nike transform warehouse training with a VR packing simulator that replicates workflows in a 1:1 digital environment. The solution reduced training time from five to two days, trained thousands of employees more efficiently, and expanded access through multilingual support, future-proofing Nike’s global operations.

Traditional onboarding methods were slow, resource-heavy, and dependent on physical training areas called DOJOs. These setups required dedicated space, instructors, and equipment, making it costly and time-consuming to prepare large groups of new hires. With a rapidly expanding workforce across multiple distribution centers, Nike needed a way to reduce training time, cut costs, and reach diverse employee groups more effectively, all while maintaining high operational standards.

VR Baby Risk

OneBonsai teamed up with 87 Seconds to develop this VR experience for insurance company Crédit Agricole, which was intended to increase awareness of the hard-to-spot threats small children face in the average living area. The experience brought that message to life in a way only VR could, by letting participants see the world through the eyes of toddlers.

Throughout the experience, people traversed a home from a child’s point of view and experienced domestic dangers first-hand. OneBonsai distributed 200+ VR headsets to 30 locations across France for this experience, giving countless people a chance to identify and mitigate hazards in their houses.