Hosts:

Jeff Julian
https://twitter.com/jjulian?lang=en

Joe Cox
https://twitter.com/joenormal


Explicit Content Podcast is Back! Jeff & Joe kick off the show and update everyone on what to expect this season.

Jeff & Joe will be tag teaming the hosting duties this season but expect to hear some of the same content marketing superstars from season’s past and new interviews from all over the interwebs. From Augmented Reality Artists to Social Scientists, fasten your seatbelts for Season 3 of The Explicit Content Podcast.

Jeff & Joe discuss the current state of marketing in the last quarter of 2019 and the place for both creativity and deep technological prowess.

We’re excited about a new partnership with DivvyHQ this season. The DivvyHQ team has been friends of ours for a long time. https://divvyhq.com/

They’ve been in the content game for a long time and have built a content planning and execution tool for content marketing teams BY a talented content marketing team.
Let’s jump into the podcast. We aren’t sidestepping the congressional hearing, but it’s not what this episode is about. Today we’re talking about Facebook’s Oculus Connect 6 conference that was held in San Jose last month. https://www.oculusconnect.com/

Why is this year any different than the last for Oculus? Last year we didn’t have the Oculus Quest, and that may be the hardware that changes everything. It’s time for marketers to pay attention and Jeff & Joe are going to explain why. https://www.oculus.com/quest/?locale=en_US

Jeff jumps into the history of VR, starting off in the 80’s & 90’s and gets to Oculus Rift and Facebook’s eventual purchase of the VR startup. https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/03/25/facebook-buys-oculus-virtual-reality-gaming-startup-for-2-billion/#1cfc30f62498

Though it wasn’t completely clear at first why a social network was interested in a VR headset that was both incredibly expensive, needed an expensive computer to run and needed a massive space and technology to even get the technology setup. VR had made leaps, but it was still just for the nerds.

VR did take marketing by storm, but it’s been in event marketing. In 2019, there’s probably not a large sporting event or conference that hasn’t had some sort of VR experience. https://mbryonic.com/best-vr-marketing/

Two years ago, Facebook releases its first wireless headset in the Oculus Go. It was underpowered and had very limited movement capabilities, but it did get rid of the need to jack into a large computer and the wires were gone. https://www.oculus.com/go/?locale=en_US

This year, Oculus released the Oculus Quest. It was somewhere in between. Not as powerful as the Rift, but much more capable than the Go, the Quest seemed to have hit the goldilocks zone of VR. Untethered with a much better experience the Oculus Quest came in at a $399 price point which put it in line with current gaming consoles from Sony, Nintendo & Microsoft.

Facebook has been steadily focused on one goal, to create a VR technology that breaks through to mass adoption.

Facebook is up to 180,000 unit sales and has reached the $100,000,000 mark on the Facebook marketplace. Just like Apple, Facebook plans to make a lot of its money through sales of games and apps on the storefront.

Let’s take a step back and talk about the difference between AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality)

Jeff dives into the differences and similarities of both technologies. Augmented reality is any technology that puts a layer of interaction or content over our current reality, while virtual reality takes you completely into another virtual space unattached to our own.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/10/24/superdata-facebook-sold-180000-oculus-quests-in-q3-2019/
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/oculus-eclipses-100-million-in-vr-content-sales/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality

If you’re into AR at all, you should check out Joe’s interview with Luke Hurd, AR artist and friend of the show, who has been traveling around the world representing Facebook and SparkAR technology.

We touch on why cloud computing is so important to the future of these technologies.
Digging into the Oculus Connect 6 conference, let’s talk about the announcements.
https://enterprisemarketer.com/podcasts/explicit-content/season-02-episode-05/
https://www.instagram.com/lukehurd/?hl=en
https://sparkar.facebook.com/ar-studio/

Jeff’s excited about the announcement of the addition of technology that allows users to lose the hand controllers and interact in the virtual world just using your hands or items from the real world.

Joe notices how Facebook keeps breaking down the barriers to using virtual reality technology.
https://www.oculus.com/blog/oculus-connect-6-introducing-hand-tracking-on-oculus-quest-facebook-horizon-and-more/?locale=en_US

Maybe the largest announcement was Facebook’s plan to finally peak into a socially connected virtual world.

Oculus also announced a simple cord that can be purchased to “jack in” to a more powerful computer, giving the Quest the ability to play the more technologically heavy games of the Rift.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/370972/facebooks-custom-oculus-link-cable-for-the-quest-will-cost

Joe sees the Oculus as one step closer to true human interaction from anywhere, bridging time and space.

Facebook releases Horizon which puts the social into the virtual experience, giving you a virtual space to interact with others. Is this where The Oasis from Ready Player One begins?
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/facebook-horizon/

Marketers beware, just because this is going to be a new world, doesn’t mean users will want you to paint the walls with virtual billboards.
Marketers need to focus on experience and ask the question of how their product or brand adds value in this new world.

Oculus For Business was announced at Connect 6, which launches many opportunities for businesses to come on board and get dedicated support to begin using the Quest for training for jobs from retail to therapy.

Listen up marketers. It’s time to pay attention. We’re not saying to add a line item to your marketing budgets for virtual reality, but it’s time to pay attention and to learn. The earlier you can get involved, the more likely you’ll get advantage from those channels.
https://business.oculus.com/

Things are changing quickly, and things are complex, but get used to the shift and try to enjoy living in the future!

A reminder that we’re doing a webinar w/ our friends at DivvyHQ in November talking about content planning and how modern marketers are simplifying the complex and keeping the marketing engines running.

Lots in store this season for us at Explicit Content Podcast, stay tuned!
https://divvyhq.com/

Thank you for listening to the Explicit Content Podcast. For more information, check out enterprisemarketer.com.