As I have been trying to find a place for simulation in the context of marketing, I originally came up with the phrase “product simulation marketing”. However, I realized not only it wasn’t particularly catchy, but also it focused on the technique/format rather than what I really should be going after, which is the effect.
TL;DR I think the phrase “virtual experiential marketing” captures an area of marketing that involves the use of simulations for marketing, but I am only really seeing it online for VR.
Today as this was sinking in as a result of avoidance behavior from my actual work, I thought about various sources I had read regarding the efficacies of experiences whether they happen to us or happen virtually through simulations.
For one specific area–the Fire/Emergency Service–Dr. Gary Klein many years ago pioneered an area he called Recognition-Primed Decision Making. Often I have heard the phrase “loading the slide deck”, as a nod to Dr Klein, as a mechanism to develop the experiences from which the decision model draws.
Years ago, in my CommandSim days, we demonstrated that candidates going through live evolutions (drills/exams performed with physical props), from a command perspective were very close to the same as exercises/exams performed in a computer-simulated medium. Having run CommandSim and SimsUshare for many years, I have heard anecdotally many times how the training one performs in a simulation has given people experiences that translated into performance in the field.
Earlier in my career I developed product simulations in various industries, from medical instrumentation and consumer devices to flight systems. Most of the time, those simulations were used for training, but looking at my blog here from years past you will see I have always been intrigued about the potential for using simulations for product marketing as well–though not the same simulations used for training. I developed various simulations for clients that had the dual role, harkening back to my friend’s comment from his first day in business school that all marketing has some educational value (apologies to my friend if I have mangled this thought).
It seems to plain to me that there can be incredible marketing value in giving potential prospects an experience with a product, whether in-person or virtual. I know that “experiential marketing” (or “experience marketing”) has been described as a strategy that uses in-person events to promote products. Why not tack on “virtual” to broaden the potential, as in “virtual experience marketing” or “virtual experiential marketing“? In reality, I think limiting experiential marketing to in-person events is way too limited, but rather than try to redefine it, we need a way to describe the inclusion of simulations that can be impactful in the same or similar way to in-person demos/experiences.
Well, some have already sort-of arrived at the show. I found this article about “VR Experiential Marketing”, and this other with interesting examples and discussion. In the coming days/weeks, this has given me some focus to explore the world of marketing.