GoPro goes Virtual
If you have been online in the last ten minutes, it’s likely you have encountered something related to GoPro. The massively successful camera brand first caught on with its ingenious marketing campaign – encouraging users to post their own videos using GoPro to film cool stuff. The campaign was so successful, GoPro just kept it going. Today millions of customers across the globe are posting an endless stream of streaming video online.
You can sit down to watch GoPro produced videos and, literally, never stop watching.So, now having officially conquered the prosumer camera market, GoPro is breaking boundaries once again – this time in virtual reality.
Since it acquired virtual reality company, Kolor, this past April, GoPro has been working on a way to integrate the two companies’ products. The result, according to an article in Bloomberg, is an “Oh my God” moment, so says CEO Nick Woodman.
Speaking at a recent media and technology conference, Woodman said the tech will be compatible with virtual reality headsets including Oculus Rift, Cardboard and HoloLens.
The innovation will be a step up for GoPro, but not really a step outside its typical business model. Interesting, dynamic, user-generated video content is GoPro’s stock in trade. This next evolution should fall right in line with that. But there will be a hurdle. GoPro’s “strap on a camera and jump” approach to PR will not work as easily here.
VR requires not only additional equipment, but also a working understanding of both the new hardware and the software to run both interfaces. That may not sound like such a difficult hurdle to get over but consider the ease with which users built the GoPro brand. There will be more than just a learning curve here. The increased difficulty level may reduce the number and quality of videos … or it may stifle the stream of user-generated content altogether. Users will be slipping into a reality of their own making…rather than sharing it with the world.
And the fast growing company has utilized PR companies, including Hotwire PR (in the UK), Olson Communications, and many others. They primarily handle marketing and publicity internally.
