Samsung Showcases VR At 6 Nations Offering Rugby Fans A Very Real Experience

England rugby’s official consumer electronics partner Samsung is hosting a striking virtual reality experience at Twickenham before England’s 6 Nations home games.

The South Korean multinational conglomerate initially implemented the technology at England’s previous game against Ireland thus enabling it to offer a bespoke Samsung ‘School of Rugby’ game on both its Samsung Gear VR headsets and its new Samsung Galaxy S7 mobiles that will challenge fans to test their reaction speeds against former rugby stars and Samsung brand ambassadors Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallaglio.

In fact, for three lucky supporters the Occulus-powered Samsung VR experience became a physical world reality when England Johnson and Dallaglio appeared in front of them as they removed their headsets.

The experience is hosted at Samsung’s pop-up in the West Fan Village at England Rugby’s home stadium and it is one of several new additions to its activation programme in the branded space.

Participants will also be offered a chance to win an exclusive dinner with current England players and Samsung endorsers Jonathan Joseph, George Ford and Joe Launchbury.

This 2016 initiative follows Samsung’s integrated ‘School Of Rugby’ leverage campaign around last autumn’s 2015 Rugby World Cup (see case study).

‘We had a lot of fun filming the Samsung School of Rugby campaign last year so it was great for Martin and I to be able to bring a little bit of that to the home of rugby at Twickenham,’ said Dallaglio.

‘It was great to see the expressions of some of the surprised fans as they took off their virtual headsets to be greeted by myself and Martin.’

Comment

The VR experience is part of Samsung and agency M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment’s Jack Whitehall fronted ‘School Of Rugby’ rugby revival campaign.

In addition to interactive video, this programme spans master classes, player-led events such as meet-and-greets and Q&A’s (with not just Johnson and Dallaglio, but also Jason Robinson, Jason Leonard and Maggie Alphonsi and comedian Jack Whitehall)

Sport and sports sponsorship continues to be one of the most popular spaces for leading edge virtual reality work – both to offer an event-related experience and to promote VR and its related products and platforms (although the current lack of retail reach, high price point and lack of content currently largely limits the mass market reach of VR activation experiences to at-event experience initiatives).

Samsung is at the forefront of this trend and clearly sees its rugby partnerships just one current driver for its latest VR and mobile technologies which were the subject of a major new global ad push during last month’s Oscars telecast.

In fact, according to Benjamin Blanco, Samsung UK’s head of sport and entertainment marketing, the brand’s rugby sponsorship marketing is part of the company’s umbrella marketing approach in 2016 which is to connect consumers with their passions while telling an emotional brand story.

‘Through our work with Lawrence, Martin and England Rugby we were able to bring the new Samsung Gear VR, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge products to life in an engaging way to heighten fans’ experience at Twickenham,’ explains Blanco.

In addition to rugby and other sports, Samsung has also been promoting its VR in the fashion and film spaces and the company recently launched Samsung Studio – a new way for storytellers, influencers, and filmmakers to leverage the technology’s momentum.

This not just focuses on the brand’s marketing-leading, cutting-edge technologies and products, but also uses them to develop more of a Samsung ecosystem to tell stories and a more human and loveable brand.

While Samsung is the world’s biggest smartphone maker and seller, it has yet to inspire the same level of brand emotion and fanaticism enjoyed by some of its rivals – particularly Apple – and one of this year’s major priorities is to address the issue.

Sponsorship will have a key role to play in executing this strategy – not just via its rugby work in the UK, but also its Olympic work.

This began with its February Winter Youth Olympics ‘The Only Way To Know’ campaign (see case study)

and will continue through its Rio Olympics work during the summer.

Links

Samsung ‘School Of Rugby’:

http://www.samsung.com/uk/rugby/

Samsung Gear VR:

http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/wearables/gear-vr/

Samsung Mobile YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/SamsungMobile

Samsung Galaxy Website:

http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/

Samsung Mobile Twitter:

https://twitter.com/samsungmobile