Oculus Brand Positioning

Approach

Using the 4C framework, I investigated company goals, customer behaviors + attitudes, cultural trends, and the competitive landscape.

Company: Oculus wanted to broaden their appeal and reframe VR as a social, immersive experience.

Oculus’s stakeholders wanted to speak to gamers, but ultimately broaden their appeal to mainstream audiences.

It would be key to take VR from a tool associated with escape, to a tool that is associated with connection and shaping reality.

Customer: Target audiences were skeptical of the Quest as a gaming device worthy of their time.

In my review of 50+ customer studies and additional quantitative data (from GWI and YouGov), gaming audiences were worried about the lack of games and community in the Quest ecosystem. It became clear that it wasn’t about competing with gaming brands, but highlighting VR’s benefits beyond gaming.

Culture: Technologies that represented an escape from reality were no longer aspirational.

Oculus and other major VR players were advertising their technology by showing people in their headsets, unaware of their surroundings.

But in recent years, society was moving away from the glorification of escape, and instead moving towards mindfulness, being present, and living life with intention.

Competitive: VR brands had long used the same visual tropes to sell the category.

In reviewing direct competitors and Oculus’s own advertising, no one was showing how VR can improve your own reality, instead showing players isolated from the people and world around them.