Oculus Brand Positioning + Channel Strategy
Repositioning a niche product for a mainstream audience.
Context
With the release of the Oculus Quest, virtual reality was declared ‘undead’ after years of critics arguing the opposite. Virtual reality was gaining steam as a mainstream gaming and experiential device.
To make sure this transition into the mainstream went smoothly, Oculus asked AKQA to craft a brand positioning to stand out among gaming and VR brands.
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.
Recommendations
The Shift
We recommended a shift away from hardcore gaming.
From Conquering new worlds
To Exploring new possibilities
Brand Positioning Statement
In a world full of constraints, Oculus is the place you go to expand your world.
Experience + Content Pillars
“Expand your world” became the north star to guide experiences and content across the customer journey, from awareness to product to loyalty. Supporting experience + content principles included:
Seeings things differently: inviting users in and opening up their perceptions of what’s possible.
Sharing experiences: facilitating connections and celebrating community.
Exploring what’s possible: building confidence and personalizing discovery.
Keeping it special: giving recognition and granting insider access.
Channel + Social Strategy
I took the content principles and translated each into specific recommendations across the user journey (awareness, research + trial, activation + engagement, community + advocacy) and by each channel (website, socials, CRM, app, and headset).
For example:
Advertising should should show gameplay from inside the headset and prioritize multiplayer content.
Site and social should show a wide range of use cases, especially through user-generated content.
Within the headset, new features would include things like “finding your squad,” personalized recommendations, and contextual education.
A Twitch channel and Discord server would be established to invest in and foster community from both within and outside the headset.
Below are redacted images of the channel and social strategy.
Outcomes
Creative work
I was not part of the following creative work, but the “Expand your world” positioning came to life in creative outputs like this one.
(The Oculus brand was fully absorbed by Meta after my work was completed.)
Successes
These recommendations started to launch in 2021, corresponding with a large increase in marketshare; Oculus headsets accounted for 78% of all VR headsets sold in 2021, up from 34% in 2020.
Additional successes include:
Oculus established a Discord server and had 6,000 members as of June 2024.
The Meta Quest VR Twitch channel has 23.7k followers.
Quest users can now use Discord from within the headset.