A 'virtually' perfect marriage proposal

Challenge: GROW ZERO LATENCY’S CUSTOMER BASE AND ENGAGE WITH THEM ON A MORE MEANINGFUL LEVEL

Zero Latency is a Melbourne-based, free-roam and warehouse-scale virtual reality (VR) gaming company that specialises in ultra-realistic Zombie-shoot-‘em-ups.  

In 2017, Zero Latency was fast becoming one of Australia’s most successful technology exports. But despite carving out a global reputation as the most sophisticated VR gaming technology, this was an industry reputation, and ticket sales in their flagship Melbourne site had started to drop off. 

Zero Latency tasked WE Buchan to grow its customer base, sell more tickets and engage new consumers on a more meaningful level.

Solution: CHANGING THE BRAND PERCEPTION FROM ‘JUST FOR GAMERS’

Our solution was formed on a comprehensive analysis of Zero Latency’s existing customer base. The team conducted an audit of customer behaviour and buying patterns, its external communication and owned media efforts, and a media analysis and social analytics review, to gain insight into the total perception of the brand. 

From this we developed our communication strategy: position Zero Latency as a new option for group entertainment, and show that Zero Latency could transport you to a different world. 

To achieve this, we needed a campaign that would change the brand perception of Zero Latency as ‘just for gamers’ and widen its product’s appeal to a new, core female and family audience.  

This required a new brand positioning and combined with the new target audience, meant that we needed to engage the audience with Zero Latency’s product, on an emotional level. It doesn’t get more emotive than a love story, so we decided to pull of the world’s first virtual reality marriage proposal. 

A vital element to the strategy was ensuring that the campaign hero video was authentic and could ‘go viral’, so the team developed a media and social campaign that challenged traditional media boundaries. No media release. No paid media spend.

Impact: WE HUMANISED ZERO LATENCY’S PRODUCT FOR CONSUMERS

The results were extraordinary. But most importantly, we achieved Zero Latency’s key sales objective – the company recorded its best monthly ticket sales in the month of the campaign. 

• Exclusive broadcast interview on ‘The Today Show’ 
• Exclusive online interview on News.com.au 
• 23,000,000+ video views achieved without paid media spend: 
  • 119,000 views on ZL’s YouTube channel  
  • 45,000 views on ZL’s Facebook page  
  • 12 content aggregators published across their channels  

• 100+ pieces of earned coverage (2 x target) in ZL’s target publications, including The Huffington Post, Mashable, UniLad, NowThis, News.com.au, MSN, Mail Online, Yahoo.com, Gizmodo 
• Compared to the month prior, ZL’s website saw an increase of: 
  • 23% in website sessions  
  • 28.3% in unique visitors  
  • 17.7% in total page views   

• Best monthly ticket sales on record in the month of the campaign

Credits:

• Guerilla Creative