2015 has been a fantastic year for virtual reality. VR is really happening this time around. As the year comes to a close, we would like to examine some of the analytical aspects to learn where we stand today before we begin our promising journey for 2016. This is the first of two parts.

Please note that there is already a lot of eggnog and warm brandy flowing in the neighbourhood along with aromas of baked goodies and Christmas Songs on Pandora. By all means, any inferences in this article or the next are most likely to have been influenced by these Holiday happenings.

# 1. Very Strong Product Category Awareness in 2015

Searches for “Virtual Reality” as of Dec 22 yielded ten times as more results than all the search results for 2014. A lot has been said about this nascent technology biting the dust even before happening. The trend seen above clearly suggests a different outcome. In 2013, there were close to 5 million search results for VR. It doubled in 2014 to roughly 10 million results and now you are at 100 million results.

Awareness around this product category is clearly growing at an exponential rate. The number of VR game and content related mentions in 2015 has also dramatically grown over that of 2014.

Interestingly, one always sees the uptick in search results when the product is launched or closed to being launched. In the space of Virtual Reality, this is even more dramatic. Gear VR had about 7.3 million search results prior to Oct 31. Now it stacks up at 14.2 mill results. Almost Double as soon as the product was close to being launched. One key factor leading to this could be attributed to its unique market positioning as well as its first mover advantage.

,Trailing not too far behind Gear VR, were the results related to Google Cardboard. With 12.3 million search results driven by the NYT VR launch campaign, Google Cardboard picked up some good momentum in 2015. That is atleast three times more than that of 2014 (~4 mill)

#2. Brand Presence of the Three Key Players

Creating a premium brand depends on creating a positive emotional response from its potential customers. Positive feelings will enhance the admiration for the brand and thus the premium brand equity and credibility. People’s feelings are usually spurred from how much they trust the brand. On this aspect, SONY has a head start with the existing PS4 customer base. Oculus and HTC VIVE will have to take all the right steps to in order to translate the current brand following into brand equity.

Trusting the brand will depend upon the brand memorability, its meaningfulness, likeability and more importantly in this category the Innovation.

Innovation will likely be one of the key determinants in this product category as we move forward. Brands that innovate are most likely to attract the consumers and will see dramatic returns on their marketing ROI.

Think about Tesla. When was the last time you turned on a prime time channel and saw an ad for their cars? In fact, from 2008 till 2011, the company didn’t have a single ad running on any major TV media outlet. Most of the brand equity was developed by word of mouth marketing strategy. Various forums, critics and blogs act as the marketing catalyst to increase the brand’s memorability.

If you are a start-up in the space of Virtual Reality, now is the time to reach out and establish those individual relationships that will help you position your product if you haven’t already done so. By working with critics, fans and blogs, you will be able to sharpen your product messaging and related characteristics before you transition from beta.

In the next article, we will focus on the unique selling propositions of these brands and evaluate if the USP’s associated with the brand are in fact translating to brand equity or if they require more tender lovin’ and caring’.

As always, We look forward to your feedback and comments.