WHAT’S NEXT: After Friday morning’s “Mercenary Matters: Technology and the Changing World of Retail” panel discussion, two participants discussed what’s next.
Their discussion was part of the Fashion Law nstitute’s seventh annual symposium “Fashion Revolutions” in New York. Plural NYC founder Daniel Plenge said, “Drones and brands need to have a big Amazon strategy because they’re going to drop the hammer this year. They already have been, and the drone thing might not be as far away as we think.”
With his marketing and digital media clients constantly asking how they might monetize Instagram, Plenge is intrigued by Liketoknow.it even though he personally hasn’t yet used it to buy anything. “One of my challenges now is to bridge the gap between tools like that online and attributing them to sales off-line. So maybe I screenshot the image, I saw it on Taxi TV, on a bus shelter or any of the six touchpoints of digital…when did I actually decide, ‘You know what? It’s payday. I’m going to go get that,’” Plenge said.
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Another panelist, Po Yi, an attorney with Venable LLP, said, “I’m not a huge fan of VR. I’m more of a fan of mixed reality or augmented reality so that you can actually picture yourself. So you can input the dimensions of your room and then use your hands [on an oversize screen] to move things around.”
Yi said, “The problem with VR is it’s a tethered experience. You have to have Oculus and they have to be tethered to a device whereas AR is not. You can get more data and you can use that data to help you see better. It’s like having a third eye where you can picture things in your head, and see that.”
She pointed to Microsoft’s deal with the National Football League as a way that mixed reality is evolving. With HoloLens, running Windows 10, players appear in 3-D high-definition displays such as a 3-D hologram that allows viewers to watch the game in real time from all angles of the field on a horizontal surface as opposed to on a screen. HoloLens is not yet an actual product.
“You are seeing mixed reality in entertainment. We have clients who are getting into that business of creating a whole experience — an in-store environment that you could only dream of. Think about creating a VR experience in Mars, but the clothes you’re wearing are actual clothes. So you can create a backdrop of things that you can only experience through VR.” Yi said, declining to identify the production companies she works with that are pursuing this with music.
Assuring that more projects along these lines are sure to come, Yi noted the free-roaming VR space that has opened in Melbourne, run by the start-up Zero Latency. (Wearing Oculus Rift headsets and computer-equipped backpacks, participants roam through a warehouse shooting zombies.) “You’ll see more of this coming out more and more.” she said.