The automotive industry is a saturated market. Showrooms are generic, websites are clinical, and car companies are all falling over themselves to sign you up to their next ‘deal’.
So much noise calls for differentiation, and some brands are finding very interesting ways to stand out, made possible by Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. Audi, for example, allow you to test one of their models in VR around a sandbox of your own creation. And a fan of Tesla created his own Augmented Reality app to view and customise his new Model 3 before it even arrived.
Digital technology such as AR and VR is still relatively new, but it’s going to push car brands and advertisers in completely new directions where marketing cars is concerned. It opens up numerous possibilities in terms of not only test driving or viewing a car before you’ve bought it, but could completely cut the showroom out all together.
Don the VR goggles and prep your smart phones, the future may well consist of online car shopping only.
Musings of a Novice MAd Man 