How Godfrey is Using VR to Create a Jaw-dropping Trade Show Experience

There’s no question that Virtual Reality (VR) is a white-hot technology right now. Vendors like Google, Samsung, Ricoh and Facebook are all addressing various solutions to production, publication and consumption of VR content. Godfrey recently saw an opportunity to do some work in this area ourselves by creating an amazing trade show experience for one of our clients.

JLG uses a great deal of photography to help tell the story of the world at work and the people that are building it. We saw VR as having great potential to take the power of the visual image to new heights of communication. For The Rental Show 2016, sponsored by the American Rental Association (ARA), we wanted to leverage VR and take visitors from a trade show floor to actually feeling like they’re on-site with JLG. If you’re at ARA this week, stop on by booth 4635 to say hello and see some surprising things for yourself.

Raising the Bar by Taking Visitors to New Heights

As part of an effort to help demonstrate the unique capabilities of their training facility and proving grounds, we used VR to give show attendees a ‘boots-on-the-ground’ feel. Booth visitors can experience a 185-foot view of the grounds in the world’s tallest reach boom lift; get a feel for standing in a boom lift basket; take a behind-the-scenes look into the activities of their expansive training bay; and have a seat in their hands-on classroom. All without leaving the show floor.

As an added bonus to the experience, we created a custom VR headset to feature the imagery. While we could have used commercially available headsets, we wanted to leverage the conversational aspect that accompanies 3D printing. Because JLG uses 3D printing as part of their design and pre-manufacturing processes, we felt this would be an ideal opportunity for customers to hear that story in addition to the VR experience. Our artists worked with their Industrial Design team to produce a headset that was representative of the JLG brand and felt like a natural fit alongside the machinery on display.

The Dawn of a New Era

An attractive attribute of virtual reality is its transportive nature. Short of physically being in a location, great VR can communicate a sense of place and position as good as, if not better than, another medium. Why tell if you can show? Why show if you can experience? In our line of work this translates into: What kind of trade show experience can we create with it?

We’re excited about how much virtual reality adds to the conversation. And we’re only just getting started. As more products and services enter this space, we’ll be looking for even more ways to create unique experiences for our clients.