With 5,374,000 views, in just two months, and growing, BMW’s, “Eyes on Gigi” has become VR’s first viral phenom. It’s got all the right ingredients, a beautiful girl fast colors and a fun little puzzle to solve.
The video starts at with supermodel Gigi Hadid walking up from behind the VR camera and saying, “Hey, over here” . In the red mini dress, you definitely don’t need much encouragement. In order to see see here you, of course, turn your head. She then climbs into one of three BMW M2 sports cars that are lined up. The three cars takeoff and are joined by two more. The idea of the video slash game is to keep up with which BMW M2 GiGi is driving. It’s a fun little game of cat and mouse with zooming sports cars weeding back and forth playing up driving version of a shell game. When the video and and only 00:01:21 later, you’re prompted to guess which car GiGi is in. But in a stroke of brilliance you don’t get to find out unless you click and go to another web site. This is a fantastic example of how to use 360 VR for advertising. The video was so good that you too has awarded it as the “Most Viewed 360 Degree Video Ad”.
The only thing missing is the addition of haptics to make you actually feel the varoom of the BMW engines. But, believe me, that is coming. You can easily watch the ad either with or without a headset . On your computer just use your mouse to track the action. On your smartphone, you have the choice of physically moving around to follow or using your finger. My favorite is to use my VR headset because you feel more a part of the action. On an immersion scale I would give it a 9!
I’m not gonna spoil things by telling you which car the supermodel is driving, let’s see if you can guess by watching.