Getting the ROI out of XR, with Sector 5 Digital's Cameron Ayres

Published: Aug. 5, 2019, 9:53 a.m.

Alan and his guests often espouse investing in XR on this podcast, but that comes with the implicit understanding that you should expect a return on that investment. Cameron Ayres from Sector 5 Digital discusses strategies for maximizing that ROI.\n\n\xa0\n\n\xa0\n\n\xa0\n\n\xa0\n\nAlan: Today's guest is Cameron Ayres, the director of innovation at Sector 5 Digital, a digital agency specializing in augmented reality and virtual reality applications for the enterprise. His primary role is developing the strategy and implementation of emerging technology, to best enhance digital projects. Sector 5 Digital helps companies transform their brands by creating brilliant digital content for marketing, communications, sales, and entertainment. Clients include many Fortune 100 clients, including American Airlines, Bell, IBM, Intel, and many more. You can learn more about Cameron and Sector 5 at Sector5Digital.com. Cameron, welcome to the show.\n\n\xa0\n\nCameron: Thanks for having me, Alan.\n\n\xa0\n\nAlan: My pleasure. I'm so looking forward to this. Some of the stuff you guys are doing is mind-blowing. I had a chance to look at some of the things you're doing -- bringing Bell helicopters, their new drones, to VR, and allowing people to experience these. You've done work with airlines, with car companies, with Harry Potter. Describe what Sector 5 digital does, and some of the projects and things that you're most proud of.\n\n\xa0\n\nCameron: Sure. At a high level, what we focus on is coming into these companies that are doing a lot of great work, but they just want to kick it up to the next notch. They want to tell stories in a new way. They want to increase their ROI, is the bottom line to a lot of it. "How can we do things faster, with exerting less effort and less man hours?" That's where virtual reality, and augmented reality, and a lot of other different media come into play. We come in and we'll actually sit down and brainstorm around, "what are the problems, and how can we come up with solutions?" And it's funny how many clients you'll interact with that come to you with a solution. "We want a hologram," or "we want virtual reality." But what we specialize in is taking a step back and saying, "let's do a deep dive. Let's talk about what virtual reality accomplishes, and if that is the best medium." And then, if it is, we can move forward with brainstorming. But it's so important to not fall into the trap nowadays, of trying to make the next gimmick... or, to do it just because the technology's cool. Let's do it with a sense of purpose.\n\n\xa0\n\nA lot of what I do is try to take new and emerging technology -- obviously right now, VR/AR/XR; all that falls into it -- and using that to enhance messaging and storytelling, training, simulation, all of that type of stuff. It boils down to two words for me, which is "presence" and "experience." You have the presence, for things like training, for things like real-time engineering. You really feel like you're there. Then you have the experience side of it, which is more the storytelling, the marketing; let me actually go on a mission, and something that doesn't exist yet, and get a feeling for how that's going to change warfare, how that's going to change my ride to work every day. A lot of it focuses around messaging, storytelling, and training.\n\n\xa0\n\nAlan: You've done everything from -- like you said -- storytelling and training. What are the big, open spaces for companies? Let's say you're a medium-sized business. You see XR, you're going, "well, I have no idea where to get started." What is that low-hanging fruit for businesses to get involved, and just start with this technology?\n\n\xa0\n\nCameron: I've noticed that -- and