The Campaign

Studies show that with constant practice, people can overcome their fears permanently. So we collaborated with doctors and VR programmers to create a free home training VR app to help people overcome two of the most common fears using Samsung Gear VR and Samsung Galaxy mobile. The Fear of Public Speaking VR app was designed with computer graphics, while the locations for the Fear of Heights VR app were filmed with 360 cameras. How it works is simple. Each app contains various scenarios and levels that were carefully selected by the medical staff. People are exposed to fears in stages to gradually overcome their fears. It’s the world’s first VR app that holistically utilizes your heart rate, eye contact and voce recognition to give a personalized feedback. Although VR is a one to one experience, the campaign is designed so people can get support and encouragement from social media.

Execution

A manifesto film, kick off films, social contents and 360 viral films on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Vk.com and other media encouraged more than 7500 people around the world to apply to participate in the #BeFearless campaign. 27 from UAE, Germany, Russia and Austria were selected to be trained for 30 minutes everyday for 4 weeks. Meanwhile, to test the effect of the VR app, the medical team in Seoul went through a clinical testing of their own. Each local market released in stages, their participant’s journey on overcoming their fears. And two final campaign films were released on YouTube, social media, Samsung Launching People homepage, and bloggers’ websites, accompanied by PR release. For the public, #BeFearless VR apps were also made available for free on Oculus Store.

Doctors from Yonsei University Gangnam Severance Hospital approved the credibility of the BeFearless VR app through their own clinical testing. After only two weeks of VR training, 87.8% of 82 people saw benefits. People with fear of public speaking were able to reduce their anxiety score by 18.7% and those with fear of heights by 23.6%. Following its succes, the campaign was covered in more than 350 media including public TV and major newspapers worldwide which values more than 1 million dollars. The journeys of our participants had over 100 million views and over 400 million media impression worldwide. Samsung #BeFearless VR apps had more than 50, 000 downloads on Oculus Store with a high rating of 4. #BeFearless program is now also being used in the hospital’s VR clinic. After the campaign, Samsung’s brand attachment improved as high as 18.9%.

The Situation

Samsung #BeFearless campaign received a lot of spotlight from media around the world in that it showed new possibilities of leveraging VR technology in health-care industry for societal benefits. In collaboration with doctors and VR developers, the VR app was designed to help people overcome their fear of public speaking and fear of heights easily at home using Samsung Gear VR and Samsung Galaxy mobile. #BeFearless VR apps can be downloaded for free and the program is currently being used in hospital’s VR clinic.

The Strategy

To strongly engage 18-29 young consumers with Samsung, we asked about their biggest fear that stops them in life through YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other social media. And backed up by recent medical journals, the common fears addressed were the fear of heights and fear of public speaking. 1 in 5 people have a fear of public speaking (Ruscio et al., 2008) 1 in 4 people have a fear of heights (Brandt & Huppert, 2014) Doctors in VR clinics and VR professionals were gathered together to create VR training apps for each fear. Theses were created to have the highest quality Samsung Galaxy S6 specification allows and was completed in 10 months. And at last, the VR apps were translated into 4 different languages: Korean, English, German, Russian.