Virtual Reality Experience at the Schaeffler Employee Day

Schaeffler, one the world’s leading automotive and industrial suppliers, has a core strategy: "mobility for tomorrow". It sounds great, but holds a real challenge for brand communication – both to customers and its employees. How can a brand create an experience about something that hasn’t happened yet?

Our answer was to use virtual reality as a tool for B2E communication. To surround Schaeffler’s employees in their vision for the future. VR holds great possibilities for corporate communication. Employees become part of the story – they are the centre of the merging real and virtual worlds.

But VR is also still in its infancy, and the rules of storytelling, animation and visuals are a challenge to define. We decided to explore the possibilities of a spectacular world with a classic narration, testing the drama of virtual mobility whilst preventing "simulator sickness".

Schaeffler debuted the experience on its employee day. Over 30,000 people queued to be part of the virtual journey. Revolving chairs provided unrestricted 360° views with a stable base. The visitors descended on future cities and into offshore wind farms. They drove in Schaeffler’s bio-hybrid vehicle concept and swam under sea. In the four-and-a-half minute experience, Schaeffler shared its future vision of how mobility and digitalisation will move tomorrow hand in hand. Shared this vision with its employees, who came back to today with a clear vision of the future.