by Mark Tungate (@MarkTungate) Mention the word “corporate” and you tend to think “conservative”. But although Nicolás Cresci comes from a corporate background — his first job was as a corporate risk analyst at Citibank, followed by a marketing stint at MasterCard — he clearly has a taste for the unconventional.
A former pro basketball player, he was marketing director of the Basketball Association of Argentina for a year. “The experience was awesome,” he says. But he had to give up the job because he was doing it in tandem with his work at the digital agency, iURL.
The agency was founded in 1999 by his “business partner and best friend” Alex Smith; Cresci joined in 2005. “We’ve been together ever since, making our monster grow every year.”
Made headlines recently
The pair made headlines recently when they launched Collateral Studio, the first virtual-reality studio in Latin America. “We are serial entrepreneurs. The agency is articulated by a creative lab and all the crazy ideas come from there.”
The first was OPQAM Studio, a video game studio. After launching their first shooter game, Project Root, they sold licences to PS4, Xbox, Vita and Steam. Right now, they are working on their next title, Dogos.
“Collateral Studio was born from the idea of being the first in Latin America working on, creating and developing VR content. As Latin Americans we love to be the first in whatever we do, so we took that premise and moved forward with it.”
Very first short film
Collateral was launched during the Mediamorfosis conference in Buenos Aires this August.
“It’s an event that attracts people from different industries, especially from TV and movies. For the conference we produced our very first short film, ‘Bad Winter’s Day’. It’s a three-minute horror film that immerses the viewer in a terrifying story.”
He says the agency is also working on projects for brands such as HP, Coca-Cola and Samsung, among others, although they remain under wraps for now. Does he think advertising will genuinely benefit from VR technology – or is it set to be a gimmick that will quickly fall out of favour?
Introduction of new competitors next year
“Right now, the benefits are limited due the small penetration of VR in homes. That will change next year with the introduction of new competitors such as the consumer version of Oculus, Sony’s Project Morpheus and Microsoft’s Holo Lens. The advantage of the last two is that they will sell the devices in a bundle with the consoles. In theory, that will bring this tech to consumers in a massive way.”
And where consumers go, brands are pretty much obliged to follow. “Right now, it is a ‘skim-off-the-top’ technology and only the top-tier companies are investing in it. We are waiting for a huge increase next year.”
Mark Tungate (@MarkTungate) is the editorial director of the Epica Awards (@EpicaAwards), the only global creative prize judged by the specialist press. A British journalist based in Paris, Tungate is also the author of six books about branding and advertising, including Luxury World and Adland: A Global History of Advertising. He has a weekly column in the French magazine, Stratégies, and has written for leading newspapers and magazines in the UK and the US.
This “Global Headline Makers” column is syndicated monthly, with permission from Epica.
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