The fiber broadband provider ume.net offers one of the world’s fastest Internet connections, but they were still pretty unknown on the Swedish market dominated by the big telecom corporations. To highlight ume.net’s product benefits, we performed an experiment that brought Internet’s biggest disturbance to life - i.e. lag, which is often associated with slow Internet connection. Four volunteers were equipped with a custom-built Oculus Rift lag machine that could adjust the resolution in the display and simulate real-time buffering and delay. The experiment demonstrated how simple everyday tasks such as cooking or bowling became extraordinary hard with real-time lag, and the message was that no one would accept lag offline, so why do it online.

The campaign was targeting tech and gaming enthusiasts that specifically value fast Internet connection, and we had them communicate the message for us. We knew that they are active in Internet forums and social media, and they are often first to spread material they think is fun and can relate to. And lag is definitely a recurring topic among them in various forums.

The video of the experiment was posted in carefully selected forums where the target group is active and it didn’t take long for it to go viral. Within one week the video reached 5 million views, 333,000 social actions in social media and gained both national and international recognition in major news outlets such as Mashable, Gizmodo, Fast Company, CBS News, Fox 13 News, Daily Mail, Business Insider and much more.

To create the experiment, we custom-built the world’s first lag machine, using Oculus Rift VR-headset. That was a strategic choice since Oculus Rift was trending in media due to acquisition by Facebook. To set different levels of delay, resolution and buffering, a single-board computer was programmed in the lag machine.

During two days four volunteers took on different challenges such as playing bowling, aerobics and frying pancakes while wearing the lag machine. The experiment was filmed and edited to a three minutes video.

In order to create excitement about the experiment we invited local press to interview the participants while shooting the experiment, resulting in an editorial teaser.

The video was published on YouTube with the name “Living with Lag – an Oculus Rift experiment,” and posted on carefully selected forums where we knew that our target group is active and lag is a recurring discussion topic.

Living with Lag exceeded all set goals. The brand awareness increased by 14%, preference by 32% and sales by 54%. Within 24 hours, the experiment had over 1 million views and was featured on all major technology and gaming sites around the world. As of today, the Living with Lag Experiment have generated over 5.7 millions views in 230 countries, 78 million impressions, 333,000+ social actions, and an earned media value of $4.2 million, exceeding the digital media investment by 21000%.