The magic of VR is that it helps you experience what otherwise wouldn’t be possible. We created an immersive VR experience that let people ride with Santa on his biggest night of the year. “The Night Before” allowed participants to feel the magic of Christmas and ride in a life-size hydraulic VR sleigh with Santa at the Grove in LA and at Herald Square and the Samsung 837 space in NYC.

To help promote the purchase of the Gear VR headset and Galaxy S7 Edge for the holiday season, we created a VR experience where people were able to ride with Santa in his magical sleigh on his biggest night of the year.

For the first time, we gave people the opportunity to experience what Santa experiences every Christmas, as he travels the world delivering presents to all the good boys and girls. To extend its reach, we created a 360-degree video for mobile and desktop that was shareable across YouTube and Facebook.

Over the course of two weeks in December, approximately 18,500 people experienced the in-person 4D activation in LA and NYC.

The 360-degree video we created for YouTube and Facebook garnered over 500K views (YT = 274K / FB = 271K), with over 7,600 positive interactions.

Through the end of Q4, over 4.5MM Gear VR headsets were sold, giving Samsung a 70% market share in the VR headset category. Samsung is constantly at the forefront of VR technology, and experiences such as “The Night Before” allow people to feel our innovation firsthand.