Tech tools for creating engaging experiences
A smart engagement design includes everything from registration to capturing the right insights into your target audience – none of which is too challenging using the tools and technology available to us today. The real difficulty is making it all add up to an effective experience; inspirational, motivational, transformative, peer-connected, business-improving, educational, and most of all, engaging.
It is well documented that experience has overtaken price and product as consumers’ primary brand differentiator. When they have a positive experience, consumers feel that the brand has listened and responded to them personally. They feel appreciated, and they’ll remember the sensation. For the brand, the effect can be dramatic and measurable.
New technologies can now make ‘inspiring experiences’ a little easier – and to even define brand experiences in whole new ways.
Technology with purpose: New tools for designing engagement
When we use the term ‘technology with purpose’, we refer to hardware and/or software used in to engage audiences with a clear goal in mind. For example, technology can be employed before and during an event to connect with and inform attendees while providing robust ROI analytics. Or it can be used during activations to do brand or product education with technology at its heart.
1nter5ec7ion – Microsoft Security’s VR escape room
A spectacular example of event technology at work, 1nter5ec7ion aimed to transform the complexity of Microsoft Security’s enterprise-class features such as Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph, Microsoft Cloud App Security and Zero Trust security approaches – plus AI and automation-related security – into an entertaining learning experience.
The solution activated by MacWell was an installation that fused virtual reality (VR) team play with a VR ‘escape room’. Drawing on sci-fi, cyberpunk and art deco for its environments and characters, 1nter5ec7ion is set in the future, where a ‘cybersecurity council’ has called on participants to stop a hacker dubbed ‘157’ from creating major cyber breach. Up to five players work together in its VR space as they use Microsoft Security products to solve puzzles and save the world.
Even the VR gamespace’s colour palette was derived from the Microsoft Brand Guide, while its soundscape was specially composed to enhance the storyline. Through its immersive gameplay, 1nter5ec7ion imprints security solutions on participants via experience, rather than by simply explaining product features.
Now imagine expanding the 1nter5ec7ion approach to embrace not just one product experience, but a mass audience’s experience of an entire mega event. In this respect, the upcoming Tokyo Olympics point the way to the astonishing potential of new event technologies.
Relating with robots at the Tokyo Olympics
Technology not only can facilitate event actions and processes, but make them fun and memorable in themselves. At the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, for example, mascot-like robots developed by Toyota will greet athletes and guests using friendly, human-relatable movements such as shaking hands, waving and even facial expression. The robots – dubbed Miraitowa and Someity – are also equipped to sense the proximity of humans and even recognise them.
The tech needn’t be as sophisticated or obvious as Tokyo’s robots to add a deeply immersive and engaging new twist to events. As we’ll see, even traffic cones can make a key difference between merely showing off a product and creating bonds between a brand and its audience.
Jaguar The Art of Performance Tour’s ‘smart cones’
A new type of traffic cone – the ‘smart cone’ – proved key to activating Jaguar’s Art of Performance Tour concept of engaging Taiwan motorists with the brand and its cars.
Aiming to create an experience that went deeper than the staid luxury car showcase, organisers wished to emphasise Jaguar’s legendary cat-like agility and advanced Art of Performance tech. The key was to put cars and drivers on racecourse – and to really test their abilities, wireless smart cones would randomly illuminate in pairs to continuously change the circuit’s path.
The effect, as hoped, was immersive, informative and deeply enjoyable to the kind of driver who appreciates Jaguar qualities.
Find your purpose, choose tools to fit
Whether you are working with activations, conferences or exhibitions, the pressure is on to deliver more than a ‘textbook’ event. The goal is to deliver a memorable experience that will resonate long afterwards and feed customer loyalty. That’s something more than mere entertainment; it’s engaging with the real needs of the target audience.
As all the cases above show, event technology is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Planners should always think of the desired effect on the audience, then utilise whatever technology that will enable them to achieve it. It may not be the latest or even the ‘best’; the important thing is choosing what’s right for the job.
