As advertising agencies, especially in the Baltimore-Washington Metro area, an arrow that must become part of all of our respective quivers is Experiential Marketing. Experiential Marketing creates unique and personalized experiences that let audience segments engage with a brand’s products or services in a more hands-on way, e.g., Mixed Realities.
This is nothing new, but an “experience” in 2023 involves realities and technologies that are new and evolving, and even we’re still determining exactly where they’ll fit in our video production and Marketing mix. This is what we’re looking at this year.
Like many, my first experience with Mixed Reality was Augmented Reality, chasing and catching pocket monsters, or Pokémon, in Pokémon GO.
It was a groundbreaking concept incorporating the reality of your smartphone with the real-world environment and the augmentation of Pokémon to get people outside to play a new type of game. It reminded me of Geocaching, where you explore the outdoors using an app on a smartphone and your powers of observation to find a cache hidden in an eco-friendly site above ground.
Retailers (and e-tailers) are bringing Augmented Reality to help furniture shoppers secure their purchase decision by not only showing how items fits into spaces, but also allowing for environmental compatibility – how does the piece of furniture look in the space.
Now, impactful product visuals are no longer a “nice to have” – they’re essential to an engaging customer experience. IKEA uses 3D product configuration technology to help shoppers test and visualize products in their own space, and Home Depot lets users see what a paint color or bathroom fixture will look like in their home
Then there is Virtual Reality, which you can access through an interface like the Oculus Rift, Apple’s upcoming Ski Goggles – er, VR glasses – or other similar devices. While Augmented Reality exists on the surface, Virtual Reality can provide an experience with nearly infinite layers of depth, like the Van Gogh Immersive Experience.
Instead of standing and staring at one of the iconic artist’s paintings, you walk inside one, with the vibrant colors enveloping you through cutting-edge video-mapping. It makes learning about art a much more memorable experience. When you wear the Oculus headset, you take an immersive ride through Van Gogh’s incredible works. The question then becomes: How do we bring this concept into our advertising world to create that immersive, engaging, perspective-altering experience for our customers/consumers?
Now don’t forget about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning, where every click is tracked to provide a more customized web journey. Your mouse becomes quite literally a crawler that tracks where you skitter around, collecting your data and anticipating your next move to improve your journey – hence the term: “predictive” analytics.
Spotify, Netflix, Google, Facebook and Amazon crunch immense amounts of user data and mix it with your own unique profile to surface new content and products. It’s how they recommend movies and shows for you to watch and products to buy.
But it’s not all movies, electronics and Cuisinart knife sets in primary colors. Hospitals, governments and charities use predictive analytics to find new ways to administer services and help more people. Organizations need to uncover the insights hiding in the data if they’re going to thrive – which can be tough, but doable with the right tools.
Is that all? Not even close. You can read about a few up-to-the-second advertising and technology trends recently unveiled at CES 2023. And stay tuned through 2023 as we show you how creative advertising agencies are bringing Experiential Marketing into the mix.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland, Renegade Communications is a strategic, creative communications and media company that empowers its clients and their employees to achieve growth objectives and grow their brands. Renegade Productions offers a versatile studio space and video production capabilities, with sound, graphics, and postproduction services from an award-winning team of professionals with decades of experience. Renegade also offers employee optimization services, which blend the science of training with the art of marketing to create programs that inspire employees and drive job performance and bottom-line results.
