How to Immerse Your Guests With the Ultimate Interactive Experience

Who doesn’t like being immersed? Successful event marketers understand the importance of attendee engagement. That said, too few impact consumers the way they want to be impacted. If you can immerse your audience, you can captivate them. In 2017, interactive technology is king.

The Future of Interactive Visuals

Technology has come a long way. Now, intuitive interfaces are being used alongside touch screen technology. Developers like MultiTaction have strategized the process, making touch display a king-of-the-hill tech avenue. Modern surfaces are using infrared cameras, “seeing” what device users are touching. When sensors can capture dynamic touch range, anything is possible.

So, where does this leave you? It’s a good idea to invest in tech which recognizes a limitless marker input range. Get big with coded event items—like Glenfiddich’s coded glasses. Interactive bars, tables and games, too, can spice up your event. Much can be said for information composition. By creating interactive displays, you can create enthralling technology.

The Modern Brand Experience Studio

If you’re gunning for a highly immersive experience, why settle for a single display? Companies like Ford are creating entire experience studios. Its FordHub, launched back in January, outfitted the Westfield World Trade Center with countless digital experiences. Ford’s innovations addressed today’s city-wide mobility challenges, creating memorable pop-ups worthy of continuous exposure.

Interactive LED displays, illuminated water patterns and innovation challenges are fantastic inclusions. By building alongside other tech providers, you can create an environment which encourages exploration. Provoke curiosity, and help your guests linger.

Downloadable Demos

Where out-of-event immersion is considered, downloadable demos go a long way. Ford’s digital record presentations are a great example, as they’ve let users download configured models in online spaces. Provoke the imagination, and create dialogue between your brand and the consumer. Anyone can install an Oculus Rift booth, and anyone can utilize the iPhone 7’s VR capabilities. In 2017, quality VR needs to be more than immersive. It needs to be memorable.

Pinpointing the Quality Consumer Experience

The goal of any event activation is to garner attention. If you can make your consumer’s feel, you can make them think. If you can make them think, you’ll make them talk. Build lasting impressions, and engage attendees at the ground level. A little immersion goes a long way, and you needn’t resort to straight-up VR displays to invoke excitement. Loyal audiences stick around, but they’re paying attention to brands maintaining a competitive edge.

How L’Oréal Paris Keeps it Fresh with Consumers

L’Oréal Paris might be a beauty brand, but it has some DIY chops, too. In celebration of its newest product lines, the brand hosted a “Galentine’s Day” party in New York’s West Edge. February 13, the event’s day, was an unofficial holiday for L’Oréal Paris, featured on NBC’s Parks and Recreation. Centered on events for women, the faux holiday was powered by L’Oréal Paris spokeswoman, Blake Lively. High-fashion décor, activities and music were had, as well as Valentine’s Day card creation.

Design Elements and the Art of DIY

The event catered to jewelry-lovers, too. Attendees could have their necklaces engraved, check out new fashion options and compare styles. Cookie decoration highlighted the event’s sweet tooth touch, and a variety of celeb-hosted introductions brought the average consumer’s vision to life.

There were about 15 DIY stations. Guests could listen to DJ Vashtie songs, get their feet wet with crafts and check out classic clips gathered from a variety of memorable movies and television shows. All products on display, of course, were up for grabs. The combination of practical DIY and digital is a good one, and L’Oréal Paris decision makers took on several beauty influencers who snapped, posted and shared photos.

Explore, Discover and Share

The event’s mantra was “explore, discover and share.” Non-traditional lighting, instrumentation and DIY stands certainly turned the age-old event participation approach on its head. Guests were urged to snap their best creations, creating environments capable of reaching high visibility on social media. Aside from L’Oréal Paris’s influencers, the event received attendance from a 300-plus crowd. V.I.P. members, of course, came out to play. L’Oréal Paris president, Tim Coolican, was one such memorable face. Other notable figures, like actress Robyn Lively, similarly attended.

Product Launches and Crafts

The arts-and-crafts area was covered by a lush, floral canopy. The area was outfitted by Tinsel & Twine and Agency, empowering the creativity of attendees. DIY card-making may not seem like a profitable event investment at first, but the event’s station packed plenty of embellishments capable of packing in personalized touches. Paper Fashion’s Katie Rodgers, meanwhile, offered highly customized guest illustrations. At every level, the event was attendee-centric.

When you combine Polaroid cameras, quirky props and several impromptu photo shoots, you’re set up for success. Take note: L’Oréal Paris has quickly become one of this year’s most notable DIY pop-up event providers, mostly due to their consumer dedication. In the world of event marketing, few brands get it better.

How Corona Brought More Light to this Year's Electric Beach Event

In partnership with Live Nation, Corona celebrated a beer-exclusive event at the country’s favorite EDM music festivals. The Electric Beach program has been around for a while—five years, in fact—but has revamped its proprietary approach to fun with Corona’s newest, brightest additions.

Fun at the Auto Club Speedway

Electric Beach was sparked at the Auto Club Speedway at Hard Summer. Celebrated in Fontana, CA, the event was followed by San Bernardino, CA’s Nocturnal Wonderland between September 2 and 4. Lounge-in experiences, dine-out options, parties and an environment charged to excite were present—as were intimate performances.

The End-All Party Scene

Corona isn’t a stranger to all-in party ideas, and its presence at Nocturnal Wonderland displayed its capacity for Vegas-like experiences constructed to emulate parties which never end. Packed with sand, palm trees, turf grass, dj sets, misters and cabanas, the beer brand’s presence at Nocturnal Wonderland didn’t come lightly.

Famous artists like Grandtheft, Keys N Krates, Autograf, Astronomar, Giraffage and Sluggers and Wuki arrived, fulfilling their annual promise to Corona’s flashy events. Electric Beach celebrated Corona’s outstanding industry successes with interactive experiences, giving partygoers the option to use its underwater photo activation display.

Targeting with Visuals

The underwater photo activation wasn’t an event-only deal, either. Partiers could link their photos to Instagram, creating stenciled artwork promoting the event’s “Nocturnal” presence. With logo assets and body paint galore, Corona lovers were never far from visually stunning stations designed to carry the brand name far into digital realms.

Yes, there were cold Coronas. The brand’s experiential events, however, have historically focused upon the consumer—not the consumed beverage. Beach resorts, rooftop bars and pools are only as great as their visitors, one must remember, and the Electric Beach Instagram account reflected this. The event’s followers could receive updates, receive RSVP information and check out future renditions.

Love for Beer and Everything Music

Beer and music match well, and Corona didn’t cut corners in tying multicultural Millennials to Corona via EDM. Each Electric Beach program prioritized the music world’s biggest listeners, and the brand’s inclusion of local artists, musicians and cultural gurus has only enhanced its popularity.

Where local artists are considered, social media influence is an undeniable factor. Sure, Instagram might’ve been at the event’s front-and-center angle, but it didn’t receive all the attention. Facebook and Twitter are notorious Twitter accessories, and each promoted Corona via EDM. Music, while a wonderful addition to any beer-heavy event, rarely gets the cultural attention it deserves. Corona’s event serves to rework the way marketers view classical promotion with tunes. Electric Beach isn’t going anywhere, and that’s certainly fine. After all, the world of marketing deserves a little excitement during late night hours.

Toilet Paper Wall at New York Fashion Week

Even toilet-paper gets its kicks in fashion. This year, Cottonelle created a highly unique offshoot beauty lounge to spruce up New York Fashion Week and change up typically showcased brands. Both creative and memorable, the toilet-paper brand’s hosted lounge created a variety of excitement-packed options for event-goers.

Pampering in Style

The toilet-paper market is tough to market. It isn’t, however, exclusive to typical comfort commercials. Cottonelle’s approach, harnessing the triumvirate of promotional power—gifts, celebs and media—took Fashion Week by storm with a rather ornamental element.

Attendees were pampered, offered photo ops, gifted with Cottonelle gift bags and were given meetings with industry influencers. Taking place at SoHo’s Openhouse, Cottonelle’s beauty lounge created, yes, an entire wall out of toilet paper rolls. The rolls, designed and placed along the wall, created a photo booth backdrop to encourage hygiene-related poses.

The Method and the Meaning

Cottonelle’s toilet paper wall was created to boost its CleanRipple Texture toilet-paper—which is one of the brand’s own innovations. Designed to clean better, CleanRipple Texture toilet-paper definitely benefits from an “all hygiene, no nonsense” marketing effort.

Cottonelle’s approach worked, too. Senior associate brand manager, Jeremy DeWitt, considered the event to be a major success, setting Cottonelle apart from typically flat patterns, uninspired visitation booths and, of course, the brand’s leading competitors. The toilet-paper industry, itself, is difficult to compete in due to the product’s marketing monopoly on television time. That said, experiential approaches certainly exist—and Cottonelle has hit it right on the head.

More than a Showcase

Cottonelle’s display, in essence, was a consumer visual test for CleanRipple’s design. The product’s showcase, being out front and center, was a compelling feature reveal. While a highly forward approach to display marketing, the massive toilet-paper wall wasn’t necessarily off-putting. Here, the brand’s dedication to its beauty lounge takes the main stage. Its attention to consumer interaction—and not only detail—won its visitor population’s heart.

The Sponsors and Affiliates

Few experiential marketing efforts, today, are solo efforts. Cottonelle utilized its big-industry brand partners to breathe life into the event, backing a truly unique idea with truly resourceful entities. Corso Coffee, Pulsaderm, YouCam Makeup and Nonni’s Foods, all sponsors and partners, directly assisted the beauty lounge’s creation.

Integrating sponsors into experiential approaches can be difficult, but Cottonelle’s resounding support reveals quite a lot about its strategy. Primarily, it works. Secondarily, it displays an overarching inclination to try new things. Few marketing creators have the intensity, the openness and the creativity to display toilet paper on a wall, but Cottonelle’s display proves such a venture is, indeed, a successful one. The event’s success is likely attributed to its initially bizarre ideation, right alongside its solid approach to practical marketing.

Frisk Clean Breath Launches Brutally Honest Breath Meter

Not every experiential marketing event involves getting thousands of people together in one spot. The latest campaign from Frisk Clean Breath, a maker of breath mints, chose to go where people already are. It set up a machine in shopping malls and similar venues that promised to be "brutally honest" about people's breath. The machine was appropriately called Frisk, the Brutally Honest Breath Meter. Passers-by soon noticed the machines and breathed into the tube sticking out of the front. When they did, the machine responded with something extremely unexpected for a marketing campaign: Insults! Every response colorfully insulted the user's breath. It would light up words like "your breath is so bad that your toothbrush mistakes itself for a toilet brush." Then, it would dispense anywhere from a few to a huge amount of Clean Breath Mints. As it did this, it promised that the mints would keep the person's breath fresh for at least two hours.

The reactions of the people who got these analyses typically involved some sort of surprised exclamation. This got even more passers-by to stop and see what was going on. Soon, they too would blow into the machine and get their own brutally honest assessments. As this happened, Frisk recorded the reactions.

Once the company had enough reactions collected, it picked out the best ones. Then it made a TV commercial that has been called one of the best of the year. This ad showed what the machine said, how the people reacted to it, and how many mints it dispensed. In one case, it dispensed so many that it looked like the person had won a decent-sized slot machine jackpot – that was paid in mints!

Like other great experiential marketing campaigns, this one by Frisk is innovative, unexpected, and contains more than one phase. The first phase lets regular people directly experience the product in an unforgettable way. Then, the second phase shows the results in a way that makes viewers feel like they were almost a part of the original event. The combination is far more exciting than traditional advertising, which has become a bore due to overexposure. People remember experiential advertising in part because it is so different than the usual.

While this campaign didn't use a specific private venue, many do. If you're looking for a place to hold a big marketing extravaganza, look no further than Soho Studios in Miami. Soho has up to 70,000 square feet of space – enough room to fit a huge crowd under its roof. Contact us today to set up a reservation or learn how we can cater to your specific event.