Creative Commons image by Rafael Gonzalez

Where the Money Lies

Rachel Stoll
Published in
3 min readJun 22, 2016

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There’s money to be made by immersive creators, if you don’t consider selling stuff selling out. Brands and their agencies have been playing in the “experience” space for years but it’s about to get real. Why? Immersive and VR are the buzzwords that are making money and headlines for agencies. Oh and because millennials want experiences not things.

Started From The Bottom…

Some may point to the World Fairs as the first place companies were connecting with consumers through some experience, but a less fuzzy starting point is 1979. Gary M. Reynolds founded an agency (GMR) wanting to integrate music and bands to create experiences. The agency did a fair bit of experiential style work with Miller Brewing Company with music and taste challenges — engaging consumers in a new way. Flash forward to 1984 and Jay Conrad Levinson writes a book about Guerrilla Marketing which had a lot of ideas but really puts the idea of a branded experience on the table.

Experiential agencies continued to grow, also becoming known as promotions agencies. “Experiential” was and still is a pretty broad term, but mostly referred to events or some sort of physical experience. Food samples, SXSWi booths, and brand stunts in NYC’s Times Square are good examples.

Work expanded and technology changed. No longer did events have to be physical but they started to bleed into digital and later social channels. Sweepstakes were no longer limited to an event or a grocery store aisle, and the applications and advances were endless. Brands who got it early on were creating experiences for winners and capturing content for distribution later. These are all things that we assume will happen now, but was not the case 10 years ago.

…Now We Here

Brands have been tapping into existing immersive creators and experiences. Heineken has been pushing into experience and content with campaigns like their Departure Roulette stunt in which people in JFK could trade in their flight for a randomly selected one and collaborating with creators with a Punchdrunk event at the McKitterick in 2014. BudLight’s recent Pac Man live-action commercial is also bleeding from experience into immersive.

With technology continuing to advance, it seems every week a new branded “immersive” experience is launched digitally. May included Facebook’s “Here and Now”, done by their in-house study “The Factory” and shot on their 360 video camera that was announced at F8. GoPro also hinted that VR viewing options were coming. Samsung also had a VR storytelling app that connects traveling parents and kids over bedtime — well connect with a purple ball. Done by BBH London, the Samsung app is just one of many immersive experiences being done by a host of advertising, marketing, and content agencies looking for new ways to connect to consumers and drive some media coverage for being innovative.

There are many who are skeptical about a branded VR/AR space and for the right reasons. It’s too early to even call VR a “fad” since adoption of hardware is currently low. Right or wrong agencies are throwing money at innovation in this space even if it fails to sell product.

What it all probably means

There’s an opportunity to consider this branded work as part of the larger landscape of immersive, or at least as a subset. With money and technology comes potential innovation — and hopefully adoption of technology so that VR can actually be a fad… and then maybe a trend.

For directors and creators know that you have a right to play in this branded-experiential space. Brands and agencies will continue to look for collaborators who understand how to create rich experiences that stand out for consumers. You may even be able to have some fun while you’re at it.

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