The Value of Immersive

One of the biggest challenges we’ve been hearing from brands is how to measure experiential success and win over stakeholders. As consumers increasingly demand immersive experiences, brands must find effective ways to demonstrate the value of these engagements.

With that in mind, we hosted our ‘Value of Immersive’ event at The Lighthouse to make the case for innovative brand experiences. We were joined by Will Harvey – Senior Innovation Manager, Diageo, Montse Passolas – CMO, ghd, and Gavin MacArthur – Senior Creative Director, Pixel Artworks. If you’d like to learn more about the event speakers, head over to the event page.

The Five Layers of Experience Design

Gavin kicked off the event by introducing our Five Layers of Experience Design, which serve as a framework for creating impactful and engaging experiences.

The Craft: This foundational layer involves blending creative vision with insights to create multi-sensory experiences. He categorised experience stages into five moments. Each moment, plays a crucial role in ensuring that brands excel in delivering immersive experiences.

The Journey: Journeys can range from abstract to narrative-driven, with the most unique experiences allowing people to embark on personalised paths, while ultimately arriving at the same destination. Aim to create “invitations, not obligations”. When you allow for personal choice, experiences become more unique and enjoyable.

Feeling: Understanding the emotional impact is crucial for creating meaningful connections. Brands should consider what they want participants to think, feel, and do during their experiences. Achieving a flow state—where participants lose track of time and become fully immersed—should be a key goal for experience designers.

Transformation: Immersion extends beyond physical spaces; it encompasses every touchpoint along the consumer journey—from ticket purchase to post-event engagement. The full experiencescape must facilitate multi-sensory engagement and emotional depth, ensuring that every interaction contributes to the overall immersion.

Technology: Technology in experience design is about combining unlimited creativity with innovative tools to create first-time experiences. Lead with ideas rather than tools, ensuring that any technology used enhances rather than detracts from the experience.

The role of immersive tech

Diageo’s session focused on how immersive technology is shaping next-gen brand experiences. Will shared several key insights:

Generational Shift: Gen Z is tech-agnostic and expects brands to adopt innovative technologies in their experiences. This generation has grown up with technology and demands more engaging interactions.

Personalisation: Traditional methods of personalisation are no longer sufficient; brands must find new ways to engage consumers meaningfully. Will shared an example of Diageo’s use of generative AI to allow consumers to co-create bespoke artwork printed directly onto Johnnie Walker bottles in-store—an innovative approach that reflects evolving consumer expectations. An engraved name on a bottle isn’t enough anymore.

Physical Locations: Establishing interactive spaces within brand homes fosters community and engagement, creating opportunities for shared experiences around products – which feels natural for a brand that is all about togetherness.

“Intelligent failures”: Learning from unsuccessful initiatives is crucial for growth. Will cited a Tanqueray Gin sensory experience that created a cocktail based on your palette. It was a brilliant experience but scalability wasn’t considered in the design and they weren’t equipped to scale the experience up and roll it out to other locations.

As for what’s next? Technology in experiences is often modular. Will believes that next we’ll see multiple devices for the same experience for example glasses that deliver multiple layers of digital engagement.

Embedding experiential

ghd’s shared their experience embedding experiential into their marketing strategy to launch their groundbreaking ‘duet style’ —a 2-in-1 hot air styler designed to style hair without heat damage.

Montse’s launch strategy was driven by 4 key pillars:

Revolutionary technology: The launch event needed to be bold and innovative to match the product’s revolutionary nature. ghd became the second brand to activate futuristic venue The Outernet (after Chanel.) The 360 wrap-around screens fully immersed guests in the world of the duet style.

Social and digital channels:  The venue and launch were designed to be naturally shareable. ghd’s event was amplified by key influencers from around the world that shared footage from the event to their millions of followers.

Ultimate experiential: The launch was true to the ghd way of life, allowing guests to experience the brand, not just the product. Every aspect from the red-carpet tunnel to the glambots left the audience feeling and looking their best.

Obsession for demonstration: The launch event was attended by 200 VIP guests. Every single person had the opportunity to experience the product with a dedicated stylist.

The launch achieved remarkable metrics – Doubling their reach and tripling their organic views and value of website traffic, demonstrating the power of experiential marketing in driving brand awareness and engagement.

Transforming Scepticism into Advocacy

The panel discussion brought together all three speakers to address one of the biggest challenges faced by brands today: transforming scepticism into advocacy among internal stakeholders while proving ROI on experiential initiatives.

Unique Value Proposition: Experiential marketing allows consumers to engage tangibly with products and services, creating opportunities for storytelling that resonate on a deeper level.

Measurement Strategies: Identifying clear objectives is essential for determining appropriate ROI metrics. Your engagement metric could simply be brand love, and social following is a great way to measure this. There are also tools for measurement that can be seamlessly integrated into experiences such as heatmapping, eye tracking, and geolocation.

Stakeholder Engagement: Seeing is believing. Your stakeholders are just as much an audience as your consumer, bring them into the experience and demonstrate the value first-hand. It’s not always possible to bring an experience to your stakeholders, but there are layers to unlocking budgets and experiences, start small and work your way up. Sending a VR headset to get a feel for the experience is a great example.

Budget planning: It’s important to allocate a budget pot for experiential, rather than trying to dip into other pots when an opportunity arises. Finding and incorporating metrics that matter to your brand’s overall goals will help you make a better case for allocated budget.

With so much knowledge and enthusiasm in one room, there’s plenty more to share. If you’d like to chat more about this topic, we’d love to book you in for a visit to The Lighthouse.