Events in a virtual world: capturing undivided attention

After the release of the Ocu­lus Rift at the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show, the world real­ly got to under­stand what can be achieved with vir­tu­al real­i­ty or VR – and not just for brands in shop­ping cen­tres, but for gamers in their home.

Start­ing this year you’ll be able to link your head­set to your Xbox and you’ll be danc­ing around the liv­ing room with it. So now we’ve all heard the term and we’ve had our bal­ance chal­lenged on the sofa, how can VR be used to cre­ate a brand expe­ri­ence that is both immer­sive and actu­al­ly prac­ti­cal?

VR grabs 100 per cent of the consumer’s atten­tion, enabling you alone-time with that per­son to deliv­er your expe­ri­ence, which means, if you get the con­tent right, you can cut through in a noisy world

Event tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ists Arc­stream have worked at the cut­ting edge of event tech­nol­o­gy for the last 20 years, bring­ing ideas to life with bespoke tech­ni­cal solu­tions for event organ­is­ers all over the world. They were the team behind inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ences in the Pep­si Max Cube on the South Bank in Lon­don, the huge­ly pop­u­lar inter­ac­tive pro­jec­tions in Frank­furt Air­port for EMC² and the Grolsch roadshow’s ulti­mate pho­to booth that vis­it­ed pub­lic spaces through­out the coun­try last year.

They are cham­pi­oning VR expe­ri­ences as a vital ele­ment for events in 2016 and beyond, enabling you to visu­alise the expe­ri­ence for the con­sumer, take them through the yet to be con­struct­ed build­ing or per­son­alise their jour­ney around brands – the appli­ca­tions are end­less. Let poten­tial cus­tomers see pro­to­type cars and give feed­back ahead of release, let peo­ple walk around a mega-yacht, test out your new store con­cept or cre­ate a vir­tu­al par­ty envi­ron­ment that changes every 15 min­utes.

Now the real­ly amaz­ing thing about VR that makes it worth the invest­ment for brands above all else is the undi­vid­ed atten­tion it affords you with your con­sumer, while they are immersed in the expe­ri­ence. At all oth­er times of the day you are con­stant­ly dis­tract­ed by mul­ti­ple things, play­ing on your phone while shop­ping, brows­ing the news while watch­ing tele­vi­sion. VR grabs 100 per cent of the consumer’s atten­tion, enabling you alone-time with that per­son to deliv­er your expe­ri­ence, which means, if you get the con­tent right, you can cut through in a noisy world.

Not all events or brands will ben­e­fit from this kind of expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, and this is where touch­screens are com­ing into their own for events in 2016. While the ver­sions we know from years gone by were unre­spon­sive and the con­tent poor­ly designed, the time for a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence is now.

Event-goers now expect more than just a pre­sen­ta­tion to flick through vir­tu­al­ly or an inter­ac­tive floor­plan which sim­ply flash­es with a loca­tion map for your event. Just think what a map can deliv­er, sim­ply and intu­itive­ly. The des­ti­na­tion would have a pop-up video of its product’s lat­est prod­uct lines, while an event map would high­light the num­ber of steps to get to that cho­sen exhi­bi­tion stand, so you feel vir­tu­ous on the way.

Touch appli­ca­tions can now be devel­oped with a bespoke jour­ney for every user. More inter­est­ing­ly, the lat­est touch tech­nol­o­gy can receive infor­ma­tion as well as give it, using object or fidu­cial code recog­ni­tion to deliv­er tai­lored expe­ri­ences to the user, tak­ing them through a brand sto­ry using their pref­er­ences, cap­tured by scan­ning the badge of an exhi­bi­tion attendee, for exam­ple.

You can tai­lor your event invi­ta­tion, giv­ing atten­dees a per­son­al greet­ing on-site and then allow­ing them to request infor­ma­tion to be sent to them via their pre­ferred mode. More impor­tant­ly, it allows brands to data­base what the user has been explor­ing and their con­tact detail to fol­low up in a sales process lat­er.

Arc­stream demon­strat­ed this recent­ly at the Quick­Books Con­nect 2015 US event in San Jose, for INTUIT. By access­ing the attendee data­base in real time, users could scan their pass on a touch table to cre­ate a total­ly per­son­alised expe­ri­ence for them.

By then using a selec­tion of pucks placed on the sur­face, the table revealed spe­cif­ic apps rel­e­vant to their busi­ness areas. The user could quick­ly see the details of each app, along with rat­ings and demos, and most impor­tant­ly, they could add apps to their per­son­al wish list, drag­ging and drop­ping the infor­ma­tion with their fin­ger.

After the event, each per­son who logged into the table was sent an e‑mail con­tain­ing their wish list and the option to down­load the apps they saved, extend­ing the event expe­ri­ence.

It’s an old adage – at least two-years-old any­way – but con­tent is still king, more than ever though it’s the idea that is king, as well as the way it is pre­sent­ed. The guys with the best ideas, exe­cut­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ly will be the win­ners at events as the tools are bet­ter than ever.