Brett Hyman is the founder and president of NVE Experience Agency, a Los Angeles-based brand experience agency focused on digital, virtual and live events.
Brett Hyman is the founder and president of NVE Experience Agency.Photo: Prado Photo
Will fully virtual experiences replace the effects and value of in-person experiences? No, of course not. The human brain just doesn’t offer the same oxytocin reward that it does by getting together with our tribe in the real world. But virtual experiences can deliver a lot of value to the lives of consumers. Done right, virtual experiences can be memorable, meaningful and even transformative.
Nevertheless, we’ve begun documenting NVE’s “new rules” for experiential, which will hopefully guide brands and agencies alike to success in a partly virtual world.
1. Design experiences with empathy by listening to the needs of your target consumers.
The starting point for designing any experience is empathy and listening to consumers. Before you can reinvent brand experiences, you first need to understand how consumer behavior is changing, what they value most and where the opportunities are. All of our campaigns are insight-driven—rooted in cultural and consumer truths.
Despite the lockdown, people value shared experiences more than ever. When crafted through a lens of human empathy, interactive or digital experiences have the potential to reach a wider set of target audiences with even stronger levels of engagement than what you would see at a physical event.
2. Move from passive to active audience participation.
Another important rule of experiential is driving active participation by your audience versus passive consumption of content. This sounds like a no-brainer, but the reality is many experiences today revolve around content designed to be consumed by the audience rather than co-created. When people actively participate in an experience or create original content, it boosts their feeling of connection.
A great example is the release of Netflix’s new movie Over The Moon. To drive deeper fan engagement from home, NVE worked with Netflix to create a five-day virtual program for kids and parents, inspiring them to build their dreams through the magic of art, science, music and storytelling. The weeklong event, hosted on Netflix editorial channels, featured the film's director, talent and influencers and drove active participation by fans around the world.
3. Build community and unlock shared experiences.
Brands also need to embrace the role they play in amplifying culture and seeking out new ways to build community through shared experiences. For example, to create an immersive experience for Pinterest Creator's Festival, a one-day virtual event, NVE worked with dozens of top platform creators to capture intimate conversations about how they’ve utilized the platform to grow their businesses with tangible examples and anecdotes. Individual panelists were sent home studio kits to create high-quality videos leading up the event. In addition, NVE produced video content with creators in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, increasing community engagement, participation and awareness.
To premiere season 2 of The Alienist: Angel of Darkness, NVE created a custom digital interrogation experience.Screenshot: Courtesy of NVE Experience Agency
Despite the challenges of remote production this year, brands have an opportunity to create even more impact with the digital experiences they produce by meeting consumers where they are and putting their audience at the center of the story.
Our interactive division, COGNITION, helped TNT bring the second season of its psychological crime drama The Alienist: Angel of Darkness to life through the curation of a custom digital interrogation experience to promote the show and amplify engagement. The custom interactive Facebook Messenger Interrogation Experience allowed audience members to join a 1:1 conversation with detective Sara Howard to pair them with a real criminal from New York at the turn of the century, based on their responses prompted by the bot followed by a shareable GIF opportunity.
5. Embrace experimentation and stay flexible.
To deliver an experience that truly stands out, brands also have to take a 360 approach both in terms of the content and stories they tell and the technology they apply to extend the experience—creating layers of personalization and choice for the audience.
During periods of uncertainty like the current pandemic, this requires not only experimenting with new interactive approaches to drive deeper engagement for audiences joining remotely, but also contingency planning for the future—depending on what the restrictions and protocols are in place for physical events. It’s not a one-platform-fits-all mentality. Our teams have sourced hundreds of vendors during the pandemic, and ultimately choose the best partners to meet our client’s objectives—whether that’s utilizing options like Hopin, Jumbo, Afterparty, Markee and more. And even then, you have to be flexible with changes to service offerings or updated project needs.
Ultimately brands need to embrace the ambiguity while focusing on the opportunities to extend the experience. For example, for the recent launch of NBA 2K21, NVE helped to produce #2KFEST, a global livestream event bringing followers across the world together for 24 straight hours of original content showcasing the video game, its history, its fans and its place in culture. The event was simulcast in multiple languages worldwide, and featured some of the NBA’s and WNBA’s biggest stars while including interactive challenges for fans. I wonder what this experience and others would have been like before the pandemic.
This story appeared in BizBash's Spring 2021 issue.
