Strategically integrating tech into brand experiences
Editor’s note: Alex Vera is the vice president of creative and strategy at SGK.
In a world where technology can unlock a broad range of brand touchpoints, it’s tempting to grasp at every emerging opportunity to surprise and entertain consumers. Many companies are creating connected brand experiences and while we have the digital tools to make people feel like they can connect to a brand anywhere, making brands come to life in a multisensory and immersive way, it’s important to integrate digital technology strategically.
Whether you’re exploring the metaverse, remaining in the analogue world or joining the dots between the two, the experience you create must thoughtfully connect people with the essence of your brand. Otherwise, all they will remember is the clever tech and creative you invested in. For brands seeking to create truly transformative experiences that forge meaningful connections with consumers, we recommend taking the following into consideration.
1. Develop a cohesive brand ecosystem
Linear thinking is one of the key obstacles to achieving an impactful digital experience. Most people think about how they can maximize native digital marketing channels, but a better approach is to consider it as an integrated element from the outset, using interactivity to connect people to the brand. We recently created a gamified environment for a client, combining basketball hoops with interactive digital content, resulting in a brand ecosystem where consumers were able to play with virtual characters using a real ball and hoop, connecting and unlocking physical and digital channels simultaneously while feeding shared social moments.
2. Engage the senses
It’s always sad to see people using digital technology as an afterthought – placing QR codes around a space that often lead to disconnected content channels, for example. Creating a digital experience is about much more than that. There are so many opportunities to personalize a brand experience by creating opportunities to interact with a physical space. QR codes can be used to unlock anamorphic 3D content and augmented reality, while RFID near-field or far-field technology can alter the environment as someone moves around it, making the digital elements of the brand experience agile, responsive and interactive.
3. Managing budgets: Don’t let a limited budget constrain you
The biggest impacts don’t always come with the biggest budgets or the most sophisticated digital elements. We recently worked on a campaign for General Mills, which leveraged nostalgia for milk bottles and deliveries to create shareable real-world content. As part of this campaign, a vintage milk delivery van took crates of milk bottles filled with cereal to the homes of influencers, tapping into both the appeal of traditions and the brand’s heritage, while speaking to a new generation of digital natives. That’s the essence of delivering a digital brand experience; being led by the brand to discover strategic opportunities for digital and traditional marketing channels to collide.