Immersive Experiences When No One Can Travel: Tips to Keep in Mind
When brands in retail, hospitality, and similar industries market themselves to customers through immersive experiences, this typically involves allowing customers to participate in experiences at actual physical locations. Of course, that’s not easy to do when customers don’t have the option to leave the house for long.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has forced many to remain in their homes. Many people are only leaving if they’re an essential worker who cannot work remotely, or if they’re handling a necessary task, like buying groceries or getting medical attention. Leisure travel and trips to the shops just to browse are off the table for many people right now.
None of this is to say brands need to completely abandon an immersive retail strategy for the time being. There are many ways companies can still offer immersive experiences to customers at home. They include the following:
Virtual and Augmented Reality Experiences
Virtual and augmented reality headset ownership is on the rise, and brands can offer customers unique experiences with these technologies.
Many have already done so successfully. Consider the example of The North Face. Even before the pandemic left many stranded at home, this popular apparel brand offered customers a VR experience that simulated hiking in Nepal and Yosemite National Park. Of course, while customers are participating in these VR experiences, they’re also engaging directly with The North Face’s brand.
There are other possibilities as well. For example, some travel brands have experimented with VR programs that allow customers to plan a trip and then “take it” through a VR headset to determine if it’s the type of vacation they want to go on. During times when many people feel the stress that naturally comes from being stuck inside and unable to visit other places, such an immersive experience could be more attractive than ever. It could also be the key to keeping customers engaged with your brand during this time.
Digital Meet-Ups
Not all of a brand’s customers will own VR headsets, so there’s a higher barrier to entry for these strategies. However, even those who don’t own a headset can still participate in digital versions of immersive experiences. They may not be as visually immersive as VR, but they can offer many of the same benefits.
For instance, some brands offer immersive experiences that consist of parties or meet-ups based around a particular theme. Brands that can no longer organize such parties in physical locations can instead host them on platforms such as Second Life. This reduces the costs of the event while ironically expanding access to it. Before the pandemic, many customers still couldn’t participate in immersive experiences because they couldn’t travel to the locations where they took place. That’s not a problem when the experience takes place entirely within a digital platform.
Streaming Events
Brands often design immersive experiences in the form of live events. For instance, a kitchenware or food brand might host an event that simulates dining at a Parisian restaurant for attendees.
Obviously, it’s not possible to offer such events during these times. However, it is possible to live stream events. Brands can make these experiences more immersive by adding an interactive element.
For instance, in the example above, a brand could modify the event to make it more interactive. Because the event can no longer involve serving customers in person, the event could instead take the form of a live stream in which a celebrity chef walks participants through the process of making the dishes they would have been served. The organizers could add an even greater degree of interactivity to the experience by asking participants to post photos of the meals they created on Instagram or a similar digital platform, with a relevant hashtag. As a result, they would have successfully offered a digital version of an immersive experience, while also getting free marketing from the pictures customers share.
Competitions
Online gaming platforms also give brands the chance to offer immersive experiences by organizing matches and inviting customers to sign up for the chance to participate. This could be a particularly smart idea now, when customers are eagerly seeking ways to stay entertained at home.
For example, perhaps a hospitality brand wants to promote a luxury resort that’s meant to recall the Golden Age of Hollywood. That brand might organize an online trivia match in which the questions are all about Hollywood’s Golden Age. Depending on the platform the brand used, they could even design the audio and visual elements of the game to resemble an old Hollywood setting.
The main point to understand is that the current situation doesn’t need to stop brands from offering immersive experiences and entertainment. While the current pandemic undoubtedly presents a huge challenge to the immersive marketing and hospitality industries, it’s possible for brands to reach out to followers with digital immersive and interactive experiences.
