Experience is (the new) King

Replacing the multi-decade reign of Content as king

At Art House , we view the promise of augmented reality (AR) as a canvas for brands to better connect with their audiences like never before. AR, defined simply as the ability to bring digital overlays into physical environments, is an experiential medium. By bringing their brands to life through this medium, marketers are also bringing the relationships with their customers to life.

The realization of this promise for augmented reality is becoming closer as it becomes clearer that experience, not just content, is essential to reach and engage audiences today. This clarity was on center stage during Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year. And, I’m not referring to the weeklong parties and events, as fun as they were; instead, I’m referring to the Lions award-winning campaigns. The importance of consumer experiences was as clear as (the few sunny) days at this year’s festival.

This is a departure from the yesteryear of advertising, mostly a show-and-tell exercise. Today, more and more consumers no longer just want to be told or shown what to consume. And many agencies and advertisers likewise no longer just want to show and tell. 

So now, they are speaking with each other - advertiser with audience.

The Power of ‘With’

‘With’ not only illustrates the relationship between the modern advertiser and the modern consumer; it also defines a paradigm shift in the public presence of the modern brand.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, dot com presented brands the opportunity to be physical or digital. You could be competitive with a brick-and-mortar business or an online company. By the 2010s, it became essential for most companies to have a physical and digital presence; websites and social media became checklist requirements for most business types, offline or online. And now, as we move through the 2020s, it is becoming increasingly important to integrate, blending physical with digital; equally significant limbs of the modern, integrated brand, acting simultaneously and symbiotically. One simple example of this is the proliferation of QR codes, printed everywhere the brand is present, from billboards to product packaging. 

Importantly, this presence of the digital with the physical enables Points of Experience, represented by Points of Interaction along the customer journey towards Points of Sale. These experiential interactions benefit the brand and consumer alike. Instead of just pitching products and services, the integrated brand invites the audience to discover something new themselves. The process of discovery is one of the most powerful vehicles for an audience to become customers. These discoveries, by definition, also reveal something new (about the brand, product, services), one of the most effective adjectives in marketing. The power of experience runs deep.  

Experience is the New Advertisement

What if ads become experiences? This is one of the rhetorical questions we ask ourselves at Art House daily. In this new landscape, marketing & entertainment not only intersect, but their lanes actually merge.

Walking through The Work gallery in the Palais Des Festivals at Cannes Lions, I encountered a quite validating trend. The infographics representing many winning campaigns across multiple categories revealed the important role of interactive experiences between advertiser and audience. 

The creative ads by some of the leading agencies were populated by those points of interaction, inviting audiences to participate in the brand journey, just as brands pore over the customer journey. This dynamic replaces the much more passive status quo of the past. Don’t just tell. Don’t just show. Interact in a two-way conversation with your audience. 

With this observation, below are 10 of my favorite award-winning examples from this year’s Cannes Lions.

PUB MUSEUMS

LEPUB, MILAN / HEINEKEN / 2024

To preserve the historical status and record of Irish pubs, Heineken installed augmented and virtual museum experiences into them, for on-site and remote viewing.

THANKS FOR COKE-CREATING

VML, NEW YORK / COCA-COLA / 2024

Coca-Cola embraced what would otherwise be unauthorized versions of its logo in bodegas throughout the world. In doing so, they uplifted the brand and the bodega owners, placing various community versions of the logo in global print and OOH campaigns.

CODE MY CROWN

EDELMAN, LONDON / DOVE / 2024

Dove's open source project empowers anyone with the tools to produce and use realistic Black hair for digital characters in virtual worlds.

BMW IJACK

SERVICEPLAN MIDDLE EAST, DUBAI / BMW / 2024

BMW turned Google Maps into a virtual showroom for its electric cars by uploading images of their EVs at every public charging station location in Dubai. 

OREO X PAC-MAN SUPERMARCADE

SAATCHI & SAATCHI, DUSSELDORF / OREO / 2024

Leaning into the retro video game trend, Oreo produced digital twins of supermarkets that also served as the canvas for a retro-future AR pac-man game. Consumers-turned-gamers follow the path of cookies leading to a special edition OREO x PAC-MAN shelf.

THE BEER INSIDE THE MUSIC

AFRICA CREATIVE DDB, SAO PAULO / BUDWEISER / 2024

To show its deep ties to music, Budweiser placed posters, print ads, billboards, and OOHs in more than 100 locations across Brazil, featuring Spotify Codes for songs that mention the brand.

EAT LIKE YOUR AVATAR

OGILVY PARIS / INTERBEV / 2024

Challenging gamers to eat healthier, Interbev leveraged the food lore of Zelda, where players unlock and prepare various recipes to enhance their gaming experience through a “flexitarian” diet.

SMACK FOR HEINZ

RETHINK, TORONTO / HEINZ KETCHUP / 2024

Heinz created a smackable, ketchup-dispensing billboard placed outside restaurants that did not serve their brand of the condiment. These locations were identified via customer complaints that Heinz was not available. 

THIS IS AN IKEA STORE

OGILVY, MANILA / IKEA / 2024

To expand the footprint of Ikea in the Philippines without building more stores, the brand deployed “This is an IKEA store” QR-enabled ads in various online and offline touchpoints to recreate the IRL shopping experience.

RIP CURL VIRTUAL PRO

VML, SYDNEY / RIP CURL / 2024

Rip Curl launched the Virtual Pro as the world’s first digital global surf competition that rewarded loyal customers, gamifying the retroactive surf data contained within their Search GPS watches.

About the Author

Justin Fredericks is the Co-Founder and CEO of Art House , whose proprietary augmented cloud & augmented intelligence technology powers some of the most innovative AR & AI experiences for brands. Clients include Paramount Pictures, Compass Real Estate, NBCUniversal, Viceroy Hospitality Group, Eden Roc, Monster Energy and many others across a wide-range of industries.

Justin combines learnings from 10 years in tech and 7 years in visual marketing to forecast a flourishing future for the AR industry. Also a nerdy academic, he received a B.A. in Sociology from UCLA and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.