Cloud Sourcing
Deloitte Ecosystems & Alliances Group educates attendees about its consulting services via a virtual treasure hunt.

In 2018, Deloitte Ecosystems & Alliances Group, the business consultancy wing of Deloitte Consulting LLP, was a marquee sponsor of Google Cloud Next for the first time. As such, it was crucial for the company to make an impression on event attendees and solidify itself as a leader in professional cloud services. Specifically, it wanted to show business leaders how Deloitte can make shifting their business operations to the cloud a cinch.

Since marketing the intangible service through traditional presentations wouldn't build the buzz Deloitte was looking for, the company determined a virtual-reality experience could be the ideal vehicle to build excitement around its offerings while also providing a logical and creative tie-in with the leap to cloud-based operations. "The show floor at Next is filled with the top innovations from Google Cloud and their partners spanning both industries and capabilities. To stand out among the rest, you need something that is unique and intrigues the audience," says Amy Gonzalez, marketing lead for Deloitte's Google Cloud Alliance. But offering a VR activation at such a tech-heavy show is a bit like keeping up with the Joneses.

To help deliver an interactive solution more spectacular than the rest, the company tapped experiential-marketing agency Live Marketing Inc. to create a high-flying VR experience that educated business leaders about Deloitte's eight-step solution. Live Marketing decided to appeal to the tech-savvy attendees by gamifying the experience with a scavenger hunt through Google Cloud City, a fictional locale based on the event's host city of San Francisco. The goal of the game was to search the metropolis and collect the eight tools required for a company's successful transformation to a cloud-based operation.

Approximately one-third of Deloitte's 30-by-30-foot island exhibit was devoted to what it dubbed the Cloud Buyer Journey. As attendees wandered into the booth, four professional engagers invited visitors to take flight in the virtual scavenger hunt. Staffers scanned their badges, led them to one of four swivel stools that would give players a 360-degree view of the VR world without fear of toppling over, and outfitted them with Google Daydream VR headsets powered by Google Pixel phones and handheld controllers.

The VR experience's opening scene revealed the Google Cloud City hovering on clouds below users and included iconic landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman's Wharf. Brief text and voice narration explained that the orchestration of a cloud journey can be just as important as the cloud solution used, and Deloitte is the ideal guide. Next, attendees were asked to use their controllers to zip around the city and collect eight transformational tools hidden among Cloud City's monuments.

The scavenger hunt was divided into three phases, the first of which was titled "Map Your Journey" and designed to help users gain the insight and understanding that are necessary to ensure a successful leap to the cloud. Narration and on-screen graphics instructed players to seek the "Initiate" icon, and the program automatically positioned users in the correct section of Cloud City to explore. When they located the target nestled in the Bay Bridge, the icon did a quick spin, showing it was successfully captured. Following the acquisition, brief text accompanied by narration stated, "Your journey has begun. Let Deloitte help you understand why cloud matters and what makes it possible." After this easily digestible messaging had been conveyed, the icon flew up and into the first of eight circles at the top of the screen, which served as a progress indicator. Attendees were then given their next target, "Engage," and the game repositioned players in a new area of the cityscape. Again, participants flew around until they collected the icon and were given more information about Deloitte's ability to help their companies before setting off to find the phase's final "Converge" icon.

Phase one was followed by two additional segments: "Navigate Your Success" and "Amplify Your Cloud Performance." Phase two required the collection of three more icons ("Mobilize," "Adopt," and "Scale"), and phase three entailed locating the final two ("Optimize" and "Innovate"). When the last icon was placed in the progress bar, users were returned to a bird's-eye view of Cloud City, now awash in Google-brand colors and text congratulating them on their successful expedition to cloud transformation. A final message told users to remove their headsets and collect their rewards for successfully completing the journey.

Following their seven-to-10-minute scavenger hunts, attendees received small giveaways and were entered to win a Google Daydream headset of their own. By the end of the show, the Cloud Buyer Journey helped Deloitte reach more than 300 visitors from 180 different companies. "The VR experience not only made us one of the most popular areas on the show floor, but also created brand awareness and delivered our messaging in an innovative way," Gonzalez says.

A Spoonful of Medicine
A mixed-reality activation with a 6-foot-tall sculpture helps GlaxoSmithKline plc launch a new shingles vaccine.

Leading up to the 2018 American Public Health Association Conference, GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) was itching to debut its new Shingrix vaccine, the first shingles inoculation to hit the market in a decade. So experiential-marketing agency Impact XM wrote a prescription for a gamified mixed-reality (MR) solution that would educate attendees about the vaccine's proven efficacy and safety using the Microsoft HoloLens.

To ensure the activation garnered the desired attention, Impact XM fabricated a 6-foot-tall, bright-red humanoid sculpture and placed it on a corner of GSK's 40-by-40-foot island that faced the main traffic aisle. "The strategy was to create a centerpiece experience for the Shingrix booth that would stand out from the noise of the exhibit hall and create a must-see engagement for showgoers," says Impact XM senior creative director Paul Spadafora.

In a semicircle in front of the Shingrix Man, as the sculpture was called, GSK arranged three waist-high pedestals that each held a HoloLens headset and a tablet that allowed passersby and staffers to see what the user was experiencing. Booth reps helped curious attendees don the HoloLenses, through which users saw what appeared to be immune cells floating around the mannequin and two red balls (representing the two doses of the vaccine) hovering over its shoulder. A voiceover narrator said, "Welcome! Please air tap one of the red balls to see how the two doses of Shingrix create an immune response in the body."

Once tapped, the two Shingrix doses spun around each other and disappeared inside the statue as the immune cells multiplied and became more vibrant. The cells then faded into the body as a narrated efficacy statement transitioned into view. When the voiceover concluded, a box with a glowing diamond materialized with a challenge: "How many patients can you protect?" The narrator proceeded to describe the game portion of the experience, explaining that users were to "immunize" patients of different ages by air tapping bubbles representing the shingles virus.

When players initiated the game, a 30-second timer appeared next to the mannequin, and four to six bubbles at a time – each marked with different patient ages – began drifting toward them. Players immediately started punching the air, and when a user successfully immunized a bubble, it exploded with a popping sound followed by a slot machine animation on a scoreboard anchored to Shingrix Man's chest. As bubbles popped (or flew past the players unimmunized), new targets replaced them. After 30 seconds, an alarm signaled the end of the game, and a brief fireworks display celebrated the user's success. The efficacy statement then reappeared and directed visitors to explore the in-depth data found throughout the booth or talk to a GSK rep. Before the experience concluded, animations provided additional information regarding safety, sensitivity, and references.

Following the two-and-a-half-minute engagement, most players were sufficiently intrigued to explore the vaccine in more detail. The visual spectacle of the Shingrix Man combined with participants' wild gesticulations proved to be the right medicine, as GSK moved 139 users through the AR experience and attracted hundreds of health-care providers to the exhibit.

Game. Set. Match.
IBM Corp.'s gamified engagement shows tennis fans how Watson can see, hear, and understand mankind.

IBM Corp. has been the official technology partner of the U.S. Open since 1990. In 2018, the company decided to create an immersive experience solely for the fans, and did so by shifting its focus to Watson, its artificial-intelligence supercomputing platform that helps create near-real-time highlight reels of U.S. Open matches by analyzing crowd noise, player body language, and commentators' emotions. This enables the U.S. Open to upload match highlights to its platforms faster than any other media outlet, thereby attracting global attention as well as more advertisers. IBM also wanted to educate attendees about how Watson uses the same technology to make advancements in various other industries.

To accomplish these aims, IBM asked George P. Johnson, a Project Worldwide agency, to develop a fan-focused interactive experience inside a former tennis retail store near Arthur Ashe Stadium. Dubbed the IBM Experience, the roughly 25-by-35-foot space demonstrated that Watson is as big a tennis fan as humans via a three-part gamified experience in which the supercomputer analyzed visitors the same way it does tennis matches.

One half of the space was outfitted with four interactive stations, each with a large wall-mounted monitor that rendered an attendee's silhouette in tiny, dynamic balls. With staffers' guidance, visitors first learned how Watson sees emotion. On-screen text instructed attendees to "Raise your arms. Pump your fist. Do a little dance" to elicit a response á la Novak Djokovic after delivering a match-winning ace. Watson analyzed their dances and delivered an emotional-excitement score ranging from zero to 100.

Next, to demonstrate how Watson listens to crowds, audio speakers played a series of audience reactions recorded during various sporting events. Via text, Watson asked, "Which sport do you think this sounds like?" Using a microphone, attendees made their guesses. After the monitor displayed the correct answer, it showed a sound equalizer highlighting the more detailed frequency range and nuance that Watson picks up. Finally, visitors reenacted a classic snippet of tennis-match commentary, which Watson again scored based on their levels of excitement.

To end the engagement, the monitor played a short video showing how Watson advances other industries, such as by listening to trains to pinpoint mechanical problems and analyzing thousands of pages of medical charts and images to help physicians detect early signs of cancer. Finally, staffers used tablets to collect participants' contact info and send them their own personal "highlight reels," i.e., their victory dances. Visitors that shared their video clips on social media with the hashtag #myAIhighlight were entered into a drawing to win a tennis ball signed by U.S. tennis star Madison Keys.

The Watson fan experience helped IBM attract more than 7,100 visitors and generate more than 1,000 hours of engagement. Better yet, those visitors walked away with a clearer understanding of how Watson both enhances fan enjoyment and makes the world a better, safer place. E