Today’s consumers crave meaningful brand connections that aren’t all that different from their relationships with people.
When you want to connect consumers with your brand and elevate your image, creating a memorable and immersive brand experience is a must. Of course, this is easier said than done.
Read on to learn all about what goes into creating a brilliant immersive mobile experience and how it can benefit your next campaign.
Your brand is more than a business. With advertising, there’s an opportunity to build trust and a deep attachment that can translate to improved brand advocacy, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. One way to do this is through meaningful brand experience design.
Immersive brand experiences invite consumers to fully interact with branded content like videos, games, and other visuals and sounds. The approach empowers brands to create a world of their own for consumers to connect with. As you’ll see, these experiences can range from the whimsical to the more practical, but they all rely on the pairing of cutting-edge creative and technology to bring the branded experience to life.
The rise of immersive brand experiences is already here.
Just take the rise of social commerce. As the experts at McKinsey highlight, more and more consumers are turning to social platforms to interact with brands. It’s evidence of a paradigm shift in where, when, and how consumers are shopping. And for the brands in question, it provides ample opportunities to offer more interactive, experiential journeys to meet consumers where they are - on mobile.
The same is true for the continued popularity of immersive commercial experiences. Remember the “Immersive Van Gogh'' experience that made its way across the country? The experience transported people into the artist’s most famous works of art and became an instant hit. Between February 2021 and May 2022, the immersive experience sold more than 5 million tickets and it was nearly impossible to miss seeing it shared on social media.
To say the Van Gogh experience is a success would be an understatement. Other brands and artists are also taking notice. The Gorillaz, a popular band, made history with their augmented reality (AR) concert in both New York City and London. And Disney even released its first AR-enabled short film this past fall.
Brands can capitalize on the popularity of immersive experiences by incorporating them into their marketing and advertising strategy. Mobile ads, in particular, are the perfect complement to in-person experiences and events. And with the right technology at their fingertips, brands can put mini-immersive experiences directly in the hands of their consumers.
Immersive brand experiences are more than flashy gimmicks. Investing in immersive mobile experiences can help your brand:
Attention and engagement are the most important metrics to measure in 2023 and beyond. And what better way to engage consumers with your mobile ads than by making them interactive?
At the foundation of immersive brand experiences is interactivity. For instance, the Van Gogh immersive experience invites guests to be a part of the artist’s work. They can walk around, take pictures, or sit back and relax in some of the rooms. This creates an interactive, memorable experience for visitors.
Creating these moments on mobile is ideal for capturing consumer attention. In fact, we recently analyzed our clients’ ads and found that video ads with interactive capabilities achieve a 53% boost in engagement compared to standard video ads. Interactive features keep consumers engaged with your mobile creative and create a unique 1:1 ad experience.
Immersive mobile experiences can also make your brand more relatable. Marketers can create worlds that are aligned with their brand identity and deliver them to the hands and minds of consumers. This can go a long way in terms of improving brand awareness and recall.
We recently worked with Lumen, a top Attention Measurement firm that utilizes eye-tracking and surveying of opted-in panel participants, to evaluate the brand recall of MOBKOI formats compared to industry benchmarks. After analyzing two distinct brands, Lumen found that with MOBKOI mobile ads, one campaign achieved 2.7x better spontaneous recall when compared to traditional mobile display ads. The other brand’s campaign performed even better, with 3.5x the average spontaneous recall.
Brand recall is one of the best ways to verify that your mobile ads are indeed capturing attention and resonating with consumers. Findings from this initial study suggest that interactive, full-screen mobile ad formats are incredibly effective for brands across industries to make impactful, long-lasting impressions.
Learn more about the results from the Lumen and MOBKOI research study.
There’s a fine balance between creating an immersive brand experience that’s both memorable and branded.
Luckily, mobile experiences are a great opportunity to include bespoke elements and highlight what makes your products and services shine. For example, a luxury retail brand releasing a line of handbags can showcase a limited-edition color through an immersive, colorful mobile ad. An automotive brand can highlight the features of a newly released car by giving consumers a 360-degree view of the exterior and interior – all through an interactive ad unit.
Immersive brand experiences are memorable and marketable. After engaging with an interactive mobile ad, consumers should be able to more easily recognize or recall your brand along with details of the experience you just delivered.
Many people think of “immersive marketing” in the context of in-person events. When done right, mobile is a perfect complement to an immersive in-person experience or an omnichannel campaign.
We recently had the chance to catch up with the VP of Marketing at The Watches of Switzerland Group, Katie Reed, who heads up marketing strategy for the company’s family of brands. During the webinar, she highlighted how her team utilized immersive mobile ads as part of their 2022 Mayors Diamonds Collection campaign.
Along with a lavish event in the Hamptons and pop-up stores where consumers could try on jewelry, her team also ran interactive mobile ads powered by MOBKOI. The top-performing creative was a drag-and-drop unit that showcased how different jewelry pieces looked on a Mayors Bridal model.
This brilliant creative captured consumer attention by letting users drive the experience. Interactive features enhanced the ad experience, keeping users engaged within the unit longer than other formats as they mixed and matched jewelry on the model.
The drag-and-drop creative achieved a whopping engagement rate of 7.06%. That’s almost 24x the mobile display benchmark. Additionally, it achieved viewability, click-through, and dwell-time rates that were significantly higher than industry benchmarks.
Moreover, the mobile ads were the perfect complement to the in-person event and pop-up stores – creating an all-around immersive brand experience.
In a blog about immersive experiences, we’d be remiss not to highlight an Augmented Reality example. While the applications of AR in advertising are endless, one especially interesting use case is how AR can amplify PR stunts.
Take this unmissable example from Burberry. In 2021, the luxury brand set a giant Burberry bag to sail on the Thames to mark a new global campaign. The up-scaled model of Burberry’s sculptural Olympia bag was to promote its release.
The unmissable, floating handbag garnered immediate attention. After taking on the Thames, it continued on its journey to other destinations. This stunt was no doubt eye-catching, and it was further complemented by AR mobile ads that empowered users to see how the bag would look in their own space in real time.
While the enormous Olympia bag caught consumer attention and was great for showcasing the details of the bag, AR allowed consumers to see how the actual bag (to scale) would look in their space. Consumers could interact with the bag and see how it could look sitting on their desks or on their countertops. It’s a creative and engaging way to ensure the bag matches a personal aesthetic before making a purchase.
We’ve talked at length about bringing brands to life visually, but what about the voice of a brand?
According to a recent 2022 study by Userlike, 80% of consumers have at some point interacted with a chatbot. The study also found that consumers find chatbots to be fast, convenient and sufficient for basic requests. Very few respondents were against companies using chatbots, and with generative AI making waves, the technology will only become more advanced and prevalent.
An AdTalk ad is essentially a chatbot in an ad unit. Advertisers can leverage AdTalk units to guide mobile shoppers to find the right product or service to meet their needs. These ads connect with consumers on a more personal level, making them ideal for fun holiday campaigns or lighthearted gift guides.
While this type of unit is highly customizable, there are a few rules of thumb that any advertiser should keep in mind when testing out talking ads.
The following tips were derived from... MOBKOI’s deep-dive study of 10 AdTalk campaigns that ran from the beginning of 2019 to August 2022.
From simple quizzes to ChatGPT-style interactions, the possibilities for AdTalk ads range far and wide. We are excited to see how this type of ad unit will evolve to become even more immersive over the next few years.
With the right mobile ad agency by your side, you can create brilliant brand experiences that truly resonate with consumers. Whether you are looking for a standalone mobile ad or a complement to a larger campaign, we have the expertise to help engage consumers with your brand.
Learn more about how MOBKOI can create immersive brand experiences and bring your mobile ads to life!
