Event Showcase | Immersive Experiences Designed to Influence

Creating “immersive” experiences is all the rage. Event planners and designers are eager to create environments and experiences that immerse their guests in their event’s purpose – whether that is to promote a brand, launch a product, raise funds for charity or create community. The more immersive your event, the more engagement and ultimately the more influence your event will have.

So, when Event Emporium got together with AV1 and Beta Bar Sydney to create an immersive event for industry networking group, Influential Women in Events and Marketing we were keen to see the results. Join us as we take a look at what design elements they included to create the recent thought leadership event, Immerse Yourself with Influential Women in Events & Marketing.

The Event

This event was the vision of Francesca Peskops, Event Emporium Creative Director. Francesca and her team produced the event from the invitation right through to the gift bags, and brought it to life with their key collaborators AV1 [AV, Media and Production] and Beta Bar & Gallery [Unique Sydney CBD Venue].

The event itself was designed to demonstrate the power of immersive events to the guests.

Immersive Elements Applied

Immersive experiences are where guests feel included, surrounded by and engaged with the event concept from all around them.

Francesca believes that in order to convert an audience to advocacy or enhanced consideration for your product, they must have a physical experience of your brand or product promise at your event.

On Arrival

Guests were treated to an engaging entry right from the get-go with the Sprintr kiosks. The kiosks were branded with the event’s colours, graphics and logos, and designed to complement the venue’s unique backdrop.

A quick entry is a good entry. After selecting their name on screen they were then asked a quick question; What’s your favourite type of movie? (a bit of fun that was incorporated in to the presentation later) before pressing print on their name badge!

Once guests had entered the venue, they were offered Beta Bar’s brand-new cocktail named after the Greek goddess of love – The Aphrodite. A gin and tonic with rose syrup and finished off with dried rose petals over ice this cocktail was the favourite on the night. (Mmmmm sounds delicious!)

Food Stations

Another key highlight of the event were the immersive food grazing tables produced by Chef Peter Conistis at the gorgeous Beta Bar, Sydney.

Chef Peter created one seafood and one vegan grazing table to showcase Beta Bar’s alignment to growing customer demand for a greater range of dietary requirements plus locally sourced ingredients demonstrates his commitment to sustainability.

To showcase Beta’s incredible food, Francesca envisioned an immersive dining experience and collaborated with AV1’s design team to create custom animations that were projected directly on to grazing tables. The seafood dishes looked as though they were floating in the sea, while the vegan dishes were casually blowing in the wind… All content was designed by AV1’s in-house media team.

Some clever design also ensured that the sharks didn’t swim over the top of the food – just around it – giving the illusion the food plates were floating on water. Pretty cool!

The Presentation

To prove that immersive events can be produced for all levels of budget, Francesca, co-created her story with AV1 to be displayed across eight connected portrait LED panels to create one seamless screen that curved around the audience like a big hug. Speaking from the floor with image led content, the audience were so close and involved in the story it was impossible not to be fully engaged.

Francesca shared six amazing immersive event examples from global agencies and case studies from Event Emporium to demonstrate that immersive events can be produced for all budgets and all marketing objectives.

Later, the expert panel consisting of Francesca (Event Emporium), Tegan Burford (Beta Bar) and Toni McAllister (AV1) provided leading edge insight and answered questions from the audience on “How to bring immersive events to life”.

The Technology Elements

Technology and custom content play an important role in creating immersive experiences. We’ve mentioned above a few elements already – the seamless registration on arrival by Sprintr, the projection mapping used to bring the food stations to life, and the LED screens that wrapped the audience in a giant hug.

In addition, AV1’s media team created bespoke graphics, seamless animated transitions and sourced specific imagery and footage to complement the presentations, which combined was instrumental in immersing the guests in the overall concept of the event.

And to finish…

To complete the immersive experience the gift bag given on departure contained a luxury organic bath soak for hard working events & marketing professionals to relax and enjoy. Ahhh, nice touch.

Suppliers involved:

Event Management & Concept | Event Emporium

Venue & Catering | Beta Bar & Gallery

AV, Production & Media | AV1

Registration, Name Badges | Sprintr by AV1