From Virtual to Immersive

When PayPal recently unveiled six new commerce innovations through a virtual presentation, the company did not hire a venue for an in-person or hybrid event. They even ditched predictable slides with bullet points and stock images.  

Instead, the presenters were shown in a completely virtual space, with the ability to showcase new features and how people use the app in everyday settings while animations visualized how AI makes the check-out process easier. 

CEO Alex Chriss provided a well-scripted voiceover that added color commentary in a confident tone. When he promised that PayPal would change commerce, he was believable because PayPal showed us what’s possible instead of telling us. 

Welcome to the new world of immersive events. Thanks to advances in technology such as motion-capture and 3D spatial audio, businesses can launch new products, educate employees, and share important updates with production values close to a large studio. But businesses need to understand how to adopt immersive technology properly. The key to success is to choose the right opportunity for immersion and create an entire end-to-end experience beyond an event.  

Let’s take a closer look at how we got here and examine tips for doing immersive right. 

How We Got Here 

Many factors are converging to raise the stakes for virtual events, ranging from technological advances to rising audience expectations. 

Executives Need a Toolkit 

The typical C-level executive of a FTSE 100 or S&P 100 manages an increasingly enormous job of building brand value with stakeholders ranging from investors to customers. The radical shift to virtual living over the past few years has exposed the gap between executive needs and the support they get from virtual platforms. An executive rolling out a new product, sharing a major change in company strategy, or hosting an annual shareholder meeting cannot be confined to a small square space on Teams or Zoom.  

At IDX, executives tell us that they need more immersive platforms to: 

• Express their personalities more naturally as if they were presenting at an in-person event. People naturally move about a stage and gesture with their arms as they speak in person. Immersive makes it possible for executives to do that as the PayPal example shows. 
• Manage large-scale events more economically and efficiently. Immersive technology makes it possible for executives to host far-flung, global events without needing to travel. Nor do they need to pay for the costs of finding suitable locations to create highly interactive content in different settings. With immersive technology, executives can do presentations in Paris and London in one day without needing to coordinate video shoots at the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben. This appeals to the economic pressures they are managing.  

Executives aren’t the only ones who demand a better experience. So do their audiences. We’re now living in an age where the audience’s expectations are formed by entertainment they can get through expansive experiences such as Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies whether in their homes or in theaters. The bar is being raised in every conceivable form of experience, from live concerts to at-home television viewing. When immersion becomes the norm in our everyday lives, who will stand for boring professional presentations? Nobody. Fortunately, technology has advanced to help. 

Technology Takes a Leap Forward 

It’s astonishing how rapidly technology evolution made it possible for virtual events to raise the bar for live streamed events beyond what was possible even two years ago. The key is that immersive technology is now far more accessible. High-fidelity real-time rendering engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, sophisticated motion capture accessible for various applications, high-resolution graphics and textures, advanced lighting techniques like ray tracing, and 3D spatial audio for immersive soundscapes have evolved at a far more accessible price point. Interactive elements in virtual presentations are now standard, enhancing user engagement and immersion significantly. 

For example, real-time rendering engines can be used for creating highly detailed and interactive 3D environments in real-time, which are essential for immersive presentations. When a business couples these environments with spatial audio techniques, an experience becomes more immersive by mimicking how sound behaves in the real world. 

The applications range from university learning to product training to investor briefings. Consider an automobile manufacturer explaining the importance of a new electric vehicle to shareholders at an annual investor meeting. Instead of describing the new EV to investors its relationship to the company’s growth strategy, the executive team could use a virtual showroom to help investors feel the emotional excitement that customers experience as they purchase the car – overlaid, with, say, a narrative that discusses why the EV is central to the company’s near-term growth plans. Spatial audio could simulate the sounds of the engine, doors closing, and indicators clicking, enhancing the realism.  

For online applications such as virtual events, the audience is not a passive party to these experiences. Thanks to advances in tools such as real-time polling, audiences can interact directly with speakers, making the event more interactive and responsive to the audience's interests. 

I believe that overall, businesses need to follow these tips to create great immersive virtual events that audiences want to watch: 

How to Get Immersive Right 

• Pick your opportunities. Not every experience requires immersive technology. Save immersive technology for your most high-value, high-risk meetings. Those include annual investor meetings, employee town halls, product roll-outs, or a change in company strategy. 

• Surround your event with an audience experience that includes a secure registration process and well-managed event. Don’t forget the fundamentals of a successful virtual event. A successful registration process and clear pre-event communication set the tone for a professional experience. Ensure data security and provide straightforward guidance to users ahead of time. And finally, get more value out of your virtual event by extracting evergreen content such as highlight videos, quotes, and write-ups for social and your website. 

• Tell a compelling story. Immersive technology should always serve the story you want to tell. Ask yourself: Does it genuinely enhance the product demo, training session, or brand message? Choose the right technology for your production. 

• Humanize your brand. This is exactly what PayPal did by using video overlays showing its customers using its product. Don’t get lost in features, bells, and whistles.  

• Work with an experienced partner who understands the interplay between storytelling and technology. The right partner should know how to tell a story – and the crucial production details such as how to frame shots correctly, use spatial audio strategically, and ensure the experience is user-friendly and within budget. 

Whatever you do, don’t treat an immersive experience as a “nice to do.” Immersive experiences are your future. Learn more about the value of immersive events on our website.