Experience Manifesto

Ready for Members!

Excited to announce that after a few months of working on the infrastructure of the space, we're ready to open our doors to members! We are creating a word-class accelerator for companies working in retail, VR/AR and out-of-home (OOH). As we looked for our own space, we quickly realized that many coworking spaces are great for working, they are usually not very good if you need to do demonstrations of physical technologies.

Our space is just across the river from NYC, a short PATH train ride away in Jersey City. With 14,000 sf (and another 14,000 available if needed!), we have plenty of room to grow; set up your technology for live demos, meetings, seminars and getting work done in a living, breathing, future factory. It allows for you to go from concept to a real-world testing environment and get instantaneous data and feedback. This also allows our members from outside of the United States to have a US office location. We even provide staffing to present your products when you are away. And did I mention that the Cake Boss bakery is in the building too?

What we offer:

• Shared Space working with BEL design team
• Access to tech member network spaces while in NY
• Client support for hosted meetings
• Desks & office furniture 
• Conference room facilities
• Use of the shared space to host up to 4 events per year
• Demonstration area to present products and technology
• Kitchen for your staff and guests
• Wi-fi connectivity throughout premises

In addition, all members can participate in all events hosted on the premises including (based on availability and suitability) client presentations, industry specific events, meet-ups with other entrepreneurs, workshops about general business topics; demonstration events.

For members, BEL is your brand accelerator, helping you grow your business by:

• Demonstrating your technology to key retailers and clients.
• Presenting your technology to Unified/BEL clients and contacts.
• Working with Unified Merchandising LLC for manufacturing support, from prototype through final product.

Lastly, for companies outside of NYC, the BEL staff can act as your local business development staff. We can represent you in all client presentations that are necessary, acting as your staff on the ground in NYC and in the States. This allows you to be able to react quickly to client requests, without incurring last minute travel expenses.

Julian Fisher, CEO of our first member company, jisp said, "We are thrilled to be the first to take our place inside the Brand Experience Lab showing how the simplest, fastest and most seamless route to outstanding customer service lies in the hands of every shopper, their cell phone. And with jisp it is an experience once tried you’ll never want to shop any other way. It maybe a small step for shoppers but it’s a giant leap for retail."

Want to learn more about what we're doing? If you're developing innovative, new tech for the retail industry, click here to learn about our membership program.

If you're looking for space for your company, you can email David or Jim and we can give you additional information. You can also click here to download our full presentation.

Here are a few pictures of the space, come visit and see what it looks like in person! You can go to Brand Experience Lab for directions to our space. Hope to see you soon.

Can You Be an Influencer if You're Not Real?

A recent article in Verge, Virtual creators aren’t AI — but AI is coming for them, talked about the rise of AI influencer, like Lil Miquela:

One of Instagram’s hottest influencers is a 19-year-old intelligent robot. Lil Miquela’s 1.5 million followers watch her eat sherbet on the beach, visit her favorite art galleries, and hang out with other robot models. Except, Lil Miquela isn’t really an artificially intelligent being. She’s also not a robot.

According to the article, there's a lot of VC money going into this space, which I guess is how the world works these days. But, can we really call them influencers when there's absolutely no chance they can use any products at all? Now, the influence business has had challenges and more and more we know that quite often, they are really nothing more than paid spokespeople.

Wikipedia defines an influencer as a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media. I would add, and I think most people would as well, that they can influence us because we believe that they have knowledge and experience with the product/service they're talking about. If someone you know recommended something to you and it turns out they have never used it before, that would seriously decrease the influence they had to get us to use that product.

So what's the value of an artificial influencer? If you know they have never, and could never, use the product, aren't they just a commercial? I can certainly see this tech becoming a great tool for customer service and creating better in-store experiences, but I'm not sold on it as an influencer. I may just be old fashioned, but I think in order to influence me, you need to have actually used the product. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Marketing in a World of Bots

I’ve just returned from CES, the annual gather of all things technical in Las Vegas. Over 4,000 companies will present their wears, from the largest companies in the industry all the way down to new start-ups being shown in Eureka Park. Last year, almost 190,000 people attended over the several days of the event, all looking to see what trends they should be following. This year, there seem to be a number of key trends being discussed, that for me bring up some interesting future discussions for the advertising industry. They include 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT). Of course, there will also be a great deal of VR and AR on the show floor, some I’m very interested in.

What’s most interesting to me about these trends and how they might come together is what it means for the advertising business. Eventually, IoT will mean that everything we have will be connected, allowing the systems to know how we’re using a particular product. So, if my washing machine knows what size box of detergent I have, then it can automatically order a refill when the time comes. The AI will be able to learn how often I do wash and how long it takes me to go through that box, really taking me out of the ordering equation completely.

While not using really any tech at all right now, we have that system running with dog food today. For years, we watched the food dwindle, reminding ourselves daily for a week or so that we needed food. That usually resulted in a few days of them eating things we made at home before we got back to the pet store to buy more food. By going into the store, we could then be influenced by sales or a desire to try something new. Today, we have a standing order at Chewy and the food arrives about every six weeks.

What this means for dog food manufacturers is that it’s now much harder for them to get me to change my order. They have to get me at the right spot in the cycle to get me to change the order and they have to change my shopping habit, which Chewy has not established. The upside for our household is that our dogs are never without food. The downside for all of the brands that we’re not currently using it that it’s much harder to get into my shopping cart.

Today, we are seeing more and more products purchased this way, these kind of standing orders that happen automatically without any consumer involvement. The Amazon Dash Button is an interim step to this future, automating the purchase, but still requiring the consumer to trigger the purchase.

But as 5G rolls out, making it much easier for a wider variety of things to be connected to the network and more things being automatically connected to the network and AI learning our habits and behaviors, it starts to take me out of the purchase funnel. In the near future, I will be able to program (or they will just learn!) my shopping bots to do a large majority of my shopping for me. And for marketers, this creates huge challenges.

How will marketers in the future influence those bots that are out there shopping on my behalf? Today marketers use all kinds of tools to get me to buy. They can appeal to my emotions or just my budget. They can help me with longer term purchases or connect with me for an impulse buy. But how will an emotional appeal change the behavior of my bot?

Now, there will always be things that either require my involvement, big ticket items like major appliances or cars as well as other items that I just like to be involved in the purchase. But if toothpaste, deodorant, laundry detergent and even some of the more standard parts of my wardrobe can be purchased through my shopping bots using AI, I’m not sure I’d want to be involved in that purchase process myself. And that will upend the entire idea of the consumer journey and purchase funnel.

For me, of course, this means brands need to figure out how to connect with me before I programmed my shopping bits, so that their brands are added to the mix. I might not always want just the cheapest dog food, but I may be up for a deal among 3 or 4 brands that I have preselected. It’s critical for those brands to be in my consideration list for my bots.

Think of how many products you wish you didn’t have to shop for every week, where you could just do some upfront programming and then let the system to the rest. If you think you’re one of those products, you need to start thinking about this issue today. For the robots are coming, but these robots will be working for me the consumer and you need to make sure that I’m already loyal to your brand when they’re here.

Immersion & Escapism - Is this the Future of Video?

Take a look at the video from our panel during Advertising Week on the how we can move VR forward. Great group of folks and an excellent discussion!

Virtual reality enables you to step into another world – a stimulated environment brought to life by a marketer’s control and imagination. Once there, consumers can suspend belief, interact, move, and be totally surrounded by a brand. That’s what makes it irresistible to advertisers. Yet, it’s a solitary experience that’s costly to create and consume with specific hardware requirements needed by the end user. So, when should you initiate a VR project? What goals does virtual reality help achieve? Could 360 degree video also meet your objectives? Will you gain something from using virtual reality that you couldn’t through other mediums? How will mixed reality affect video in the coming years? We’ll put those questions to our panelists.

• Anthony Iaffaldano, Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Business Insider
• Sarah Bachman, Vice President of Mobile Strategy and UNCVR, Horizon Media
• Chris Helm, COO & Co-Founder, Blend Media
• Bryn Mooser, Co-Founder & CEO, RYOT
• David Polinchock, Founder/Chief Experience Officer (CXO), Experiential Advertising Group
• Miheer Walavalkar, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer, LiveLike

Talking Experiences at the Adobe Think Tank, Advertising Week 2017

I had a chance to sit down with Don Bennion from Adobe during Advertising Week to talk about what makes a great experience, the value of data and the importance of authenticity!

Advertising Week TechXperience 2017

A few months back, I had coffee with Mari Kim Novak, who was about to start as president of Advertising Week, the annual celebration of the advertising indstry that happens in NYC. She wanted to create a new experience for Advertising Week, something that focused on the emerging technologies everyone's talking about, like VR, AR, AI, voice and others. Having taken my tours at CES several times, she also wanted something that would be curated and, just as importantly, contextualized so that attendees would understand why we were talking about these technologies, not just what they are. As Mari Kim explained in an interview with AdWeek:

To showcase what some startups around the U.S. are doing, Novak said the conference has created a “playground,” called TechX, “for our industry partners and attendees to come and be introduced to these technologies, to feel them and try them—not to be in a trade show environment where they get pitched and sold to.”

Included in this year’s selection is Vntana, which creates interactive holograms for brands like Lexus. There’s also Envrmnt, an AR/VR/360 video startup that’s that’s working to compress files to make it easier to stream and download data-heavy experiences. On the AI front, there’s IV.AI, a startup that’s working on everything from chatbots to other uses of AI.

Lance Pillersdorf, co-founder and COO of Advertising Week, had this to say about TechX:

There is a knowledge gap within our industry between those creating the next generation of technology and the executives challenged to utilize it for their clients. We wanted to address this by carefully curating an experience that allows us to provide attendees an unbiased evaluation and contextual understanding of the power of these innovations. Technology is continuing to shape our industry and TechX is our way of giving Advertising Week Delegates a one-of-a-kind experience within an already packed thought leadership program.

I worked with my network of friends and creative technologists, including my Elias Constantopedos, to begin finding the best companies out there. I also enlisted Fred Schonenberg, Allie Feinstein and the team at VentureFuel to help source additional interesting companies from their network as well. And out of all of that effort, AW TechX 2017 was born!

We received a great deal of positive feedback, including:

• "It was AMAZING. Every exhibitor was the best!"
• “It was the best event we have been to”
• “Absolutely splendid and world class”
• “The entire team can’t stop talking about it”
• “When you left the event, you were twitching with excitement and wanted to go back in.”

Chris Pfaff, who helped bring both envrmnt and Valossa to the event, also gave us a great review, saying:

The Advertising Week New York 2017 TechX experience in Times Square, in a pop-up space between H&M and the NASDAQ MarketSite, curated some of the hippest tech for the ad world, from September 25-28. From digital art projects to AR apps to VR tools and holographic displays, the TechX arena offered a wide palette of commercially available experiences for attendees – creatives and media buyers – to play with and understand.

The value of TechX cannot be understated: TechX was groundbreaking in its depth, bringing start-up companies in the immersive and AI worlds into a forum for major brand conversations on the state of the ad industry...TechX was a rare opportunity to glimpse some of the more inventive ways to deliver and measure ads – and no PowerPoint involved.

If you didn't get a chance to visit the TechX space or if you did and are looking for additional information about what happened during the week, there are several ways to learn more about the companies involved:

• You can click here to see the materials our friends at Citia put together for the event. There's a complete list of all of the participants there.
• You can click here to see a full 360 video of both the main TechX floor and the Playground downstairs created by our friends at VirtualAPT.

I also love what Baaria Chaudhary and Marjorie Wang did with Pawn VR at #AWTechX #AWNewYork. They 3D scanned attendees to turn them into chess pieces in a new, immersive chess game experience. What makes it even cooler is that the entire experience was created live during Advertising Week. Thrilled to have them participate!

In addition, I also used TechX to launch my new consultancy, the Experiential Advertising Group. EAG is a consortium of companies that builds strategic immersive experiences from innovation labs to Experiential Advertising programs using the latest in emerging tech including AR, VR, Robotics and Sonic Haptics, and others. We're already working on a number of projects and ready to help companies create a wide variety of experiences. Please reach out if we can help in any way.

Some pictures from TechX 2017

Advertising Week TechXperience

Very excited to announce that I have been brought in, along with a partner VentureFuel, to create a unique, tech experience for Advertising Week 2017. As you may know, Advertising Week is the premiere ad industry event, with 100,000 attendees and dozens of co-located industry events over the four days. The event runs September 25th - 28th and you the location we have secured is on Times Square at 43rd Street.

We are taking over a 12,000 sf space right on Times Square for this experience, creating tremendous visibility for all of our participants. We're looking for emerging tech companies, VR, AR, digital artists, holograms, projection mapping, AI and others to help create a must-see tech showcase here in NYC. In addition to the showcase, we will be hosting tours to agencies and clients, to go beyond the "here's something cool" and help them contextualize what they're seeing.

I'm reaching out to you, my network of friends who know cool things, to help us find things beyond the usual. This is the first time Advertising Week is doing such an event and we want to make sure it's the best it can be!

So, if you're interested i participating or know someone who might be, please contact me by Thursday, August 24th with the following:

• All company information, including contact information
• What the company does
• Description of what you would present
• What makes you unique
• How much space you need
• Tech requirements (Note: We're not sure what tech we will be able to provide at this time)
• What staff you will you have on-site

Don't hesitate to e-mail me if you have any questions or need any additional information. In addition to having space at the experience, there may also be speaking slots available, as well as opportunities to participate in our Ask a VC breakfasts and the start-up competition. This is a great opportunity to reach the best of the advertising community in a great setting. Space is limited, so please make sure you get back to me by the 24th to be considered.

I appreciate your time and look forward to hearing from you!

David

Advertising Week TechXperience

The ultimate innovation destination for advertisers. Immerse yourself in the latest tech breakthroughs and emerging media trends curated by thought-leaders VentureFuel and Experiential Advertising. The journey begins with the Innovation Gallery which features awe-inspiring interactive installations and bleeding edge tech advancements: haptics, holograms, the canvas of the future, AI, VR and AR. Sourced from start-ups, corporate and university research labs and our global network, you’ll get to explore these technologies hands on and in-depth. In addition, TechXperience will showcase cutting edge, digital artists throughout the day and at special events at night.

Stop Thinking Killer App, Think Killer Experience

Since hopping back into the VR/AR space, I've been having many conversations with people about what's needed to make VR/AR the success it should be. With the announcements at Facebook F8, there's a lot of enthusiasm for AR right now and there's no doubt as I say quite often, that we will live in an AR world in the near future.

But I've had many conversations about why VR in particular isn't where we thought it would be and why there still isn't great content for the most part. Many friends are asking me what's holding up creating better VR experiences. We hear content makers talk about the technology not being up to par and the tech people complain they don't have great content to show. As I wrote about here, I do feel that we focus too often on the limitations and not on the possibilities of the technology and that's not helping us to move forward at all.

I also hear and read about the need to create the killer app for VR/AR and I think that's also hurting us as we try to build a new industry. The truth is that there will be many killer apps, not a single one. I think we should focus on creating killer content instead, to help drive the change and show people the real capabilities of the technology. How do we make these killer experiences?

1. Stop with the limitations. As I wrote about here, we need to stop focusing on the limitations. Everyone knows they exist, but we still need to make great content. I've had so many conversations with friends who were doing VR/AR 10 or 20 years ago and they were all doing awesome, cool things. With all of the limitations we had back then. Just make it good!
2. Add the other senses. We're slowly starting to see more experiments with other senses coming into the space and I hope that continues. Jacki Morie is doing great work on bringing scent into virtual worlds. As she says - Scent, as the most evocative of our senses, should be used more widely in virtual environments.

   

   Jacki Morie RemniSCENT™
   

   Do more with spatial sound. Lots of really great work being done in 3D spatial sound and more needs to be done. Charlie Morrow has been doing awesome spatial sound for years and knows how to create soundscapes that are truly amazing. I was just introduced to DearVR, another company bring spatial sound to VR environments. Of course, we're waiting for a head mount with excellent built in headphones...

   ExtremeTech has a good overview of tactile feedback suits that are being developed and while I think they will be used a great deal for commercial applications (training, etc.) and some gaming, I don't think people will be using them for every day VR use for quite some time. But it's still important for developers to play with haptics and see what they can do. But, there are simple ways to bring that sense of touch into the experiences as well. I love that The Walk experience had you actually walk on a wire. Have people stand in a sandbox if you're doing an experience by the beach. If I'm walking through a forest, have branches brush against me. As I say below, set the environment!

   

   Tesla Suit
   

3. Set the environment and bring in the physical. Many years ago, we were pitching the tourism board for a resort island. In addition to talking about what we could do within the actual virtual world, we talked to the client about creating a set for their experience. A sandbox would allow people to feel they were walking on a real beach. Heat lamps would remind them about the warmth of the sun. I don't understand why people aren't using the power of creating a set.

   For example, I love what Diesel did in their Only the Brave experience for heights. The more you engage the whole body, the more you increase the reality of the experience. When we did the Cutty Sark Virtual Voyage, you actually stood on the deck of a ship and that floor was on springs. That little motion enhanced the experience of being on a boat.

   So often we walk into a brightly lit room, with no cues at all to enhance the experience. There's nothing there to set the mood of the experience or at least break us from the reality of being in a plain space. Make it a set and see the difference in the experience.

   

   VR Scout
   

4. Think cycle time. This point is specifically for location based entertainment and promotional efforts. After doing tens of thousands of events and watching many, many people waiting in line, I can tell you that you need to complete a story arc in no more than about 7 minutes total. It's very hard for guests not familiar with either video games or VR to step into an experience and then wander around trying to figure out what to do. They need to have a story that's easy to understand and navigate. The need to feel like they completed something or they will walk away frustrated with the technology. Back at the CyberEvent Group, we looked at a 5 minute cycle time to get the throughput at about 12 people per HMD per hour. This was done for two reasons:

   1. To make sure that the client had some idea as to the number of people that would enjoy the experience. While there's no way to create ROI off of VR using traditional metrics, it's important to have some measure of how many people can have the experience.
   2. To make sure that the guests waiting in line know how long they're going to wait. It's frustrating not knowing how much time they have to wait while someone plays an entire video game.

I'll be at the Tribeca Film Festival Virtual Arcade later this week and I'm hoping that I'll see some experiences that go beyond what I've been seeing so far. I've heard great feedback already, so I am looking forward to it.

And as I get some of the old VR band together, I'm planning on exploring all of these as well and hopefully I'll be part of a new team building some killer experiences.

Like this post, check out all my my VR/AR posts here.

AR for Advertisers - PICNIC 2007

Found this video from a presentation that I gave in 2007 at PICNIC in Amsterdam. Yes, 10 years ago! It really was one of the most fun conferences I've attended and I met some really great people there. And thanks to this video, I've reconnected to both of the companies that presented with me. Of course, one of my demos didn't work right, but that's what it's like when you're on stage talking about emerging technologies! And damn I wish my hair stayed that color and that long!

During the session we cover a number of things that back then really seemed like science fiction and today are just really getting into the main stream. The work we were doing at Brand Experience Lab and ydreams in interactive cinema was just starting and we all thought that there would be a huge opportunity for AR in the future.

Here we are 10 years later, with Facebook just announcing a huge AR effort, it seems that AR, like it's cousin VR, may well finally be on the road to mass adoption! And hopefully the three of us will hit a stage at a conference in the future and talk about some of the cool ways we've brought AR and VR to our clients.

Augmented Reality for Advertisers from PICNIC on FORA.tv

Conversations with Digital Natives Full Video

We're still having some video issues, but here's the video for our presentation at SXSW 2015. We'll do more editing and break it down into smaller segments, but if you have an hour to spend, it'll be well worth your time!