One of my earliest memories is of stealing petals from the neighbour’s garden to make perfume. Certain roses still remind me of slowly fermenting jam jars and playing in my old house and garden. More often than not our memories are made from experiences and not things. A great experience is the ability to touch lives both physically and emotionally. How do brands evoke these very human reactions?

Virtual Reality is a bit like stepping into someone else’s memory. Unlike a linear film the viewer gets to look around and choose their own path. At the beginning of the year The New York Times gave away 1.3 million Google Cardboard headsets to their subscribers. The Displaced, a VR film about three refugee children, allowed readers to engage with the story in a much more immersive and memorable way. NYT VR was the newspaper’s most quickly adopted app and the average engagement time was a huge 6 minutes.

New immersive technology is pushing the boundaries of classroom learning. On the YouTube Beach festival goers could try out Google Expeditions, new VR tools that allows teachers to transport pupils under the sea or into space. 

Experience isn’t just about the technology. We wrote about the partnership between the Art Institute of Chicago and Airbnb in last month’s BITE: a collaboration that gave customers a unique and personal brand experience, and created a huge amount of PR.

Customers are consuming more media than ever before. There are hundreds of opportunities for brands to surprise and delight. So think about each touchpoint as an individual experience and aim to make every
moment memorable. 

Read on for examples…