Music and dancing are essential to the way many of us relate with one another: you might feel a connection with others sharing the same taste in music, or might feel a closer bond with others when participating in a song and dance. And with technology permeating all aspects of culture and fundamentally changing the way we socialize, what might a tech-infused musical performance of tomorrow look like?

To answer this question, we take a close look at two different musical experiences—a marquee concert event and an AR experience that may be enjoyed anywhere—that each offer value not just for fans, but also artists and brands hoping to make a mark on culture through tech-driven creative experiences. The secret to both their successes is how they uniquely inspire connection between fans and how they engage with the experience at hand, offering a handful of best practices when leveraging emerging tech.

Translating Familiar Activations into Forward-Thinking Tech

MediaMonks recently sought to modernize the concert-going experience at Super Saturday Night—a major night of musical programming on the eve of the Super Bowl—which featured Lady Gaga this year.  “It followed a specific ask from AT&T: how do we modernize the traditional concert-going experience and make this truly tech-forward?” says Shamlin. The team took inspiration by reinventing the types of activations you would typically find at concerts and events, giving them a Lady Gaga facelift and bringing them into a more future-forward form.

Take the Monster Wall for example. This play on the “step and repeat” media wall, commonly found at so many award shows and other big-name events, encourages attendees to strut, stop and snap a photo. The wall animates unique, neon-lit “little monsters” (referencing Lady Gaga’s name for her fans) that mimic attendees’ movements with no latency, demonstrating the strength of AT&T’s 5G network.

This type of smart, relevant demonstration of product offering is critical to apply to integrated marketing delivery across the board, whether through live experiential events or with a digital banner ad. “Empowered customers and prospects hiding from advertising and marketing put pressure on CMOs to create stickier media executions and experiences,” writes Forrester Principal Analyst Jay Pattisall in The Forrester Wave™: Full-Service Media Agencies, Q1 2019 report. “This new challenge means media campaigns and the agency partners that deliver them must forgo conventional reach and frequency in favor of more personalized, culturally relevant and technology-savvy execution.”

A similar idea takes effect with our upgrade of the signature wall—essentially, a blank wall or canvas that anyone can sign, share a message or doodle on. But what if the signature wall didn’t have to be limited to a flat surface, and could extend into the space all around us?  “Drawing on Kindness” is an AR experience that answers this question by letting attendees use phones as if they were brushes capable of painting the three-dimensional space around them, inviting them to really leave a mark on the environment.

Differentiating Through Desire for Connection

The above activations play on the concert’s theme of bringing people together through kindness, a theme shared by the artist herself. All digitally infused performances and events must likewise be intentional with how they use technology—a lack of purpose runs the risk of reducing artistry into novelty.

People attend concerts for a sense of connection with the artist, sharing the same space with them and other fans. When Childish Gambino sought to bring a performance anywhere—even your living room—with augmented reality, this desire to connect was key in our development of the Pharos AR app, made in collaboration between MediaMonks, Google, Unity and Wolf + Rothstein. The app initially soft launched at Coachella in 2019.

In addition to treating users to an intimate performance of an exclusive track, the app serves as a direct channel between the artist and his fans, offering an exciting way to release new songs and virtual performances right into fans’ homes. “It serves as another outlet for Childish Gambino’s creativity, letting him update his fans with future song releases over the cloud,” said MediaMonks Sr. Producer Thomas Prevot, who worked on the project.

Activations Still Thrive on Simplicity

Despite the bells and whistles of cool, futuristic activations detailed above, there’s still a lot of value for simplicity. Ask Shamlin about one of the most popular attractions at Super Saturday Night, and he’ll introduce you to the Monster Paw, a giant claw-shaped sculpture based on Lady Gaga’s iconic hand pose. Attendees could stand in front of the claw to capture a dynamic, 180-degree gif of themselves in front of it.

“It’s the least tech-forward attraction we placed there, but it’s turned out really cool given the materials, dramatic lighting and fog,” says Shamlin, who notes that its simplicity and obvious value as a social takeway have elevated the Monster Paw to being a hero moment for fans at the show. It serves as a good example of how the design of any good experience must begin with offering a clear value. “How do you capture attention and get people to pause?” asks Shamlin. “The balance of technology often has a learning curve. You have to teach how, why and when to make an interaction.”

Shamlin’s point hearkens back to the truth that any use of emerging tech must offer a key, easy-to-grasp value to users in order to be received successfully. With intentional design, strategic onboarding and cultural relevance working in concert with one another, experiential activations in many forms can modernize the typical music-going experience to dramatic effect.

Each Super Bowl, it’s not just the teams on the gridiron that are in a competitive mindset. Of course, the big game doubles as a competitive play for brands and advertisers, who treat the event as one of the biggest opportunities to make an impression on an unusually large TV audience.

Advertising has become so synonymous with the game that brands have begun releasing previews and prequels to ads in the weeks leading up to the game, drumming up excitement among consumers and effectively building an entire genre in the process. In this environment, how is a regionally based business supposed to capture anyone’s attention? It’s enough to make you think that the day is reserved for only the biggest brands—or is it?

Circus, who joined our big tent at the start of the year, didn’t think so. Through a clever mix of ultra-efficient production, ingenious media spend and close collaboration, a cunning campaign idea was born in 2019. Family-owned supermarket chain Northgate Market pre-empted some of the most buzz-worthy Super Bowl ads with pre-roll ads relevant to their content, a strategy that met so much success (including a Cannes Lion nomination) that we’ve built upon it further this year.

Raising Expectations—and the Bar—on Creative Production

The campaign relies on the relationship that digital streaming has with the Super Bowl ad frenzy. When brands release ad previews, consumers seek them out. And this is where we make a daring play: through a pre-roll offering a “behind-the-scenes” look at the ad viewers are about to see. For example, before watching an Avocados From Mexico spot (which features absurd ways to protect the delicate fruit), consumers within Northgate’s local region see a quick pre-roll in which a crew member on a film set carefully secures and delivers the prop avocado.

“After the success of last year’s effort, we knew there was an opportunity for us to own during one of the biggest weeks for Northgate,” says Nava. “Going into the second year we wanted to make sure we continue building in the same territory. All products you see on Super Bowl ads can be found at Northgate Markets, but this time we wanted to say that actual products being used to film those Super Bowl ads also came from the store by doing a fun, behind-the-scenes replica of each commercial.” This is referenced in the slogan for the campaign, “The big game ads start with us,” which directly ties to the brand’s message that “every visit has a story.”

A Genius Game Plan Built on Trust

The pre-rolls not only show that the product is available for purchase at Northgate Market, but also reference the themes and ideas behind the most talked-about Super Bowl ads: in the one mentioned above, Northgate’s crew member has the seriousness of a secret agent passing along classified information, seemingly elevating the avocado’s safety to national security-level. But because the content of any Super Bowl ad is only known a week or two before the big game, there was crucial little time to carry the campaign from concept to market.

Trust and swift collaboration were critical to the campaign’s high-risk, high-reward success. “There’s not a lot of room for back and forth between agency and client, because there’s no time,” says Nava. “The minute a spot is out, we need to prep and shoot for it, so Northgate was part of the process from the beginning, strategizing which products made the most sense for them to promote.”

While the “Super Bowl hijack” tactic was developed as a way to efficiently produce work within a short turnaround time before a major event, it serves as an excellent example of how brands can overcome a growing challenge that’s universally felt: the need to rapidly produce content around the clock. Whether it’s a need to keep up with the rate of conversation, produce always-on content streams or simply anticipate major cultural moments without being left behind, brands seek new ways to cut through the noise amidst fierce competition and dwindling resources. With full-service social media capabilities and as a leader in multicultural marketing, Circus bolsters our ability to produce and deliver relevant digital content at speed for all audiences—not without pulling some tricks in the process.