Google, a global leader in technology, recognized that the traditional product launch playbook had grown tired and saw an opportunity to connect new technology with people's everyday lives in a more meaningful way. For its Made by Google 2025 event, Google established a new vision for the launch centered on a human-centric, entertainment-driven format. To bring the product demonstration component of this strategy to life, Google engaged us as their experiential partner to fundamentally reimagine the event’s demo area. Our solution was to design and build an immersive sandbox, a collection of interactive stations that allowed guests to experience the new products in authentic, real-world scenarios.

In just six weeks, our team delivered a fully-realized, immersive product sandbox. Our scope included managing all front-of-house operations, graphics, and staffing, but the centerpiece of our work was the concepting, design, and fabrication of five unique interactive demos. We moved away from placing products on pedestals, instead building distinct “mini-scenes” that mirrored real-world environments. For instance, we created an intimate New York café to demonstrate the Pixel phone’s low-light camera capabilities and a record store to highlight a new music discovery feature. This strategy made the technology feel approachable and intuitive, inviting guests to discover its features through hands-on, playful exploration.

The interactive design of the sandbox also served as a powerful content engine. The immersive, real-world scenes provided the perfect backdrop for the A-list talent and creators attending the event to produce authentic, engaging content chronicling their experiences. This generated a steady stream of user-generated content that extended the hands-on experience to millions of their followers at home, transforming a physical installation into a global digital moment.

The success of this strategy was immediately evident in audience engagement. Where attendees at past events might have spent just a few minutes in a demo hall, they were now staying for extended periods to interact with the products. This dramatic increase in dwell time, combined with the influential voices sharing their genuine experiences, had a powerful ripple effect. The authentic, hands-on stories from talent and press gave coverage of the products far more narrative impact. Our work proved that by designing experiences where people can discover what a product can do for them, a launch moment can be transformed into sustained brand equity.

Few campaigns are as iconic as Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, well-known for challenging traditional beauty standards and celebrating inclusivity. Marking the campaign’s 20th anniversary, Dove sought to show that 20 years on, the need for better diversity and inclusive representation is still as relevant today—especially with concerns about AI-generated content. The Code: A Dove Film—created by Soko—was designed to bring awareness of the increasing impact of AI on beauty and was established on the key insight that by 2025, AI is predicted to generate 90% of online content. The film presents biases exacerbated by AI in contrast to the Dove-coded imagery, which shows that AI has learned from the brand’s long legacy of portraying diverse women and body types in the pursuit of real beauty.

The film served as an important anthem standing for Dove’s values, though Dove wanted to extend the campaign with a resource that substantiated its message and encouraged the industry to participate in challenging biases inherent in generative AI output. The brand believes that we are at a pivotal moment at the beginning of the AI era, where we can make a change in how AI depicts beauty. So, we had the idea to build an AI prompting playbook and other assets designed to answer the very question presented in the film: What kind of Beauty do we want AI to learn?

As an AI consulting partner, we’re well aware that generative AI isn’t going anywhere—and that it’s going to change everything. Starting out, we sought to define how we can take action now to help steer generative AI outputs in the right direction, with the goal of accurately representing diverse communities with AI. With tight timelines needed due to the pace at which AI evolves, our experience design experts worked alongside our research and development team to test prompts and outputs, resulting in a first-of-its-kind guide of best practices.

Achieving this level of nuanced representation in a guide to prompting AI hadn’t been done before, so we needed to test and explore different prompts for various use cases and types of women. For example, what’s the best way to prompt for a Filipino woman with a prosthetic leg and big, curly hair? The Real Beauty Prompt Playbook provides broad guidance on beauty and inclusion, specific information on the power of prompts, and recommendations on how to create prompts of your own.

With the overarching Dove Code campaign designed and developed by Soko, we collaborated closely with Dove’s roster of partners and sought external specialists where relevant, including female AI experts and a global community of body confidence experts to ensure we brought together best-in-class thinking across every aspect of AI. We also had guidance from the AI researcher who discovered the key insight used in the Dove Code film, ensuring continuity between the questions asked by the film and the answers provided in the playbook.

Beyond the playbook itself, we continued to support the Dove Code with an above-the-line out-of-home (OOH) campaign, including a CGI-rendered OOH ad celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Dove Real Beauty campaign on digital platforms. Overall, our efforts helped substantiate Dove’s message about ensuring diversity and inclusion in the age of AI. As one core partner among many, it took a village to build the Dove Code in celebration of the brand’s lasting commitment to real beauty—and we couldn’t be prouder.

In the early months of 2022, IBM Research had a valuable asset at its disposal: a selection of proprietary AI models that could accelerate molecular discovery. These models were technologically advanced, but only interactable in code form—which wasn't particularly user-friendly for lab scientists who lacked coding knowledge. Seeking to bridge this gap, IBM Research engaged us to create an intuitive interface that would enable these scientists to leverage the AI models effectively, thereby facilitating the creation of new molecules that could find drugs for diseases, sustainable materials and much more. The objective was not just to make the models accessible, but to ensure their seamless integration into the existing scientific process.

To kick off the experiential strategy, we began an in-depth exploration of the scientists’ culture through interviews and workshops. During this process, we identified three critical principles that would serve as the foundation of our approach: flexibility, play and collaboration. We recognized that each scientist had a unique problem-solving approach, appreciated the importance of fun and exploration in their work, and we came to learn the difficulties they faced in collaborations. 

With these insights, we set out to design a SaaS tool that accelerated time-consuming tasks into smaller multifunctional processes, using a node-based system that evoked the play of building with Lego blocks. We were also inspired by the successes of existing collaborative design platforms, integrating both approaches to the scientific process. It allowed scientists to collaboratively construct innovative hypotheses for novel molecular discoveries using AI and interact with results in flexible ways.

Following the design stage, we began piecing together the proof of concept, built jointly by IBM Research and Experience.Monks. The product necessitated a deep dive into understanding IBM's backend framework, which subsequently guided the design of a bespoke API. We ensured seamless integration with other IBM offerings while catering to frontend needs and proactively addressing potential technical issues. The custom JavaScript SDK for the API now enables the IBM team to deploy it across other IBM Research applications.

By redesigning the research process around creative behaviors, our platform made generative AI accessible to scientists and reimagined accelerated discovery.

After a year of rapid-paced battles, we wanted to celebrate the first year of VALORANT and its growing community with a bang. So we launched RETAKE, a series of hybrid events in Cairo and Dubai where both on-site and online audiences became real life agents of the VALORANT Protocol. They competed against each other to detonate or defuse the Spike, a game-deciding device featured in the VALORANT lore and gameplay.

The rivalry between agents is not the only aspect of VALORANT’s rich lore that we brought to life. Upon entering the event space, agents were met by sets inspired by in-game maps. Iconic landmarks, props and a huge Spike fully immersed agents into the action. The competing teams were led by live hosts that commanded when to attack or when to defend. Ultimately, only one team emerged victorious.

The online experience took place on Twitch and was made possible with LiveXP, our own customizable tool to deliver interactive livestream experiences. Online viewers could attack by sharing hashtags, while on-site agents took part in physical interactive challenges based on in-game characters’ skills. Agents could control fire with their hands like Phoenix, escape the dark labyrinth haunted by Omen’s Paranoia or avoid being hit by lasers inspired by Cypher’s Trapwire ability.

RETAKE set the precedent for what can be achieved when brands invite online audiences to play an essential part in the story and mechanics of a physical event.