How Marketers Can Tap into AI to Create Experiential Events of the Future

We’ve seen AI begin to infiltrate the marketing mix in nearly every aspect, from personalisation of targeted social media ads to content co-creation. Still relatively unexplored, however, is the intersection of AI and experiential marketing.

While the need for a human touch on a human-to-human interaction will never go away, out-of-home experiences will evolve beyond our wildest imagination and expensive fabrications seen by few will fade. While it’s still far too early to accurately predict exactly how AI will be used at live events, there’s no doubt that the next wave of AI tools will be made for physical experiences. When implemented, these tools will help experiential marketers create more immersive and personalized experiences, optimise events for fans and the teams building them, and better justify the spend for brands – ensuring experiential is held as a major line item across marketing budgets.

While many of these evolved use cases of AI at live events are still being created, the groundwork can and should be built now. 

Start with the basics

In its current state, AI can be used to inspire things like copy, content and creative ideas, which teams can use to inform an approach that’s right for their client. 

Eventually, AI will be an incredibly useful tool for measurement and the gathering of post-event information that helps agencies and brands evolve activations. The current industry standard is to issue a quantitative survey to understand how experiences were received by consumers. In a not-so-far-off future, AI will give us the ability to track more qualitative consumer sentiment by capturing massive amounts of data across social media, reviews, chatbots, emails, calls, surveys and beyond, then analyse it in real time to dive deeper into how consumers really think – and even how they feel.

Develop composable solutions

There are billions of dollars pouring into this space and so many different tools coming online, similar to what we saw with the Web3 boom. At a basic level, anyone can use ChatGPT, so composability is going to be what differentiates the good from the great. The agencies and marketers that will truly be successful will be the ones that can harness their traditional experience with a mix of different AI tools that create a customised, composable solution that works for their client or brand.

Create digital extensions

The convergence of physical and digital worlds is happening at lightning speed. We believe in it so greatly at Invisible North that we’ve invested in a company called Atlas, a 3D metaverse-building tool for virtual environments that can turn renderings of a physical environment, developed by AI, into a virtual world by using simple language commands.

Up until now, it was cost-prohibitive to build a virtual environment to complement a physical event, but AI is making it possible. We’re already seeing summer festivals announce that they have an annex state that’s all in a virtual environment, which makes the experience more accessible for more people.

Prepare for the future

There’s still a long way to go until AI can support a seamless event execution from top to bottom. In the meantime, there’s a world of opportunity for marketers to build a solid AI foundation and start evolving client offerings. By preparing now, you’ll be in a prime position to capitalise on new tools as they emerge and be on the front lines of the next wave of experiential marketing.