Immerse Yourself in These Digital Experiences Before You Hit the Croisette
With a 14-year focus on creating new immersive, interactive and experiential ways to tell stories for clients, Nicolas Rajabaly, co-founder and CCO at makemepulse, is always keeping an eye out for the most exciting work in this space.
With that in mind, here are Nicolas’ picks of immersive digital work that he thinks deserves to win at Cannes Lions later this month.
Complex Networks – Complexland
Jam3
For me, this experience represents a real cornerstone for the industry, and everything to do with immersive tech. The first version was launched in 2020 as a need to keep an event going virtually due to the pandemic, but there have since been two more versions annually.
Complexland is a real event that takes place every year and before the pandemic it was in person. So in 2020, they created the virtual version. Complexland is like the Super Bowl of super cool brands – sneakers, merchandise etc. The experience allows you to create an avatar, find your friends and go shopping together just like you would in a shopping mall. You can move from one shop and booth to another and hunt out the latest drops. The clever thing is that it is only open for three days every six months, and in this weird, unusual experience they take millions of dollars in sales each time. It's very interesting.
Microsoft – 20 Years of Xbox Museum
Active Theory
This Xbox project represents another industry turning point for me, I just love it. It's a really exciting project for gamers and perfect for the audience and the brand, and extremely well executed.
In celebration of 20 years of the Xbox, this beautiful museum experience was created where you can hang out with your friends, meet new people and literally experience the museum. So it’s an immersive space where you can move around and discover the whole Xbox story.
Google – Auditorial
R/GA London
This campaign blew me away and really shows the brilliant things we can do with tech to help people for the greater good. Auditorial is about making content on the internet more accessible for people with disabilities and enabling them to access it without difficulty.
The software adapts websites to each reader's sensory needs by customising a variety of audio and visual control settings.
I particularly loved the way Google took it one step further and made a playbook available to publishers and creators, so they could take these learnings to create their own accessible experiences – sharing the love basically!
American Society for Deaf Children – Fingerspelling.xyz
Hello Monday
Again, another brilliant example of how interactive tech can be used to help people – which I’m all in support of.
Fingerspelling is a browser-based app which helps people to learn sign language. It uses your webcam and machine learning to analyse your hand shapes so you can learn to sign the ASL alphabet correctly. The user is given a series of words and the computer shows a 3D model of how the hand should be positioned for each letter. When the word is signed, the camera tracks hand movements and gives real time feedback so corrections can be made as needed. This helps fingerspelling skills develop quickly.
It’s important to highlight campaigns using technology to help people with disabilities. Anything that can help inclusivity is going in the right direction in my humble opinion. I hope all those brilliant creative brains in the jury rooms see that too!
