VMLY&R Shapes the Future of Business with 'Home of Connected Brands'

VMLY&R introduces The Home of Connected Brands, a fully immersive experience space designed to help clients innovate to fuel growth. 

Breaking through boundaries with cutting edge technologies, cultural and behaviour insights, this unique experience space transports people into a universe where brands sit seamlessly, digitally, and physically, in everyday lives – at home, in play, in retail, and more.

Located in London at WPP’s Sea Containers campus, The Home of Connected Brands helps brands and retailers test and trial connected experiences across hybrid environments to enhance value and engagement at every single touchpoint of life.

The space invites brands to innovate with existing and emerging technology across channels. From holographic store catalogues to Whispering Windows softly transmitting brand messages to Microsoft’s Seeing AI technology helping the visually impaired to hear spoken product information.  

To deliver the connected experience, The Home of Connected Brands features six environments, including the new iteration of VMLY&R Commerce’s pioneering 360-degree retail space. 

Explains Debbie Ellison, global chief digital officer VMLY&R Commerce: “Channels viewed in isolation often feel disconnected, uncomfortable. This new space forces us to look at how brands live more innovatively and effectively across channels.

She adds, “With the continuous explosion of new channels comes infinite opportunities for brands to generate awareness, drive engagement, and creatively connect to seamless and frictionless purchase moments. We passionately believe in the power of connected brands – this is its first physical manifestation.”

The Home of Connected Brands: Six connected experiences

Countless connections to explore the persuasive potential in moments that matter across the end-to-end journey.

• Home: From socially connected smart glasses, personalized cleaning and live shopping experiences, brands can reach people in their own homes through devices from smart TVs to games consoles.

• Play: A bit of fun breaks down new technology barriers for brands. An interactive touch-table, webAR, holograms, social vending, and even metaverse experiences connect people with brands through cutting-edge innovation.   

• Social: Engage with real time feeds where people interact with each other and/or brands, where clients can tap into the power of influence and culture.

• Out of Home: Emotion, gender, age determination data and anamorphic technology transform conversations into warm personalized, relevant experiences.

• QSR:  The next generation of interactive technology gamifies the quick serve restaurant experience, a Magic Mirror augments food ordering while an AI delivery robot delivers with a smile.

• The Flagship 2.0: A full 3D floor to ceiling sensory experience taking brands inside the store, at the forecourt, pop ups and more, re-creating over 150 physical and virtual retail environments where brands can prototype and test creative commerce ideas prior to production. Linked to the agency’s Connected Commerce Platform, brands and agency innovate with data and proprietary tools to drive shopper engagement and conversion. 

Jon Cook, VMLY&R Global CEO, “Creating an immersive space where our clients and partners can truly experience how their brands can reimagine their consumer engagement is exhilarating. This takes conceptual ideas to prototypes, giving us real-time interactions to spark transformation. And there is no better location than our London office to create our inaugural Home of Connected Brands experience.”

Concludes Beth Ann Kaminkow, Global CEO VMLY&R Commerce, “We broke new industry ground in commerce when we launched the first iteration of The Flagship – and I’m thrilled to see this evolve to the cornerstone of The Home of Connected Brands. The unique space is part of our promise of putting commerce at the centre of brand and customer experience to help clients become more resilient and achieve more differentiation in an ever-changing marketing ecosystem.”

The Home of Connected Brands will also become the network’s Centre of Learning, Growth and Experience for proprietary training sessions, such as the agency’s Human-Centred Design (HCD) certification programme - a people-driven approach to problem-solving and product development.

Technology partners include Pixel Artworks, BrandLab360, StoreLab, EyeKandy, SocialVend, ArcStream, Hypersvn and Orion Star.