All Roads Lead to Immersive
Within co-founder and CEO Chris Milk explained virtual reality (VR) like this: “In all other mediums, your consciousness is interpreting a medium. But in VR, there is no gap. You aren’t internalizing it. You are internal in it. It’s a quantum leap in mediums because the medium is disappearing.” The same could be said for immersive entertainment. With immersion, the audience isn’t observing a story; they’re living it. The goal of immersive entertainment is to minimize the medium and place the audience directly in the action.
This goal transcends the delivery mechanism. When we look around in 2022 and the years leading up to it, we can see all media striving toward immersion. In the film and TV sphere, Netflix is taking the lead in the slow but steady move toward immersive. Take, for example, 2018’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, a television event about a video game developer in the 1980s questioning reality, which added a novel component to its narrative: the audience could make decisions for the main character at key points in the story to affect the outcome.
Bandersnatch had five possible endings, and it would require over five hours to experience every version of the story. Additionally, the film had a post-credit scene that played a sequence of beeping sounds. When translated with a Free Unix Spectrum Emulator (Fuse), an emulator of the 1980s ZX Spectrum computer and its Unix clones, savvy audience members could access a quick response (QR) code. The code took them to the website for Tuckersoft, the game company from Bandersnatch. This innovative project won Netflix a primetime Emmy, among other accolades.
Netflix also implemented this principle in marketing with 2020’s nine-episode miniseries The Haunting of Bly Manor. Leading up to the virtual release date, Netflix set up an official Twitter account for the show that tweeted a job advertisement for a nanny position - the very nanny position that the protagonist, Dani, accepts on the show. The phone number in the ad was a real number, and Twitterites who called the number could put themselves in Dani’s shoes by listening to the answering machine message: “Hi, you've reached the Wingrave family at Bly Manor. We’re not here right now,” came a little girl’s voice. “If you’re calling about the open nanny position, interviews will be conducted by our Uncle Henry in five days. It’ll be perfectly splendid. We can’t wait to meet you.”
The network hoped this would inspire potential fans to want to meet her, and it worked. Bly Manor cracked the top 15 most-streamed shows on Netflix that year (including both new and old programming) - and it was the only horror title on that list, which is unsurprising given that horror tends to be more of a niche genre than a broad crowd pleaser.
Netflix isn’t the only one. Amazon Prime put on a pop-up experience to promote its original horror films last year. Indeed, Adweek recently ran a feature on the marketing power of “the metaverse,” its term for immersive advertising. The article’s author, Allison Ferenci, calls this a “paradigm-shaking” development in the world of marketing and cites Nike, Gucci, and Disney as examples of companies who have bought into this new frontier.
Of course, the rise of immersive entertainment isn’t restricted to film/TV or marketing. The immersive theater scenes in Los Angeles and New York have been thriving for years, with production companies like Punchdrunk and JFI Productions creating award-winning, interactive theatrical experiences that delight audiences. Music, gaming, eLearning, and more industry sectors are recognizing the power of immersion to generate interest, bring in audiences, elevate experiences, and drive exceptional results.
Audiences are plugged in to the shift as well. In times when many of us feel isolated, powerless, and disheartened, we are increasingly looking for ways to connect with each other, engage with the world around us, and spark excitement in our everyday lives. While traditional modes of storytelling can be a source of comfort, immersive storytelling holds a unique potential to galvanize audiences and turn everyday into extraordinary.
