Experience Strategy Podcast: Enhancing Customer Experiences with Driving Business Value with AR/VR

To listen click HERE

In this episode of The Experience Strategy Podcast, hosts Dave Norton and Aransas Savas sit down with AR/VR trailblazers Spencer Cook from Continuum, and Bryan Searing of Stone Mantel to explore the transformative power of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in crafting captivating customer experiences. Fresh off the Experience Strategy Collaboratives program, where cutting-edge AR/VP concepts were tested with real customers, Spencer and Bryan share exclusive insights ad real-world case studies that demonstrate the immense potential of these technologies in driving business growth.

Tune in and gain:

• Actionable strategies for leveraging AR/VR to create immersive, memorable customer experiences

• A deep understanding of how AR/VR are reshaping the future of experience design and marketing

• Practical takeaways and best practices for successfully integrating AR/VR into your organization’s strategy.

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the experience strategy podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts experience nerds, Dave [00:00:15] Norton and Aransas Savas. 

Aransas: Welcome to the experience strategy podcast. 

Dave: and I'm Dave Norton. 

Aransas: And, oh, experienced strategy podcast listeners, have we got a show for you today.

[00:00:30] Dave and I are joined by Spencer Cook from Continuum, where they build immersive marketing and experience content for brands, and Brian Searing. Our resident expert in advanced technologies over at our company, [00:00:45] Stone Mantle. So in our most recent experience strategy collaboratives program, which you've heard us talk a lot about, but it's that program where we bring together teams from across sectors and then guide them on a year long innovation and experience [00:01:00] strategy journey, complete with.

Lots of bespoke research for their concepts. We added a really special bonus for our participants, some augmented reality and virtual reality concepts that we then tested with their consumers. [00:01:15] And Brian and the team at Continuum really took the lead on creating those category challenging concepts. Oh, with the results, fascinating.

We learned so [00:01:30] much about. Where these advanced technologies can add value for customers and companies. And so today we're going to. Get you straight to the source to hear directly from Spencer and Brian so that you can [00:01:45] start putting these insights to work in your business straight away. Spencer, Brian, thank you so much for being here today.

Spencer: Thanks for having us. So 

Aransas: Spencer, let's start with a little bit about Continuum. Tell us a little more about the work that you're doing, [00:02:00] uh, and, and how you've seen that have an impact for brands. 

Spencer: Yeah. Great question. So Continuum is an immersive creative agency. We I don't know if there's like a specific term that describes us best, but we do immersive [00:02:15] for marketing, education, anything in those lines.

And so what that means is rather than just creating a traditional website for a company, everybody has those. You can go on Upwork and you can. Get a website for, I don't know, 200 bucks [00:02:30] or whatever, right? It might not be a good one, but it's that engagement and that immersive nature that really drives sales and retention and brand recognition.

And so what we do is we use augmented reality and we'll kind of get into what these terms mean more [00:02:45] so, but we use augmented reality on mobile devices, which everybody has one in their pocket already. And then we use virtual reality for trainings and, uh, you know, groups that do exposure therapy for new medicines and things, you know, it's, it's really scary [00:03:00] and overwhelming.

So taking patients through a journey in virtual reality can actually trick your brain into thinking that it's already been through it before, then it's not such a big, scary thing. So AR and VR. The immersive nature of them makes it so that, uh, you can experience a lot more [00:03:15] and, and, and retain a lot more.

You don't have to be a gamer to introduce those things into your life and it can make a big impact. 

Aransas: Yeah, we did some really exciting work on that when I was at Weight Watchers and trying to really understand how to help people mentally rehearse scenarios [00:03:30] to help them feel more confident with the behavior change they were making.

In various scenarios, and it was incredible to see the efficacy of that mental rehearsal that could happen in an augmented or virtual setting. [00:03:45] So before we go any further, and I want to hear from Brian about what he's seeing and experience strategy around these technologies. But first, as our resident expert on these technologies, give us the quick primer on the [00:04:00] differences between AR and VR.

And some of the other technologies that you're focusing on. 

Spencer: Great. So even if the client that I'm talking to says they have a good understanding, I think they think I'm talking about artificial intelligence half the time. They don't know. Right. And [00:04:15] that's okay. So we've taken this really simplified approach and I, I tried to explain this in a way that my children can understand.

My oldest is eight, right? So we try to keep it really simple. So augmented reality is where you use your, uh, you can, you can use different headsets and things too, but that complicates it. So [00:04:30] think of just your mobile device. Everybody's got one in their pocket. You can scan a QR code or just click a link and you pop up with a web browser and it enables your pass through camera, allowing your phone to see what's around you as if you're taking a picture, but then [00:04:45] digital objects are placed in your space.

So think of like overstock. com. They were one of the first ones to do it, to be able to visualize a couch in your living room, right? It's like magic. It's so cool. You can actually see it next to your, your coffee table and see what it looks like in your space. You can walk around and get [00:05:00] the parallax and you can walk around this model.

So now it's been used for a lot of other things such as, uh, marketing, you know, the object placement, like we just talked about, uh, for education. Because it just immerses you and you're the one driving the experience. It's like the ultimate choose your own adventure book, [00:05:15] you know, from back in the day, flip to page 124, and then you can choose again to take a left or a right.

This is literally the entire experience is created by the clients or the business, but then the user is actually feeling it. And get [00:05:30] engaged and invested and feels like they're the ones coming up with this. Right. And so it's kind of this inception, inception approach where if you design these experiences well enough, then the user feels like they're the genius behind it, but really they're just the, it's kind of passive and they're able to get more [00:05:45] engaged in it.

So then virtual reality, don't have any here in my office. So you've got about 35 outside the door. We've got a ton of headsets, but they're the, like the meta quest, right? They were called Oculus for a long time, but meta bottom out. And it's the big. They're getting better, but [00:06:00] big old VR headsets, you can't see through them.

There's just, you're in your own little world. You can be in a virtual environment. You can be in space, you can be in a garden, you can be at the beach. And though it's not real life. And I'd much rather dip my toes in the sand. It is pretty [00:06:15] darn compelling. And we've seen, there's actually, there's a lot of studies that show.

We just haven't evolved far enough with this technology for our brains to know the difference of if we really experienced it, or if we did not, an example would [00:06:30] be going through Anne Frank's home, right? It's something you could travel. You could go see Anne Frank's home and have a tour guide, give you something, you know, just give you some little snippets, get a postcard.

And that's an amazing experience. You will feel this empathy and this, [00:06:45] this emotion evoke, you know, From that experience, but most people can't do that. And so you get a, you get a VR headset and put it on and you can actually go through a digital representation of Anne Frank's home and hear a voice actor.

Who's portraying Anne Frank [00:07:00] reading journal entries, and you're going through and, you know, opening the window shutters, opening the doors, picking up the journal and. Engaging with the things in this home and you walk away from that thing, having so much power, having gone through you. It's, it's absolutely incredible.

[00:07:15] So you can evoke a lot of emotion and empathy through VR and because the rest of the world's cut out, right? If you're, if you're watching TV, you're distracted by the dog. If you're in VR. Like that dog might be chewing on your shoe. You have no idea, right? There's some good [00:07:30] and some bad that comes from it, but overall, you're totally fully immersed in the rest of the world.

Doesn't matter. And you can learn a lot more. So those are the differences. Augmented reality. We generally talk about it in the mobile setting, but then virtual reality, it's like a 300 headset. It's [00:07:45] very accessible and you can have some really compelling experiences, but you're blocked from the world for VR.

Aransas: So interesting, the point about immersion there and how intensely empathetic and, um, and connective [00:08:00] that is. So Brian, I know you've really been going deep into understanding category leadership and experience strategy as these technologies are being introduced in more and more ways and places. What are you [00:08:15] seeing so far, just at a very top line, uh, in terms of what's working and what isn't?

Bryan: Yeah, a lot of the companies that are really embracing this technology and embracing this kind of experience design, they've started to figure out [00:08:30] some connections and some opportunities that work for them. Virtual product demos is probably one of the easiest ways to do it. Especially if you've got a product that you sell that is really large, really heavy, really clunky, the virtual product demo that where you can use an AR or a [00:08:45] VR kind of scenario is a great way to show them that product and not only show them the product, but actually take the product apart a little bit and play with it and change it and allow the user to experience it that way.

Another great. [00:09:00] Application would be in remote collaboration. So teams that are located in different parts of the world through virtual reality can get on the same headset and now suddenly be in the same space and collaborate together, whether they're doing product [00:09:15] design or collaboration in terms of innovation or new services that they're trying to develop.

So it's a great way to bring people together. Imagine a sales team now being able to show a client who's on another part of the world. Maybe [00:09:30] it's they're selling, um, luxury condos or something like that. They can actually give them that tour together. They're walking through it and going through it together.

So those are some great examples of it and training and education. Of course, this was a natural fit for [00:09:45] training and education. And just like Spencer was talking about the emotion that you can evoke through those kinds of experiences, like the in frame cows in a training and education environment, you can do the same kind of thing where actually you immerse them.

And this learning environment. [00:10:00] It's a very different experience than just sitting in a room and giving maybe a didactic kinds of lecture where they're just not as engaged. So great applications in those regards, as you can start to see it works more and more, even within training and education. [00:10:15] In a business environment or a commercial environment too, whether you're training the client or training the sales force, NASA uses it to train astronauts on how to do repairs on different pieces of equipment, you know, in the space station and things like that.

So they don't have to do it here on the ground before they [00:10:30] go up. They can use this kind of environment to understand what they need to do in the real life. world. 

Aransas: Yeah. It sounds like a lot of it falls into that mental rehearsal category where it's, it's helping us practice real life scenarios, but it's also, you know, to Spencer's [00:10:45] point, some of it is in going back in history to look at things that we will never do.

It's I think really exciting to think about it as it relates to time. So I'm going to pass it over now to Dave as our experienced strategy futurist here. [00:11:00] You have such a great track record of foretelling, uh, the role of technology and experience strategy, Dave. So how are you thinking about this as it relates to [00:11:15] long term experience strategies and what companies should be looking at?

Dave: I think consumers, people in general, have been imagining. Virtual reality for quite some time, and they're excited about it. They [00:11:30] think about it. We've got a whole generation of kids that have grown up on Pokemon Go, which is exactly the type of stuff that we're talking about. Right. And so they very much.

are ready for it. They don't understand. And I think one of the things, [00:11:45] Spencer, that you guys have done a great job of, they don't understand why certain, why their phone can only do certain things and why their headset can do others. And they're always confusing AR with VR [00:12:00] going forward. I think companies are going to really embrace this technology.

It does not look like we're going to go back to a world where there's going to be a lot of in person meetings. [00:12:15] And what you guys are talking about in terms of being able to have everyone in a room and know whether or not everyone's paying attention, have everyone looking together is all just.

[00:12:30] Perfectly great stuff. So I think the future is very bright for VR and AR. 

Aransas: I like what you said there about not going back. Um, and we say that a lot here that when we talk about technology, we never [00:12:45] turn away from it. Once the door opens, we just keep going further and further into it. And while, you know, the method may change somewhat, you know, maybe the goggles won't be the thing, but virtual reality.

will [00:13:00] continue to have increasing effect on our lives. And I think we've just seen that proven now. time and time again through all technology. 

Dave: Absolutely. You know, I, I think about these big stadiums and I think, what would a Taylor Swift concert look like [00:13:15] if it didn't have these big screens, big visualizations, and I recognize that that is not AR, VR per se, but the future is immersive experiences.

Absolutely. And that's, [00:13:30] that's what We get it everywhere nowadays. And you think about what's going on in Las Vegas as well with the sphere. It's, it's, it's an important part of, of our future, I think. 

Aransas: Agree in seeing those become more and more scalable. Jump in Brian. [00:13:45] 

Bryan: Yeah. One of the things I was going to bring up was a study that Pipsos had done, uh, just a couple of years ago.

It's interesting. You mentioned Dave, that brands are going to be embracing this. And this is where really where the lag is right now. It's the, on the side of the brands, the consumers are there. [00:14:00] They are ready for these kinds of experiences in all different parts of their lives, not just entertainment and events, which they are embracing very well, right.

You know? But they see that there's an opportunity to scan product information. [00:14:15] You know, they're getting more and more into that or travel the world and explore it or instructional information or learning in an immersive way. So the study showed that the consumers were ahead of the brands in that regard.

But brands, smart brands are picking [00:14:30] up on it right now. And are saying, this is where we need to be investing and doing new innovative work and standing out from our competition by engaging in these kinds of immersive experiences. 

Spencer: You know, that's a good point. We typically see this, this [00:14:45] technology push away, or I guess a lot of, a lot of industries kind of wait until others prove it out, right?

Some are very forward thinking. They want to be first, first in others, just kind of wait and see how others do first. We're seeing a lot of groups. [00:15:00] Really adopt augmented reality for marketing. We've done like small, you know, here in Utah, it's a big thing to have a soda shop where you go to get a Dr.

Pepper with a squirt of like coconut creamer in it or something, you know, and they're everywhere out here. They're, they're great, but we've had small shops. I like, [00:15:15] it's not a franchise. It's like one. Small business that sells soda. They come to us. We've created augmented reality games in the past for them.

Right. But then we have like, we've done stuff for Amazon and Energizer and all, every major drink [00:15:30] company out there. And there's these huge gas station and convenience store locations that are, are, um, Franchises that have thousands of locations and they're doing things also. And then you have home builders, right?

So it's kind of everybody all the way up to NASA. And I don't know if it gets [00:15:45] any cooler than NASA. Right. But like everybody is adopting this. And even on that lower level, it's been pretty amazing to see even the small dogs are really getting into this. And that to me proves that this technology has been.

Tried and tested and is being well adopted and Snapchat, [00:16:00] Instagram, Tik TOK, those have done a fantastic job of introducing the technology in a simple way. If you want to put bunny ears on your head, you can use AR to do so. And, uh, you know, kids, kids have all done it. Like it's crazy to see how many people are familiar with it, whether [00:16:15] they know that's what it's called.

They have at least done some sort of AR filter in the past. Right? So it's pretty cool to see the adoption. 

Aransas: I think you're all touching now on our first big piece of advice to our listeners, which [00:16:30] This is super scalable and cost effective, and you can learn very quickly and easily what works for your brand.

So get in there and play and experiment with different ways of engaging your audience and see what [00:16:45] the impact is in terms of. Your brand value through utilizing these technologies. 

Spencer: That being said, you know, we, we could create, we've done a few of these, unfortunately, where we create what we feel is the best possible product for a client [00:17:00] and they do a poor job introducing it and pushing it out and it could totally flop, right?

We've got a few specific examples of those. I won't necessarily go over on here to call anyone out, but we also have others where it's a really simple product that we build. And they do an amazing job pushing it [00:17:15] out. One example of that, one, I'm happy to call people out for that side, is, um, Ivers, they're the clam chowder, fish and chips franchise on like the northwest.

They're amazing. They sell like their clam chowder at Costco and stuff. They're fantastic. So they wanted to engage [00:17:30] their, their user, their users in a unique way and their average, uh. Customer is like 52 years old or something, right? Not that that's old, but it's 52 years old. And that's not the technology group, right?

Usually think of like teenagers with this, [00:17:45] but really we were able to create a game that was really simple. You scan a QR code in order to earn a cup of free clam chowder, right? Everybody's interested in that. And to not make the older demographic feel like they're being left out, they wanted to make it as simple as [00:18:00] humanly possible.

So a three year old could do it and an 80 year old could do it. Right. Three year old probably with a little of assistance, but that was kind of the goal as far as like functionality. And so we created a five question quiz. And so there's multiple folds of this, right? And I show this example, cause it's about as simple as you get for [00:18:15] a product, but the impact is actually pretty great.

So they scan a QR code and it takes them to a landing page and they can then have, uh, they have a quiz and the quiz is the same five questions every time. The goal is to get the person to understand [00:18:30] more about the business, not to trick them and frustrate them. So you can play it as many times as you want.

You just have to get those five questions, right? So if you answer the first one wrong, they have questions like, you know, what, what types of things are at all Ivers locations, oceanfront views, [00:18:45] Balcony seating, you know, fish and chips or whatever, and the answer is all the above. And so if you answer just one, it's like, Oh shoot.

And you go back and try it again. And now you learn that like every single location has those and you learn how many pounds of fish they use every year and you know, [00:19:00] what other products they have. And so you're educating. The user doing it in a fun way through gamification, and then you're offering a reward and a selfie they can share on social media after.

And they've had fantastic results from that. That just, that campaign just ended. So we don't have the final, how many cups were earned, [00:19:15] but there were tens of thousands of people who experienced that and viewed others doing it and saw it on social media, played it themselves. And it's just, it's fantastic.

So it could have been just a scan this, type your name, get an email. [00:19:30] And that's not cool. It works, but it's not fun and engaging. So that was a very cost effective way for them to engage at a higher level. 

Aransas: So we'll take that as our next big lesson, which is if you're going to do it, put some muscle behind the [00:19:45] implementation.

And I think that is. A hazard we see with so much innovation is that we'll have one team off in the corner of an organization saying, Hey, we have this great idea and it's scalable and it's affordable and we're going to go off and do [00:20:00] it. But then the rest of the organization doesn't really stand around it to champion it and ensure that it gets attention from the customer to really validate it.

And then I think we get lure within companies like, ah, that doesn't work here. [00:20:15] And so that is a point really well taken that before you judge the efficacy of this, make sure that you're doing it in such a way that you've really given it a big shot. 

Spencer: Yeah. And it's not always necessarily the, the, you [00:20:30] know, the million dollar projects that are going to go off.

Like there's stuff you can create for like five figures. That's going to be pretty freaking amazing. And it really engage your, your users at a higher level. And there's ways to do simple tests and, you know, just pick a market. [00:20:45] Pick a location, try it there, see how it is. And so I understand why some people are timid and shy because they have their marketing teams who were trained on digital marketing.

They weren't trained on like augmented reality, immersive experiences. I get it. We create these one off experiences [00:21:00] for a group and just show them that, yes, this is a need. And it will bring more business than it costs almost every time if it's done properly. So that's always the goal. It's not just to be a flashy brand.

It's to create awareness. Drive sales, you know, increase revenue. It's, [00:21:15] it's all of those things. 

Aransas: Don't be cutting edge just to be cutting edge. Yeah. Yeah. So Brian, it was really fun to. get our clients to test out some of these concepts. Thanks to you and Spencer's [00:21:30] work designing a concept test for collaborative members.

What are some of the learnings and takeaways from those wide ranging experiments that you feel like we can. Uh, [00:21:45] gain, gain some sort of universal wisdom from about what works and what doesn't with customers right now. 

Bryan: Yeah, that was actually a great opportunity that we had, right? To do some testing there.

And we did it as bonus testing for all of our [00:22:00] participants in the collaborative. They were already getting testing done on their experiences. In a more traditional delivery format, but we added in this bonus material and partnered with Spencer and his team to come up with different ideas. [00:22:15] And we were really trying to not just go for the idea of entertaining the customers while we were interacting with them, but also to look at what other kinds of value could we bring.

And I would say one of the biggest things that we learned was [00:22:30] the experiences that probably performed the best were those that were kind of bringing some sort of superpower, if you will, to our, the customers, the target audience. So if we, for example, we're looking at a travel kind of [00:22:45] experience, it wasn't just transporting them there, although that is a nice superpower to have transporting, but also helping them to connect with someone in a unique and individual way.

Through that kind of experience, same kind of thing. If we were looking [00:23:00] at perhaps recognition or something along those lines, it wasn't just making them feel recognized in terms of wearing a crown or one of those kinds of filters, but it was helping them to also teach and explain [00:23:15] what it is that they had done for their industry.

To others who would be learning. So now it's recognition through the form of sharing ideas and sharing new information. So it was quite fascinating for us to see that when we engaged that [00:23:30] kind of framework into the experience and we could see a more powerful results, more interest and participating from the target audience.

Aransas: It's such an important point here. I want to just [00:23:45] reinforce the difference in what you're describing. So, and, and this is sort of what Spencer was alluding to before, but I think when we have access to new innovative technology, Brands can get excited and [00:24:00] splashy, uh, cool looking cutting edge idea and put the crown on it.

And yet. If it does not contribute to the customer's job to be done, if it [00:24:15] doesn't help them get accomplished what they want to accomplish, then It can just feel like clutter and it can ultimately disrupt or, or distance them from the value you're providing. 

Bryan: [00:24:30] Yeah, I would agree with that. Um, the job to be done became very important because the kinds of experiences that we were testing were not necessarily just about a marketing campaign or a sales campaign.

It was a much deeper experience for the target audience that. [00:24:45] that the, those collaborative members were participating in testing anyway. So we knew that we needed to tie it to that job to be done and building in on the right kind of framework that would help contribute to that. 

Aransas: [00:25:00] Yeah. And that's why I love the word superpower because it says, We're not going to just help you with your job.

We're going to super power your job. 

Bryan: Right. Right. And it was amazing on some of the pieces just, uh, that we had tested just how strongly [00:25:15] they were embraced by the target audience. I think of one, um, brand that we had done work for, uh, I think that as a team, Spencer's team and I came up with some really, a great idea and everyone who participated wanted, wanted that [00:25:30] particular experience to be brought to life, put the client in an awkward position.

I don't think they have the budget for that kind of investment at the time, but they're super excited about exploring it for the future. 

Aransas: I'm really proud of the way we tested those because we didn't just put safe [00:25:45] ideas out there, we put some real boundary stretching ideas out there. And I, that gave us the real opportunity to understand where customers are in terms of readiness.

But it didn't, that wasn't the delta. Again, to your [00:26:00] point, it was really about Are you doing something meaningful with this technology when it comes to experience? I don't think it has to be meaningful necessarily from a marketing perspective, if that's your goal, but if you're infusing it into an experience, it does need to [00:26:15] be meaningful and add value to that job.

Bryan: Right. And I would say the other interesting aha that came out of this was our experience leadership teams who were participating in the collaborative, these clients, they had not given thought to this kind of technology [00:26:30] before. So it truly jolted them, if you will, right? To really start thinking, Hey, I should be paying attention to this.

I should be learning more about this. And I should be figuring out how to incorporate it into the work that I'm [00:26:45] doing. So many of them have come to us to have additional conversations about how do we explore this more? How can we think about this in new ways, which has helped them to bring new thinking to their own internal teams as [00:27:00] well and bring some additional added value to the way and the role in which the experienced leadership team can play at their organizations.

Aransas: And as an experienced strategist, that's a really important role for you to play. [00:27:15] Like, the organization at large isn't going to push those boundaries, that relies on you as an experienced leader to be the one to say, Hey, here are some potential ways that we can play and that we can really differentiate [00:27:30] in our category by using what's coming.

Spencer, I know you were able to see a lot of the results that we cleaned through those tests. You've certainly done many more tests to understand what works and doesn't from an experience [00:27:45] strategy point of view as it relates to using these technologies. So give us a summary. What else should we be thinking about as we, we play and test with, uh, using these technologies and [00:28:00] experiences specifically?

Spencer: So one thing I will say is Sometimes a video is better. AR and VR is not always the answer. I'm not saying to replace anything. This is as the name says, it's augmented. It is an [00:28:15] augmented part of the experience. If you're creating a campaign, I don't suggest you. Ditch doing a commercial or a social media campaign and do AR solely and hope people find it.

People need to be engaged with this at a higher level. People need clear [00:28:30] call to action. If you just put a QR code on the side of a bottle, I've got one here. Actually, I don't know where that goes. It's just a QR code. It's not labeled. It's just, you scan it, it does take you to their website, but like, it doesn't tell me that people don't want to [00:28:45] just scan a QR code, use a little bit of your real estate on the can and say for an augmented reality experience or learn more or win a free trip or whatever it is, like tell the people what they're doing and that same purpose goes for, for real estate.

[00:29:00] What we try to have drive the experience that we create. We don't want to just pump out a bunch of augmented reality experiences that no one's going to experience or ever, ever see. And we also don't want to create something that could be better through a video. Video is fantastic. It's an amazing [00:29:15] medium, right?

It's very accessible. You can be laying in bed while doing it. Augmented reality, virtual reality. You generally have to get your butt off the couch and stand up and move around a little bit. Here's the good about it though. If I'm laying in bed and I don't want to experience something in AR, you need to have a [00:29:30] supplemental experience that they can do.

We call it like a pseudo experience. So if I can experience your product in a way from my couch and kind of get my feet wet, then I might be willing to stand up and experience the whole thing. And even though fewer people [00:29:45] experience AR and VR versus like death scrolling on social media. The amount of advertisements you see on social media in an hour, let's say you spend an hour scrolling through, you will retain such a small portion of what you saw.

So yes, you got a lot of [00:30:00] eyeballs. Yes. They stay on your, your thing for two seconds or whatever, but they're not going to remember it. There's fewer people who do engage at a higher level. But when they do, they will retain it. They'll remember you. They'll tell their friends about it. They'll share the experience.

It's you communicating [00:30:15] them with them in a way that they want to be communicated with. And it's a better experience. And you give them options, opportunities to buy or to customize or to learn, or even just play a game and have your branding on it, right? All those things are positive, but you don't want to just [00:30:30] go down that one rabbit hole and say AR or bust.

That's not the answer. So I will be the first to tell anybody on a call that, yeah, you should probably just Maybe a social media campaign or a video would be better for this. It's not always AR that's the answer. 

Aransas: Good point there. Uh, and I [00:30:45] think it comes back to the reason that we design strategies because they aren't just tactics.

They aren't just playing with the toys. Uh, but rather it is about creating a strategy that ultimately looks [00:31:00] ahead at where your customer is going, what they will want and need and designing for their future needs. Uh, and that requires. doing research to understand what your customer is going to want and need, who your customer is, and certainly what jobs they have to get done.[00:31:15] 

So Brian, I want to close out with a question to you here. Um, as an experienced strategist and as somebody who is focused so solidly on the role of AR and VR as it relates to [00:31:30] experience strategy, how do you want to challenge experienced strategist to test and learn and play? Play their way into getting the insights they need in order to forge a [00:31:45] powerful AR VR or advanced technologies strategy for their brand, if they're not playing there already.

Bryan: Uh, that's a great question. Cause there's probably several different ways to approach this and think about this. [00:32:00] And as I think about the work that we did for our clients, most recently through the collaborative and that kind of testing, but we were trying to think through in some cases was what roadblocks are these brands facing with these experiences that they're already thinking about [00:32:15] that are more in person and what role could AR or VR play in that, what is AR or VR bringing or adding to the experience?

What superpowers is it addressing that they might struggle to deliver in person? Um, [00:32:30] But an AR or a VR environment could actually do a fantastic job of delivering. So that's one way to kind of start thinking about it. As Spencer said, AR and VR is not always the answer for AR experience. So we have to kind of think through what is [00:32:45] it going to bring to the table?

What is it going to add for the end user? And what ways is it going to help add to the job? So I think that that is, if that's the starting point for most of our experienced strategists who are out there as they're thinking about, [00:33:00] could AR or VR help me in this situation? And even if they are not experienced in this, you know, that's at least a good starting point.

For a mental exercise to go through and then, of course, another great way to do that is to give us a call. We're always [00:33:15] willing to help brainstorm and think it through and explore ideas. We, uh, Spencer and his team and I have had a lot of exploratory conversations with lots of different brands right now to talk about what could A.R. and V. R. do for the experience that [00:33:30] you're trying to deliver it here. 

Aransas: I always say that is the greatest mark of wisdom, asking for support, uh, that most of us try to tackle things on our own, get overwhelmed and walk away, but to tap into the existing resources [00:33:45] jumps you ahead many, many, many steps. I'm going to ask you a favor here, Brian, and put you on the spot, which is hopefully going to just make you say yes.

I know you've done a lot of thinking about how this works. You've looked at the, [00:34:00] the categories and the themes of what's working and isn't. Will you write us a POV piece that we can publish to our site that summarizes what you've learned so far? 

Bryan: Oh, yes. Definitely. Happy to do that. Not a problem at all.

Awesome. 

Aransas: [00:34:15] We'll get that out in time to release it, hopefully with this episode or soon thereafter and let you guys know for sure. Uh, but please do reach out to us if you have any questions, if you want to bounce ideas around about this. As you can tell, we're super excited about the potential of it and we want [00:34:30] you to do it well, not just do it.

And we want to help you do that. So thank you, Brian. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Spencer, for all the work you're doing to help experienced strategists do this so [00:34:45] well. And thank you to all of you who listen to the Experian Strategy Podcast and support our work. We love watching you thrive. So please share with us your success stories and the experiments that you're running so that we can [00:35:00] keep learning from you and sharing that out broadly so that we can all keep doing better together.

Bryan: Thank you so much, Aransas and Dave. Yeah. Thanks for having us. That was great. 

voiceover: Thank you for listening to the experience strategy podcast. If you're having fun nerding out with us, please follow [00:35:15] and share wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Find more episodes and continue the conversation with us at experiencestrategypodcast.com.