The age of experience: How technology is transforming the world of brand content

Our eyes have moved from our streets, walls, TVs and malls to the screens in our hands. Art is moving from museum rooms to immersive audio-visual experiences. Film production is moving from physical sets to virtual sets that save time and money.

Our grocery lists are now voice commands delivered to connected devices. Take for example the Sphere in Las Vegas - which was built to offer an immersive audio-video experience to an audience of over 18,000 people, and opened with a performance by U2 on the 29th of September.

Or consider the immersive art experiences now available across Japan, USA, UK and France. Creativity, content and technology have become increasingly intertwined, helping brands deliver what every human being wants more of - an experience.

Thanks to advances in Telecommunications, this experience can now be delivered anywhere - to a greater or a lesser degree. We see a similar pace of transformation in how content is created for these experiences. Technology is already at the heart of content ideation, creative collaboration, creative processes management, production, asset management, content delivery, audience engagement and ROI measurement.

AI in branded content development

While AI can help remove quite a bit of the drudge work creative people put in now and ensure they don’t miss the necessary yet mundane aspects of everyday coordination in the content creation process, the real focus for most of us in brand content production is delivering content as an experience, and embracing more technology to achieve this.

Yes, the change feels “Scary, exciting, collaborative” as Sebastian Tomich of The Athletic said, but it’s here and the audiences love it. On a side note, a similar technology-driven transformation is happening in sports too. It’s no wonder then, that more and more technology companies are patrons of arts and sports. Now, let’s pause for a moment and discuss the term “brand content”.

Traditionally, brand content has been defined as videos, influencer posts, blogs, etc. But that approach is archaic in today’s context where customer journey mapping is a foundational necessity, personalisation can be easily automated in some areas and generative AI is already in the early stages of being used for service and product discovery. Today, brand content needs to be integrated into the user experience, rather than primarily be a one-way message delivery mechanism.

Exploring beyond conventional methods

Content can no longer be for content's sake - it needs to be conceptualised and built with a clear brand purpose and strong business utility. And the clever marketer will not only deploy high-utility brand content to attract new customers but also for post-purchase engagement. Imagine a luxury car showroom offering an augmented reality experience to help customers customise interiors.

Imagine an auto-insurance company using a game to assess the driving style and habits of its applicants. A bank using interactive content to help customers use their services. A home interiors brand launching an app to provide an intuitive design experience to its customers. A psychotherapy service that’s based on virtual reality. All of these are examples of brand content as an experience.

They are enabled by technology. And they deliver both on brand purpose and on business utility. Like with any product and service: the audience and their context are the primary radars that need to guide brand content strategy and production. And the only way to know if something will work is to experiment with different ways of creating a unique customer experience using brand content.

And in this context of rapid technological changes, being ready to experiment is a necessary mindset. As for creative agencies out there and for brand content agencies such as ourselves - while there’s all the excitement around leveraging technology for innovative content experiences, there’s also the challenges around scaling creativity and content production. This is possibly why it makes so much sense looking back now - that we started our business, Red Bangle, by building a proprietary technology platform for managing the content production process.