How marketing will become more interactive and immersive in 2023

When people talk about the Golden Age of Advertising, they probably think of the 1960s to the 1980s. A period when glossy, feel-good ads were conjured up by smooth-talking marketing execs in swanky, smoke-filled offices – a la the TV series Mad Men.

It was a time when companies moved away from simply plugging a product's USPs and focused more on brand building, creativity and nostalgia marketing. And some of the most famous brand ambassadors first hit our screens in the '60s, including Ronald McDonald, the Milk Tray Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

But as great as it is, traditional marketing – whether it's TV, radio, print or billboard ads – have always had a drawback: it's all one-way communication. 

It’s monologue, not dialogue.

Building rapport with people is always difficult when the conversation is only flowing in one direction.   

But today, digital marketing can build engaging, two-way conversations with customers across multiple channels, which helps strengthen relationships and deepen loyalty. In other words, brands are talking with people, rather than at them.

Could we be entering a new Golden Age of marketing?

We don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but marketing is already more interactive and immersive than ever before, and there are clear signs this trend will continue. So, what will happen before this year (2023) is over? Here are some of our mid-year predictions.

More focus on empathy-based marketing  

The most memorable ads of all time often have one thing in common. They make you feel something. Joy, wonder, nostalgia, sadness or even irritation – a great piece of marketing elicits an emotional response, and it can only do that when brands understand their customers' thoughts and feelings.

And why not, when 95% of purchasing decisions are based on how a person feels subconsciously, not what they think consciously?

Empathy-based marketing is all about building deeper connections with people by seeing through their eyes (and we don't mean via a VR headset... not yet, anyway!). 

As they first discovered in the 60s, the best brands understand that it's not a product's USPs that develop these bonds; no one forms a strong emotional connection to their deodorant or toilet cleaner. It's the values, personalities and character of your brand that people relate to. 

Capturing a slice of your customer's daily life and recognizing their pain points and needs is at the heart of empathy marketing. If they can see themselves reflected in your marketing, it's already a more immersive experience.

It's an interesting part of creating a digital human a brand. You want customers to see themselves in the character, so they can naturally find it approachable and friendly, not intimidating and other-worldly.

Importantly, it's not just about how you approach empathy in your marketing, but when. Brands benefit from finding key 'moments of truth' for their audiences. 

Most of us have probably described an important event in our lives as a moment of truth – a crucial job interview or a big exam, for example. There are similar make-or-break moments when brands interact with consumers, whereby a company's response could forge a stronger bond with a customer… or jeopardize it. 

McKinsey & Co say a moment of truth occurs when a person invests a "high amount of emotional energy" in certain interactions, such as when something goes wrong, and they need to complain about a product or service. And, what's more, these moments are the most valuable for brands, as the graphic below shows.

Was the issue handled quickly, efficiently and with sensitivity? If not, don't expect loyalty from today's customers. Nearly a third of consumers who have walked away from a brand said they did so because of a bad customer experience.  

In short, you can create more immersive, interactive experiences for customers by simply making them feel heard, seen and understood. Empathy-based marketing (and customer service) could therefore hold the key to unlocking the value in these moments of truth. 

AI-driven personalization for speed and scale

Brands are often in a Catch 22 when it comes to satisfying their customers. 

PwC research shows the two most important factors to consumers when interacting with a brand are efficiency and convenience. Traditionally, these have been the big benefits of eCommerce and automation. 

However, 75% of people also say they want to interact with humans more (not less) during the customer journey, even as technology improves. This leaves companies in the seemingly paradoxical position of providing quick and efficient shopping while still delivering the human touch that their customers clearly crave.

And that's not all. Today's consumers don't want a generic experience; they expect seamless, personalized interactions that show a brand understands them and their needs. More than three-quarters (76%) of people get actively frustrated when brands fail to offer a personalized touch.

So, that's efficiency, convenience, personalization, and the human touch. Oh, and let's not forget being more interactive and immersive while you're at it, if you don't mind. Thanks very much.

Is that unreasonable? Not really; it's how shopping in store or visiting your local branch used to work.

And guess what: these experiences were immersive, as any store designer will tell you, and interactive as you got to speak with a real expert.  

The digital world has failed to offer that same desired experience.

But it is possible. And at scale too.

‍Advances in generative AI and automation mean that creating unique, personalized content quickly is getting easier, and over the course of the year we could see more brands dipping their toes in the water. 

For example, ChatGPT allows marketers to easily create personalized and engaging chatbot conversations with their audience. It utilizes natural language processing and machine learning to understand and respond to user input in a more human-like manner. This helps to improve customer experience and increase conversions.

Is the content any good? You decide. The paragraph above was written entirely by ChatGPT in just a few seconds when we asked it to describe its own benefits for marketers in fewer than 50 words. 

Stunningly realistic and creative AI-generated imagery can also be produced in deep learning platforms such as DALL-E 2, while companies like Veritone are now able to quickly (and ethically) clone voices using AI.

And we'd be remiss if we didn't mention digital humans. That conversation with Sophie you can have on this very website? Yep, that's driven by generative AI too. Try telling her what industry you work in and see what she has to say.

With all these tools at their fingertips, and a good grasp of what their customers want, we expect marketers to begin creating more personalized and immersive campaigns with tighter budgets and quicker turnaround times in 2023.

The evolution of brand mascots, ambassadors and influencers

Brand ambassadors and mascots have already evolved a lot over the last 60 years. Don't believe us? Check out the first ever advert featuring Ronald McDonald: 

It's fair to say the company's marketing budget wasn't quite what it is today. Who would have thought that a make-shift clown with a soda cup for a nose and a cardboard food tray for a hat would become one of the most iconic brand mascots of all time, and not just some suspected cast off from The Mighty Boosh?

Meanwhile, the relationship between brands and their ambassadors – the real-life celebrities who promote a company's products and services – is also evolving. It MUST evolve. 

For starters, ambassadors themselves are having to up their game. In the old days, hiring a famous face to do the occasional 30-second TV ad was generally the extent of a celebrity endorsement. Now, the media watches every move celebrities make. 

In other words, they're always on the clock, representing the brand. Some partnerships work perfectly; the celebrity just gets it, and they bring instant credibility, personality and, ideally, a new audience to a company's offerings. 

That's not always the case though. There have been truly terrible celebrity endorsers THIS YEAR, and it's not uncommon for an ambassador to damage a company's reputation if they say or do something that goes against the values of the brand (or society at large, for that matter).

Another problem is that customers rarely get to interact closely with the celebrities that endorse a brand. That's why companies are increasingly keen to work with influencers who are authoritative voices in their industry niche. 

For influencers, their whole brand is built on engaging with followers. Live streams, replying to comments on their social media, reviewing products requested by fans – their focus is on creating interactive content for their audiences. Just like brands struggling to scale customer experience, ambassadors need a way to provide their own personal touch to the masses, through automation and digitization. 

Creating digital human celebrities and digitized versions of brand mascots enables brands to offer people the chance to get closer to the personalities they love as a premium service. We might not see too many of these by the end of this year, but let's keep our fingers crossed for one or two celebs willing to show us all the way.

The true metaverse will create a step change

There's been a lot of talk about the metaverse over the last year. That's hardly a surprise – when the world's biggest social media platform changes its name to Meta and spends more than $10 billion on metaverse R&D in a single year, it's going to turn heads.   

Like Gartner, we believe the hype behind the metaverse is real. Nearly three-quarters of people say they'd join an immersive online environment like the metaverse. And you don't have to look far for obvious comparisons; within gaming, platforms like Roblox and massively multiplayer online (MMO) games such as Fortnite already have hundreds of millions of registered users.  

The level of interactivity and immersion seen in gaming is exactly what the metaverse hopes to achieve, only bigger and better. 

At the moment, we're not quite there. Many 'multiverse' projects currently lack truly engaging experiences. Interactivity and immersion are conspicuous by their absence, and we're probably being generous by describing them as 'the metaverse' when in most cases they're simply self-contained virtual worlds. 

But as we wrote in Forbes, that's OK. For now. The true metaverse – a single, shared environment of countless interconnected virtual and mixed-reality worlds – is still in the embryonic stages. It doesn't really exist in its greatest form. Yet. 

That doesn't mean brands can't start getting ready now, because we believe the metaverse will create a step change in marketing. It's already projected to be an $800 billion market by next year, with roughly 13% compound annual growth from 2020 onwards. 

Companies who aren't prepared could find themselves missing out on big opportunities to take their customer experiences to the next level, especially since consumers are already thirsty for the metaverse. 

According to GWI research, 84% of people say they're interested in either browsing or shopping there. And among those who are already using virtual reality (VR) today, nearly a third have purchased products after testing them out in VR.

So by the end of 2023, we predict marketing to have moved into Web 2.5. It's not quite the promise of Web 3.0; but will allow brands to begin transitioning into a more immersive and interactive future.

Growth, growth, growth for digital humans

Imagine being able to have a Nespresso with George Clooney. Or asking Billie Eilish to give you a personal rundown on her latest sneaker collaboration with Nike. 

In this hypothetical, Sebastian Vettel could even help you buy an Aston Martin, explaining the ins and outs of different models, and which components were influenced by the Formula 1 car he finished his career driving.

And what if, as part of that conversation (in German, or English, or any other language for that matter) you could also ask him about his illustrious Formula 1 career, his role models and some of his best memories, both on and off the track? 

For fans of these celebrities, these are the customer experiences they dream of. And digital humans are the means to unlocking these interactions, making them a reality for every consumer, at scale. 

By bringing the voice, looks and mannerisms of their favorite stars to life, digital humans allow people to enjoy truly immersive one-on-one conversations with athletes, musicians, actors – any personality.

Crucially, through AI, they allow for two-way interactions in real time, both now and in tomorrow's metaverse. They can be designed to answer questions, offer personalized recommendations, and talk about their careers and experiences. 

All you need is an idea.

We partnered with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to build Digital Einstein. Our team worked hard to recreate not only his instantly recognizable voice and look, but also his unique mannerisms. 

Digital Einstein answered questions about his life, host quizzes and talk 'face to face' with users via speech or text inputs in a browser. And the results were clear.

The idea? To introduce a new generation to the life and works of the great scientist in an immersive, entertaining and interactive way.

Einstein wasn't "selling" anything, yet he had a positive impact on key metrics across all stages of the marketing funnel, including a 350% increase in total website traffic and a 112% rise in inbound contacts.

Not all digital humans are based on celebrities, mind you. Companies can create an ambassador for their brand entirely from scratch; one with a personality and appearance that perfectly reflects their values.

Whether it's a celebrity, a mascot or a new virtual brand avatar created from scratch, when that personality is unleashed at scale, it's amazing what can happen.

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