Moving beyond the backdrop: what it takes to deliver truly immersive experiences

Author:

Katie Streten, Head of Creative Strategy

Originally published by The Drum, February 25, 2026

Recently, London was host to the Brand Experience Centre Conference, an event solely focused on those who create brand homes. Back in November, Netflix launched its second Netflix House, a mash-up of immersive experience, arcade, mini golf, and casual game park and store for key Netflix shows. Something is in the air. It started picking up in 2022 when Amazon closed its $8.5bn MGM acquisition, bringing a century’s worth of storytelling IP into a tech ecosystem obsessed with scale. It continued with Google/YouTube securing NFL Sunday Ticket rights – premium, appointment-viewing culture that keeps people emotionally hooked.

You might look at these examples and see them solely as a way for tech brands to secure more eyeballs, drawing in further subscription and advertising-based revenues.

Or you might see this as a recognition of the commercial value of real-world experience in a world increasingly disrupted by AI.

At first glance, it feels contradictory. If AI is about efficiency, scale, and frictionless digital life, why are tech billionaires (and the companies they run) piling into businesses that are stubbornly physical, social, and sensory?

Because deep down, they’re betting on the same outcome the rest of us are tiptoeing toward: if AI delivers on even half its productivity vision, the scarcest resource won’t be information – it’ll be meaning. And meaning, for humans, is built through experience: shared rituals, stories, play, community, learning, and moments that create emotions, that make you feel something.

In my earlier piece on AI in experiential marketing, I argued that the winners won’t be the ones adding ‘jazz hands’ technology for its own sake – they’ll be the ones taking a brand-led approach, tying AI-enabled touchpoints back to purpose, audience need, and business outcomes. That principle matters even more now, because the future being built by AI is quietly creating a rebound demand for the real world.

And the investment signals are already here.

This isn’t a side quest. It’s a blueprint: own the IP, then own the physical fandom. Because when AI makes the everyday cheaper and faster, people won’t just want convenience – they’ll want connection. And as work changes, so leisure will change too. For some, it becomes ever more unaffordable, while for others, the bar on experience is raised higher and higher by their expectations.

However, ‘experiential’ doesn’t have to mean expensive, high-production, once-a-year spectacle. Some of the smartest experience models today are low-cost (or no-cost) to enter, then commercially viable through advertising, partnerships, community, or optional paid layers – exactly the way many digital products are scaled.

A few inspirations:

• Today at Apple: free in-store sessions that teach, inspire, and build loyalty by turning retail into a creative community hub.
• Nike’s After Dark Tour: brand-as-coach and competition facilitator, brand-as-belonging – where participation in nighttime runs fuels identity (and product demand follows).
• AWS GenAI Lofts: pop-up collaborative spaces and immersive experiences for developers and startups – engendering learning, demo, community, and problem-solving.
• Salesforce Trailblazer Community Groups: peer-led local meetups that build skill, belonging, and advocacy – the ultimate low-cost flywheel for platform adoption.

We see forward-thinking brands across both B2C and B2B designing for the real-world connection that entertains and engages people where their passions are, often starting with a free, value-led opener.

However, ‘free’ can be strategic.

As AI compresses the cost of content and production, the bar for attention goes up. The brands that win will be the ones that design experiences for retention, advocacy, and measurable outcomes, yet enable valuable access for the many.

A practical way to think about it:

1. Free layer: open access, high emotional value (community, learning, play, delight).
2. Sponsored layer: partners fund the magic in exchange for credible association.
3. Paid layer: premium add-ons, merch, limited editions, VIP access, convenience.

This is how you make experiences commercially viable without making them exclusive – and why so many tech-led entertainment bets are moving toward ‘destination ecosystems’ rather than one-off activations.

The next era of engagement

AI will absolutely improve how we plan, personalize, and optimize experiences. But it won’t replace the part that truly differentiates a brand in the real world.

If the AI future arrives the way its architects hope, then experiences won’t be marketing’s ‘nice to have.’ They’ll be an even more important space for brands to help people find engagement, belonging, and joy – at scale, with integrity, and with commercial return.

And that’s why the next wave won’t be won by the brands with the most technology.

It’ll be won by the brands that understand what technology can’t replace: being human, together, in the real world.