Picture charge: Jack Morton
Mobile World Congress (MWC) could be a strange and inhospitable surroundings for the uninitiated, with its cavernous aircraft hangers, huge crowds, and endless temptations of things to see. Additionally, it is a challenge for those companies which attend.
For brands, the key of success would be to resist the temptation to simply talk abouttheir products, and to instead seize the chance to create tech-driven experiences that provide on new promises. This is what we try to reach together with the brands we partner with in MWC, for example Ericsson: it’s among the biggest brand experiences at MWC, designed to excite and inspire partners together with Ericsson’s compelling vision of this future.Here aresome of this otherbrands that won that battlethis season–brands thatattracted focus, told acompelling innovation narrative, and got people talking.
Intel’s curious canopy
At the center of MWC establishes a contradiction: at a seminar about ‘mobility’, not many of those experiences are connected or smart. Intel bucked that trend with an experience that lived up to their proposition, ‘Experience what is inside’. Produced in partnership with the Jason Bruges studio, the ‘Curious Canopy’ was created from countless LED ringsdangled above the space, which glowed, pulsed and cast the exhibition in an atmospheric light.
Aside from looking like something out a futuristic nightclub/science museum, each ring has been fitted with a heat mapping camera that reflect it in real-time, and could identify people moving through the space’s density. According to Bruges, who was on-stand talking about the tech, the concept started by asking:’what if the environment was curious about what happened inside it’ The result was a brilliant andengaging experience that felt different to anythingelse in the show — and as a side note, Intel are one of the few brands with a track record in creating smart and interactive spaces,creatinga ‘168-foot-wide interactive 3D virtual life simulation’at CES at 2012.
VR takes hold
VR was everywhere this year. Samsung’s fully-fledged 4D theater attracted whoops, yelps and cheers as suit-clad executives snapped a virtual feast, SK Telecom took people deep underwater in an immersive ‘diving’ experience within a big yellow submarine, also HTC committed half of their stand to demoing the impressive-looking Vive.
Guests queued up to examine the technologies, exceptional in VR for allowing users to physically move around the virtual world, and made their very own masterpieces in 3D ‘paint’ app Tiltbrush.A measure of the immersive nature of the device was that nobody felt in the least bit shy colouring-in the sea round their painstakingly-constructed palm tree or – into a casual onlooker – avidly waving at a bit of carpet in the midst of a crowded exhibition hall.
T-Mobile: a study in pink
T-Mobile was another brand who uttered its ‘Life’s for sharing’ proposition. This rack, lit in the trademark T-Mobile pink, featured an open seating/auditorium area, a cafe serving food and coffee, and a maker-zone, where people could 3D publish and cut their own accessories and test a 3D pen to embellish some rather chaotic-looking headwear.
The stand featured the sole usage of NFC I found with guests able to register a card and ‘tap’ touchpoints that were fascinating to be sent information, at MWC. It turned out to be a simple and effective tactic that paid respect to the limits of people’s attention and time with there being so many goods so much material to trawl through at MWC.
What were your favourite stands or pieces of branding in MWC this year? Let us know in the comments…
