Eric Brouillet has been creating immersive experiences for high profile brands across North America for decades. He is the founder and president of Vibrant. He explains the difference between the concept of immersive experience and virtual reality for us below.

Canada-based experiential marketing company Vibrant recently launched an immersive experience division, Vibrant Studios. Before launching the brand, Brouillet says he studied the immersive experience category, which he refers to as a subcategory of experiential marketing, one that is still relatively new. 

Brouillet suggests that virtual reality is a form of immersive experience. Immersive experiences can happen either in the real world, or in the virtual world with the aid of technology.

What is an immersive experience?

Immersive experiences are defined by putting the participant in an environment in a narrative where they’re able to interact with some form of live theatre, technology, or physical set. Basically, there’s a story line and they’re able to step into that said world and experience a different type of thing. It’s a different form of entertainment and it’s growing significantly in North America. 

What is the difference between immersive experience and virtual reality?

I think it’s an excellent question. I will say immersive experience is a wide term. It’s like when you use the word marketing. There are a lot of things that can go in there. When you look at the exact definition of an immersive experience — we build a story in a specific location, it could be a fixed location, it could be a touring location, it doesn’t matter, but people are stepping into that world. 

Now to bring that world to life, you can use different things and AR augmented reality could be part of it, virtual reality can be part of it, physical and technical interaction could be part of it, movie level grade set design could be part of it, immersive theatre with actors in play could be part of it. So, an immersive experience per se, doesn’t reduce you to a specific use of a technology, it could be a blend of technology.

You’re able to interact with props. Most of them use movie level decor. Some of them use actors that play in an immersive theatre with the audience. Some of them use projection mapping in a 360 environment where you can touch something that’s moving around, some of them use spatial effects, or high-end holographic projection technologies. What I’m trying to say is that we use the technology to service the story and not the opposite way around. So, we don’t design something to be virtually assisted or augmented reality based. If it doesn’t fit the story, we try to find the best tool to do the best job, to make sure participant engagement is to the maximum.

by Cherryl Bird – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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