Marketing tools and brand awareness are rapidly advancing to accommodate the progression of our tech-world. We are now constantly in the search for innovative, energetic new campaigns to impress customers and other competitive businesses alike.
Experiential marketing to show off your brand is proving to be particularly impactful. Prestigious fashion house, Dolce&Gabbana, has even stepped up to the world of immersive experiences.
Recently, Dolce&Gabbana hosted a boutique dedicated to interior design. This was held at Corso Venezia 7 and Via Durini 23 in Milan. Digital Engagement solutions leader M-Cube partnered up with the brand to construct the event.
A walk through the experience
M-Cube collaborated on the store’s design at the Corso Venezia 7 location. Their input lay in specially designing and then installing the immersive, creative room for consumers to embrace. The room’s design recreates the fashion house’s four emblematic and iconic themes: Leopard, the Sicilian Cart, Zebra, and Mediterranean Blue.
M-Cube enhanced the experience with many different ingenious elements. The world of Dolce&Gabbana was truly captivated and instilled throughout the Corso Venezia 7 boutique room. The use of performers; visual characteristics inspired by fashion collections; built settings; scenic element transformations; animated videos; and interactivity all came together in the creation of this piece. The feel and very essence of the fashion brand was unquestioningly present.
M-Cube’s purpose during creation was to adapt multiple aspects of the brand to maximise the immersion for the customer. This type of immersive experience is possible, M-Cube has found, only with versatile LED light technology. No other technology is capable of similar.
This all-encompassing customer experience was further projected by Dolby audio systems to fascinate yet another human sense. The room’s huge dimensions comprised of two spaces totalling 71,875m2 of installed LED. With such a great space housing an abundance of creative ideas, an unmatched atmosphere of immense potential was born.
Insider information
Throughout the pandemic, ecommerce rates saw an incredible surge. However, this acceleration has now started to diminish. The slowdown in ecommerce sales does not mean retailers should prioritise physical stores; nor should the advancement of the online experience come at the expense of the in-store experience.
What is important is that the answer to what constitutes a successful retail model is not simply black and white. It does not come down to stores versus online. Rather, it is about blending the line between the two. Businesses need to pay attention to how they use their physical stores to create new opportunities that could enhance the customer experience.
M-Cube’s UK Business Director, Alexios Blanos has also contributed to this CXM exclusive. “This type of immersive experience will grow to be fundamental for customer experience in the UK market. It will allow retailers to give their customers access to their brands and their values in a completely different way. The customer journey inside the physical shops will be more emotional and will have a more profound impact. Therefore, creating better connections with customers.”
Submersing your customers into the world of your brand, through experiences that heighten the senses and thrill their minds, can be possible within our digital universe. There are plenty of immersive experiences on the rise, for many different purpose, which utilise a plethora of technologies. It only makes sense for marketing techniques to adapt in line with the increase of these activities.
Immersive experiences can shape the future
Digitisation and technology-driven processes are the way forward, as proved time and time again. “Digital [experiences] are becoming increasingly vital to meet new consumer demands and support retailers in their internal process improvements,” Leonardo Comelli, M-Cube Business Director, remarked in response to this immersive boutique.
“It’s no coincidence that online and offline integration is vital to elevating and centralizing the customer experience. Stores are increasingly becoming places where emotions must be fully expressed,” Comelli further comments. “Immersive rooms, digital mirrors, touchpoints, smart tables, and multiple installations that are found in stores are highly advanced devices that are capable of evoking the consumer’s empathy and emotional participation.”
These immersive experiences are not just a chance for the consumer to experience the brand in a new emotional way. It doubly has a practical function. It gives Dolce&Gabbana’s sales assistants the opportunity to show a wider range of products – those not available in most physical stores.
D&G HOME applying this digital solution inside the store is gives an overview of what the future of the retail industry could be. Potentially every luxury and retail brand in the future could decide to use this kind of solution to maximise their store spaces and allow their customers access to all available products.
With such a bold project achieved by Dolce&Gabbana and M-Cube, this is a new standard and example to strive for. “The immersive room that we created is the emblem of how digital tools can give life and portray emotions” Comelli’s words capture this well.