Taking part in Little Black Book‘s Five Minutes with series, Helen Bellringer, Associate Director from our London Studios explores the difference between ‘events’ and ‘experiential’, creating for Steve Madden during Fashion Week and putting together a fully remote summit during the pandemic for ASICS.
Helen had spent her time at music college writing music, coding in PureData, hooking up Arduinos to long-range devices to creative audio-interactive controllers, and creating soundscapes for obscure surrealist films through synthesisers. Definitely a far cry from her life today.
When she graduated, her first job was in an audio post production studio because she knew her way around a DAW (digital audio workstations), but didn’t really know where to place the rest of her skillset. “I forged quite the divergent path from there, through music production for adverts and brands, a music VR startup creating content for global artists, and an immersive tech creative studio…all to get where I am today.”
And where she is today is a space Helen truly loves – living in the moment, working with new emerging technology across a diverse roster of clients, while specialising in digital and working holistically on broader experience concepts.
Why experiential? Were you always drawn to it, and if not, how did you get to be?
I’m the kind of person that loves to live in the moment; whether going to a gig, playing in an orchestra, hurtling around on a rollercoaster, I love lived experiences and the profound effect they have on your mental state. I remember going to see the theatre production of ‘The Woman in Black’ in the West End when I was still in school, and being totally enthralled by how a whole audience of people could palpably feel the same thing (absolute terror) at the same time.
Whilst at music college I supplemented my student loans by scoring music and SFX for fashion films; I loved playing with sounds and music to conjure a particular mood or emotion, and I think I’ve carried that empathetic design approach through to my work today. I’m all about how something makes you feel.
How has experiential changed ever since you started working in the niche and what are the biggest catalysts for its changes? Are they for the better? How?
The shift from ‘events’ to ‘experiential’ is an important one as it implies you’re creating a crafted holistic experience that takes guests on a journey, rather than being something branded they just show up to. There’s a lot more thought and strategy that goes into CX and UX that delivers a better experience for guests, and therefore better ROI for brands.
And what are some current trends that you enjoy and think are here to stay? Are there any that you don’t believe should?
Hybrid experiences that blend both physical and digital layers of storytelling are becoming the norm in the industry, and this is for several reasons. Firstly, our audiences connect to their day-to-day lives with their smartphones, so there is a digital fluency we can tap into as part of experiences. Secondly, an integrated digital layer opens up so many possibilities for gamification and deeper layers of interaction and engagement. Finally, a connected digital framework allows us to track and measure experiences, learning and adapting in real-time and capturing valuable data for brands.
I think GenAI has probably seen the peak of its hype-cycle, and I’m happy to see fewer gimmick-led activations that jumped on the bandwagon to use it as a PR angle. GenAI itself though isn’t going anywhere, and it will shape the landscape of experiences to come in the future, which is something I’m excited to see and be part of!
Tell me about your start at Imagination – what drew you to the company and what does your role in it look like today?
I’ve always worked with new and emerging technologies as part of my creative practice, so what drew me to Imagination was their ground-breaking work in the innovation space. Having an in-house tech studio at my fingertips was definitely part of the appeal!
In my role at Imagination I work across our diverse roster of clients, leading creative teams to deliver a variety of experiences. Whilst I specialise in digital, I also work holistically on broader experience concepts, there really is never a dull moment.
Tell me a little bit about your best projects and what made them so important in your career?
Earlier this year we delivered a two-day experience for Steve Madden around London Fashion week. It’s one of my favourite projects because I got to lead the creative from pitch to delivery, and I can honestly say that we stayed true to the creative vision from the initial winning idea all the way through to the execution of the final two-day event.
The client was so behind the concept and the creative that we were able to really push boundaries and do some brow-raising things, as well as introduce a competition element that really drove guest engagement – the influencer guests were ruthlessly competitive! In a world of brand guidelines and strict TOV documents, it was a breath of fresh air to work with a brand that wanted to tear up the rule book and were open to new ideas. It’s these kinds of projects that keep you doing what you love.
What about the most challenging project of your career to date? What are some learnings you took away from it that still carry today?
One of the most challenging projects of my career was the ASICS Innovation Summit 2021, which (due to the pandemic) was a fully remote closed-media event hosted on the Oculus Quest VR headset.
We developed a fully personalised experience with every aspect of the VR world constructed to respond to changes in the user’s biodata, tracked in real-time using a heart rate wearable to emphasise the ASICS ‘Human Centric Design’ philosophy. The experience culminated in the grand reveal of ASICS’ latest performance running shoe innovation – METASPEED, demonstrated on a virtual olympic-sized track using motion capture data-generated holograms from real runners.
There were so many innovations and brand messages packed into one experience, that it nearly broke the engineering team to build, and made the end user experience quite lengthy. If I could go back and re-make it, I’d split it into individual experiences and deliver it as a suite of bite-sized VR content pieces.
What is your vision for the future of experiential?
I believe that in a digitally connected world, experiential needs to reflect real life and offer a virtual layer of storytelling alongside the physical experience to continue to evolve with the times – if an event happens in the forest and no-one‘s there to post it to TikTok, did it even happen at all?
Adopting digital as an integral part of experience, rather than a hooky gimmick or afterthought means brands can deliver seamlessly connected experiences, hyper-personalised journeys and richer, more immersive experiences that guests will remember, hand over their data for, and share online.
And in line with that, what advice would you give to those starting in it today?
Go forth and experience! If you’ve never been to a secret cinema or punchdrunk production, go and learn about narrative theatrical storytelling. Get yourself to Sandbox VR and try out the best virtual titles on high-end gaming VR headsets. Take note of how things make you feel, how the audience is collectively feeling and if you want to be the person designing these experiences there are so many routes in creatively, from 3D spatial design to UX and real-time game development.
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