The Next Frontier of Photo Booths
Every day there are over 350 million photos uploaded to Facebook and over 100 million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram. Every. Day.
When you consider how many images are being shared daily, creating moments for user generated content, or UGC, should be an essential component of any experiential marketing strategy. UGC allows the magic of your brand experience to extend to an audience way beyond the people who set foot in the venue.
Of course a photo op at an event must be clever and delightful to lure visitors to step inside and create something share-worthy. To that end, new technology and the creativity of experiential marketing pros are bringing next-level photo booths to life. Here’s a few ideas for your next branded event or retail experience.
Interactive Booths
Tech like animated GIFs, touchscreens and interactive content are making photo booths more fun and engaging than ever. By using these existing technologies in new and creative ways, marketers are creating branded experiences that are enchanting to play with and tremendously shareable. Take for example this custom touchscreen photo opp that let attendees choose which Dallas Cowboys players they wanted to pose with while animating the athletes right into the picture in real time.
Our turnkey app Quander Mobile is GIF ready and highly customisable making it easier than ever to animate the action at branded events.
Augmented Reality Booths
Props like silly glasses and fake moustaches have been the go-to for photo booths for some time, and people are yearning for something new. Thankfully, augmented reality, or AR, technology is exploding the possibilities for photo props. Users of Snapchat and Instagram stories are already familiar with the ability to add effects to selfies. Those apps use facial recognition to add halos, sunglasses, puppy ears and all variety of digitally animated props to your photos.
With AR catching on, the Quander Mobile app is now powered with AR features to instantly bring digital characters and props into photo booths. During London Fashion Week, we partnered with Tiger Heart to bring an AR photo booth to the Creative Futures 6 event where panelists dissected the ever-evolving relationship between humans and technology and then posed with our magic mirror to digitally paint and animate their faces into a shareable GIF.
Permanent Installations
To get more legs from a branded experience, more and more brands are investing in permanent installations that offer additional ways for customers to interact with the brand and its products. This has been a useful strategy for retailers who are seeking new ways to attract customers to brick and mortar stores whilst competing with online retailers for traffic. Savvy retailers are rethinking their shops as showrooms and event spaces that offer more than just a place to purchase a product. Olivia Burton’s flagship store in London, for example, was designed to be highly “Instagramable” with a gorgeous “dream wall” and a photo booth to entice shoppers to snap pics of their experience at the store and share with friends.
Our work with Sky has included their permanent installation Sky Studios at the O2 which has a similar philosophy: give people a reason to spend time with your brand in real life — and make it shareable. We regularly update the installation with new photo and video experiences to showcase current programmes and keep people coming back for more.
An Artistic Touch
The most memorable and successful photo booth experiences are those which have real artistry in the execution. This is where your creative team or agency can bring their wildest ideas to the table — and we can help figure out the technology to make it come to life!
When Nespresso launched their new Vertuo system, working with Wasserman Experience we partnered with artist Cathy Thomas on a unique photo booth that overlaid her customised, hand drawn illustrations onto attendee photos. The results were jaw-dropping and like no other photo booth.
We can do a lot with green screens and digital editing, but sometimes you want to create a dazzling scene that will make people stop in their tracks and take part. By working with set designers, we’ve helped brands create floor to ceiling flower gardens and a magical rain umbrella with rain cascading over it. We’ve also seen brands create mirrored infinity rooms and bathtubs full of candy coloured balls just begging for you to hop on in.
Our team is always happy to collaborate with other agencies or in-house creative teams to work through the layout and experience design to find the best flow and the right technology for a crazy photo op idea. We can even help present bespoke concepts for pitches to help you get decision makers on board.
Creating opportunities for UGC at brand events and retail experiences is a must in today’s digitally connected world. And as the technology for animated GIFs, immersive AR and capturing the magic of a memorable experience becomes more affordable and easier to activate, creativity is the only limit for what you can bring to life.
Have a fantastical idea for a live event, but aren’t yet sure how to make it real? Get in touch.