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Data-driven magic: why personalisation is the future of entertainment

Opinion
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Blooloop caught up with Chad Kunimoto, global business development manager for immersive entertainment at Panasonic Connect, to discuss the latest advances in personalisation and big data, and how they are revolutionising location-based entertainment (LBE). We also explored how Panasonic Connect’s customers are responding to this trend.

Chad Kunimoto

Personalisation, and the technology behind it, are revolutionizing how we choose, consume, and share entertainment experiences. New research has found that some 69 percent of surveyed businesses are ramping up investment in personalisation. Leading brands are already reporting a twofold increase in customer engagement.

Data is driving the transformation. It’s the foundation for understanding individual customers on a granular level. By collecting and analyzing large datasets, organizations can identify meaningful patterns that reveal customer preferences. They can then tailor content and interactions to guests within an attraction in real time.

Q: What are the benefits of experience personalisation?

Personalisation helps visitors to connect emotionally with the story. When people feel that an experience is tailored to their preferences, they form a stronger bond with the entertainment and form positive associations and memories. This leads to repeat business, improved loyalty, better customer retention, and even higher spending.

Personalisation is about fun. It boosts engagement by allowing people to influence the story. When visitors have agency, they become participants rather than passive observers. This is critical for media attractions, which work best when combined with interactivity or sensory augmentation to enhance engagement.

Attraction designers are always striving to dissolve the barrier between content and guest and make them feel at the centre of the experience. Storytelling that absorbs attention and stimulates the senses makes the experience convincing and memorable.

Q: How can you integrate personalisation into an attraction?

There are so many ways to integrate guests into the story. With analytics and machine learning, particularly generative artificial intelligence (AI), businesses can gather and analyze customer data on the fly. This allows them to create unique yet repeatable experiences for individual groups or guests.

Augmented reality (AR) is one approach that’s proving effective. Smartphones and other devices are transforming the way guests engage with entertainment. Some of the attractions that Panasonic Connect has worked on use sensors to pinpoint the user’s location. They can then overlay virtual elements onto real or simulated environments. Visitors can get more involved with characters, games, and narratives that respond to their actions and movements.

Museums are using AR to deepen the connection between exhibits and guests. Pointing your smartphone at an object and triggering virtual multimedia overlays still feels novel.

Q: How are technology providers like Panasonic Connect responding to this trend?

In terms of Panasonic Connect’s role as a co-creative technology partner, we want to get involved in every phase of our client’s project, from the blue-sky phase on. Our expertise in working with businesses of every scale allows us to propose tailored solutions and integrate them from the ground up. This approach is useful for building the attraction since the tech consulting, spatial design, and content are developed in parallel according to a unified vision.

With regard to product design, we want our projectors to fit seamlessly into the attraction’s ecosystem and expand what users can do with them. By ‘miniaturizing’ projectors, we can bring enveloping visuals to any space the client can dream up, inspiring them to explore new ideas in areas they couldn’t before.

We are obsessed with making images appear lifelike when viewed up close or on a smartphone, and that means contrast. We had a recent breakthrough with scene analysis circuit design, which has dramatically improved contrast. It’s also important that the projector can communicate with peripherals over a common AVoIP standard. We’ve introduced Intel SDM-ready slots to new products for the LBE arena, allowing users to select whatever interface or protocol they need.

We’re excited about our ET-SWR10 Software Development Kit (SDK), which works with our 240 Hz-capable projectors. It has simplified the setup of IR tracking systems and expanded access to a new kind of XR experience while enabling image transposition onto moving objects in real time. The scope of application is limitless. The way it can combine digital and analog so naturally makes gameplay and live performances more convincing. It opens the door to completely unique, repeatable experiences.

The work we are doing with Glass-to-Glass (G2G) is also fascinating, particularly in the field of AR compositing. This is where live performers are captured via a system of cameras and projectors with 3D avatars superimposed over them. This opens up IDEA-friendly hybrid experiences that offer a high degree of personalisation.

Q: What examples of personalisation have impressed you recently?

One that our team is proud of is the award-winning Japan Pavilion at Expo 2020. The pavilion designers built an app that tracked users’ responses to certain content. The data was then used to tailor projected content for each group of guests during the finale, and it attracted a really positive response.

Interactivity is also transforming traditional outdoor art experiences. For example, this was seen at Beijing International Light and Shadow Art Season and their ‘Alive Together’ event at Beijing’s Yuyuantan Park. The combination of physical and digital here is mesmerizing!

Another favourite place is Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki, Japan. The level of interactivity we were able to achieve in the media-based spaces made it feel as if each moment was precious and unique. And that’s really what personalisation is all about, making each guest the star of their own show.

Also, the adjacent idea of shareability is something projectors do peerlessly. People want to share themselves in a unique way, not post the same kinds of scenes from the same angles. Projectors can create unique, personalized backdrops over almost any surface with none of the flickering encountered with LED screens. Actually, part of our aim today is to make the projection look as good on a phone screen as it does in real life.

Q: Where to from here for experience personalisation?

Data is personalisation. Emerging AI technologies and the use of various sensors, beacons, and triggers will enable interactivity more organically than we can imagine today. As we come to grips with using these tools, it’s exciting to imagine what kinds of things guests might enjoy in five or 10 years. One thing is certain; the best attractions are always born from human inspiration and the desire to tell stories, and that is something I don’t see changing.

If you’d like to discuss how to apply the ideas highlighted in this article to your museum, location-based attraction, concert, immersive attraction, artainment show, sporting event, exhibition, trade show, or anything in between, please click here or contact Chad Kunimoto at kunimoto.chad@jp.panasonic.com.

Header image: Vecstock

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Alice Sarsfield-Hall

Alice is business development manager and looks after blooloop’s clients, new business and events. She studied English Literature and French at the University of Leeds. A Disney and Harry Potter geek, you can usually find her reading, baking or at a museum.

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