INITIONs Ceo Adrian Leu and Graeme Cox, CEO, and co-founder of Emteq (developing biometric technology that reads expression and emotion from the face of the wearer) attended this year’s innovations stage at Cannes Lions on Biometrics: the new frontier in VR brand experience.
The presentation was about showing not just what people can see when experiencing VR, but what they feel too and how it triggers different emotions because we can then create content that has meaning, that is much more interesting and responds to emotional triggers.
Graeme has a background in AI. His fascination lies with effective computing and how you could computationally understand emotion, mood, expression and non-verbal communication.
His company Emteq therefore built a pair of glasses that looks back at the face of the wearer and can understand the movement of the face and the electrical activity of the muscles underlying it, as well as heart rate and various other aspects of your physical activity such as stance and head posture and translate that using AI Machine Learning into usable data.
Adrian discussed VR and its visual journey. He explained that the excitement is driven by what people experience when watching content in VR, and how it triggers different emotions because then it allows us to create content that’s more interesting and that responds to the emotional triggers which in turn gives us a better understanding of how to create meaningful experiences.
How well is VR currently performing?
Adrian mentioned VR is superficial and because of that companies are unsure to invest, the cost is considerable for the marketing budget as the content is bespoke, we therefore, need to provide measurable ROI.
We are faced with media that completely changes the rules. VR is a new grammar and we are reinventing it in a very empirical way which we can measure and try to comprehend so we can see how peoples decisions are ultimately influenced by their emotions.
How can we create content or tell a story in a medium that is different from what we are accustomed. A medium that is completely nonlinear as film, which allows users to make their own decisions, how do we measure and trigger it from an emotional standpoint?
Adrian shared some examples of where this technology can be used to overcome phobias, such as a fear of heights, with our case study from the Shard in London and from the Burj Khalifa in the UAE.
He also shared our “Being Me” project where we have used the technology for training at Fostering and Adoption agencies to help parents understand the background of the kids they are adopting and what they’ve gone through.
“The future of our industry will remain in the hands of those who can adapt, those who can innovate and adopt transformative trends and technologies and build the tools of the future. It’s the only way to create purposeful products that will enrich everybody’s lives. Brands need to be purposeful, brands need to be innovative, to the degree that they inspire people. It’s all about creating impressions that inspire, the alignment of data, media, and creative, and being able to connect audiences more meaningfully.”