For decades, advertising ran on a simple bargain: brands bought attention, and audiences put up with the interruption. A thirty-second spot broke up the evening serial; a banner elbowed its way into the news feed. That bargain is collapsing. In a world of ad blockers, streaming platforms, algorithmic feeds and an endless supply of content, attention is no longer something brands can simply buy. It has to be earned.
This is where immersive experiences are changing the game.
The past few years have marked a defining shift in how consumers engage with culture, content and brands. Digital-first, experience-hungry audiences are rewriting the rules of engagement. On the advertising front, the most interesting shift has not been from offline to online or from traditional media to digital - it has been from interruption to participation. Instead of asking audiences to stop and look at an advertisement, brands are increasingly creating moments people actively want to explore, photograph, share and remember.
The sweet spot that is art+tech
As a creative entrepreneur who started his career in advertising and is now at the helm of an art+tech enterprise, I have had the opportunity of witnessing this transition up close.
Over the past few years, the increased accessibility of hardware and software tools have enabled an entire generation of artists and designers to craft experiences that have turned into cultural phenomena. Tokyo’s teamLab Museums recorded a staggering 4.2 million visitors in 2025. Van Gogh Alive, a multi-sensory immersive experience around the celebrated artist and his works, has pulled in over 9.5 million visitors across 95 cities around the world.
These are some serious numbers. And they are more than just eyeballs.
The power of memories
The logic - behind all the magic - is rooted in how memory works. We forget most of what we see but remember what we feel, especially when we feel it alongside others. A projection-mapped façade or an immersive room engages several senses at once and hands people a story worth retelling. Every visitor with a phone becomes a broadcaster, stretching one night's spectacle into weeks of organic reach.
For marketers, the trick is to make the transition from interruption to immersion in a way that feels organic rather than forced or commercially driven.
From Herbal Tea to Husain’s Masterpieces
In my conversations with promoters and brand custodians, one of the questions that comes up the most is this: Is my brand even cut out for taking the “immersive leap” in the first place?
The answer to that question is a resounding yes. And I’m going to illustrate that with two examples featuring brands that couldn’t be more different from one another.
In March 2025, Pukka Herbal Infusions (a Unilever herbal tea brand) reached out to us with an interesting brief. As sponsors of the Lakme Fashion Week, they were allotted a space to promote themselves on the floor of India’s premier fashion event. The catch? As a brand, their product was supposed to soothe and relax. How to do so in a space buzzing with energy and excitement? The answer lay in creating an immersive space that acted as a portal to another world. Combining LEDs, mirrors, visuals inspired by the tea’s ingredients and an ambient soundscape, we created a space that transported visitors to an oasis of calm. The result? A brand intervention that led to a queue as long as those for the fashion shows!
In August 2026, we were commissioned by Giftex, an Indian auction house, to create an immersive experience celebrating M F Husain’s iconic horse paintings. Husain’s horses are the epitome of grace, dynamism and vitality. The challenge for us was to ensure that this iconic form can organically travel beyond the canvas into other contemporary modes of expression. The resulting experience proved to be the highlight of the entire event. But more importantly, it introduced a lot of young art enthusiasts and collectors to the nuances of Husain’s works in an engaging way and enlarged the brand’s pool of potential clients.
Embrace the New Normal
Immersive activations are not an experiment anymore. They have well and truly arrived as an effective addition to a marketer’s toolkit. As the format matures, it is slowly making a move beyond the metros. Which means the unlocking of more languages, cultures, nuances and creative possibilities. It’s surely going to be a memorable ride. Make sure you don’t miss out on it.
Shakti Swarup Sahu is one of the Co-Founders of Floating Canvas Company, a Mumbai-based creative enterprise working at the intersection of art, design and technology.
