OUR WORK

ESSENCE MARKETPLACE

Client

ESSENCE

THE BRIEF

Extend the ESSENCE Festival of Culture brand to a digital shopping and activity experience that runs in tandem with the live festival in New Orleans. Create a digital storefront for more than two dozen Black-owned businesses, and add a virtual component to circle back to festival sponsors, adding value to the sponsorships.

THE SOLUTION

Using a real-time 3D engine, we produced a virtual world where guests could explore a stylized version of a New Orleans waterfront district of shops and experiences. The 27 Black-owned businesses received virtual stores. For the four major sponsors, we developed fully immersive environments for Coca-Cola, Ford, Target, AT&T. We created three different AR filters within an ESSENCE-branded virtual photo booth, allowing the audience to share unique content on social media. With music custom curated by Coke Studio and offered as a downloadable playlist.

The Essence marketplace project was awarded ‘Best Virtual Environment’ at the Biz Bash Event Experience Awards.