Digital marketing has a problem.
Attention is expensive, feeds are crowded, and the average customer has learned how to ignore you without even trying. If your marketing campaigns still rely on the same scroll-stopping tricks from five years ago, you are going to feel the plateau. For challenger brands, that plateau hits faster because you are not the default choice in the category, and you are rarely the biggest spender.
Enter immersive marketing.
Immersive marketing is where brand experiences stop being a nice-to-have and start doing real work. It blends experiential marketing with digital-first storytelling so people do not just see your message, they step into it. Think multisensory brand experiences, interactive formats and experiences that earn time, not just impressions. That is the core challenger move: earn attention through experience and clarity, not volume.
And yes, this can be as simple as an Augmented Reality (AR) filter. It can also be a full virtual reality brand storytelling build. The point is not the tech. The point is what the tech enables: deeper audience engagement and stronger brand memory. For challenger brands, that memory is leverage because it helps you compete with “industry gorillas” that own familiarity and share of voice.
Commit’s Challenger Brand Marketing® approach is built for crowded marketplaces. It combines trusted strategic insight, creative brilliance and relentless execution to ignite success when you are not the category leader. Immersive marketing fits that model because it lets challengers create a distinct point of view people can experience, then turns that experience into measurable momentum.
Immersive marketing is the strategy of creating interactive, often technology-enabled experiences that pull people into your story. It lives at the intersection of:
If traditional ads are a monologue, immersive marketing is a conversation. And challenger brands win conversations by being more interesting, more useful and more consistent than the biggest brand in the room.
Trust is harder to earn in a digital-only world. That is why brands are investing in experiences that feel more human, more tangible and more real.
Freeman’s research has been consistent on this theme: in-person experiences build trust and drive post-event actions like visiting a brand’s website and wanting to engage online. That matters for challenger brands because trust is often the gap between “I have seen you” and “I will choose you.”
Even if your “experience” is digital, the same psychology applies. When someone does something with your brand instead of passively watching it, you are building memory and meaning. That is the real unlock behind immersive marketing. For challengers, that “doing” can also serve as proof. It reduces uncertainty, answers objections and earns the next click.
Immersive marketing transforms the digital landscape when it does three things well:
That participation creates stronger customer engagement and more durable brand awareness. For challenger brands, participation is a shortcut to differentiation because it gives the audience a reason to remember you beyond price and features.
IAB and MRC’s AR advertising measurement guidelines outline a wide range of AR formats that brands are already using at scale, including virtual try-ons, interactive 3D objects, portals and filters. This is good news for challengers because it means you can build immersive moments that feel premium without needing a “moonshot” budget.
If your customer can access it from a phone in two taps, you are in business. That accessibility is the challenger advantage: fewer barriers, faster action.
Immersive marketing is not an island. It should connect to the rest of your digital marketing engine: paid media, email, social, landing pages and retargeting.
If it cannot be measured or extended, it is a stunt.
If you want immersive with the lowest barrier to entry, start with AR. It is also one of the most challenger-friendly formats because it can reduce “risk” for the customer and build confidence quickly.
Augmented reality brand activations can take a few forms:
The IAB AR Buyer’s Guide is useful here because it frames AR as a practical part of a modern plan and highlights measurement considerations so brands can get beyond “cool factor.”
And AR is not just engaging; it can drive lift. Snapchat’s research on interactive AR experiences reports higher brand lift outcomes for campaigns that include AR compared to those that do not. That lift is especially valuable for challengers because you are often building awareness and association at the same time.
Our mindset: AR works best when it supports a clear job. Drive product confidence. Increase consideration. Earn saves and shares. Then push that momentum into the next step on-site. For challengers, that “next step” should be intentional: a landing page that continues the story, a product page that proves value or an email capture that keeps you in the consideration set.
Virtual reality is not always the right fit for scale, but it is powerful when you need immersive depth. That makes it a smart challenger play when you are selling something complex, premium or hard to understand in a feed.
Even outside pure marketing, the data on VR’s impact on focus, confidence and emotional connection is a strong signal for why virtual reality brand storytelling can be so effective. PwC’s VR training study is a widely cited example showing a stronger emotional connection to content and higher confidence after VR-based learning.
Translate that to marketing, and you get a simple truth: VR is a presence machine. If your goal is to make people feel something and remember it, VR can deliver. And challengers win when they are remembered.
Where VR tends to shine:
Our mindset: Use VR when it solves a real constraint. If you can tell the story in 20 seconds on mobile, do not overbuild. If you need people to experience the scale, environment or transformation, VR earns its keep. For challenger brands, the best VR use cases are the ones that shorten the sales cycle by replacing “explaining” with “showing.”
Gamification is not just points and badges. It is designing an experience around motivation: progress, challenge, reward and status.
Recent research continues to find that gamification can influence customer engagement and brand loyalty, with engagement acting as a key pathway between the game mechanics and loyalty outcomes (JART). This is a strong challenger tool because it turns attention into repeat interaction and repeat interaction into preference.
Great use cases:
Our mindset: Gamification should make the customer’s next best action feel obvious and fun. If the game is more memorable than the brand, you built the wrong game. For challengers, the “win condition” should always map to a business outcome: email sign-up, product education, trial, booking or purchase.
Metaverse marketing is where brands create persistent experiences in virtual worlds or build connected digital environments that support community, commerce or storytelling.
McKinsey has pointed to the metaverse’s potential value creation by 2030 and frames it as an evolution toward more immersive digital experiences rather than a single platform.
That said, most brands do not need a “metaverse strategy” in the abstract. They need a smart experiment tied to real audience behavior. Challenger brands especially should treat this as a targeted test, not a brand identity.
Our mindset: Prototype where your audience already spends time. Treat it like a test, not a religion. Learn fast, keep what works, kill what does not. That is challenger discipline.
Immersive experiences create leverage in three places:
People remember what they interact with. Immersion increases time, attention and recall, which compounds into awareness. For challenger brands, this is how you build salience without buying every impression.
Instead of passive views, you earn actions: taps, tries, shares, saves and completions. Those are stronger signals than a view that lasted 1.2 seconds. For challengers, those actions also create segmentation. You can retarget based on what someone explored, tried or completed.
Trust and loyalty grow when brands create meaningful moments. Freeman’s trust research reinforces that experiences can shift perception and trust, which is foundational to purchase behavior. This is the long game challengers need: build belief, then build behavior.
Immersive marketing needs KPIs that reflect both experience quality and business impact. Challenger brands should be ruthless here because your advantage is focus, not fluff.
Track:
For AR specifically, measurement standards are evolving and IAB/MRC’s guidelines are worth using as a baseline for how AR ad sessions and formats should be counted and evaluated. This keeps immersive accountable and makes it easier to defend investment internally.
Immersive marketing transforms the digital landscape when the experience is not the finish line.
It is the spark.
The smartest brands build the immersive moment, then connect it to a broader system:
That is cross-channel storytelling. One story, many touchpoints, zero disconnect. For challenger brands, that “zero disconnect” is everything. Consistency is how you look bigger than your budget.
Immersive marketing is not a trend. It is a response to how people actually behave now. And it is a natural fit for challenger brands because it helps you stand out, build trust faster and create proof people can feel.
When you build experiential brand experiences that are interactive, measurable and connected to your funnel, you get what every challenger brand wants: real attention, real customer engagement and real growth.
Not louder marketing.
Better marketing.
