Marina Leivald
CMO/Tech Strategist
Awe Isn’t EBITDA
You don’t measure fireworks in clicks. You measure them in gasps, in iPhone videos, in the dopamine rush of “I was there.” But when the CFO opens Excel, all those gasps add up to zero. Immersive experiences — drone shows, XR activations, CGI campaigns — have mastered the art of burning capital for attention. The problem? Capital eventually asks for receipts. And thus you have to prove that what you are selling actually creates ROI for the client.
Marketers know this. Agencies know this. But the game is simple: sell spectacle, then scramble to prove it “worked.”
Drone show companies pitch fleet size, engineer porn, safety certificates. None of that matters to a brand manager in Singapore or a ministry in Dubai. They’re buying a crowd reaction, not firmware. Same with XR pop-ups. You don’t buy the headset; you buy the 15 seconds of relevance in a TikTok feed. CGI campaigns — Vertex CGI types — at least scale. Once you build the asset, you can flood every feed on the planet. That’s why they win more often: infinite reuse, zero logistical overhead.
Spectacle vs. Substance
The immersive economy runs on a paradox. You’re not buying technology; you’re buying a reaction.
A drone show is about the noise of a crowd when 10000 machines align over a city, it's not about aviation software.
An XR concert is about a 12-year-olds who replays the clips on TikTok.
A CGI campaign is about whether the unreality lodges in culture for a week, a month, a year, not the render complexity.
But clients don’t pay invoices in goosebumps. They want ROI. And ROI here is a mirage — sometimes a profitable one, sometimes a death trap.
Framework: Four Returns of Immersion
Emotional ROI → awe, memory, identity. Long half-life, no direct monetization.Social ROI → virality, shares, FOMO. Fast burn, decays quickly.Behavioral ROI → purchases, subscriptions, conversions. Rare, usually weak.Strategic ROI → brand positioning, political legitimacy, cultural leadership. The only one that compounds.
The winners are those who target Strategic ROI — governments, platforms, permanent installations. The losers are brands chasing Behavioral ROI with spectacles that were never built to sell.
Case Files: Location-Based Installations
Van Gogh Alive (2017–23): Projection-mapped nostalgia sold millions of tickets worldwide. ROI? Ticket sales peaked, but operators collapsed under licensing and overhead. Buzz was monetized, sustainability wasn’t.
teamLab Borderless (Tokyo, 2018–): Permanent digital art museum. ROI is infrastructure: repeatability, tourism gravity, cultural cachet. Unlike Van Gogh clones, teamLab turned immersion into real estate.
Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (NYC, 2011–23): Immersive theatre where the audience walks inside the story. ROI = scarcity + mystique. Ran for 12 years at premium pricing. One of the few cases where Behavioral ROI (repeat purchases) actually sticks.
360° Domes / Planetariums: Pivot from science to branded entertainment. ROI is venue stickiness — once the dome exists, you can run infinite shows (music, launches, education). High upfront, low marginal.
Case Files: Large-Scale Outdoor Spectacle
Pepsi Asia Drone Show (2022): Millions spent on logo formations in the sky. ROI = Social buzz (billions of impressions), zero evidence of soda sales lift. Behavioral ROI nonexistent.
UAE National Day Drone Show (2022): Prestige play. ROI isn’t sales, it’s nation-branding. Political ROI justifies recurring spend — governments buy symbolism, not conversions.
Tokyo Firework–Drone Hybrids (2023): Drones plus pyro = amplified spectacle. ROI is event differentiation: fireworks alone outdated, drones alone clinical, together they deliver the “wow.”
Dubai Fountain Water Screens (Ongoing): Holograms projected on fountains. ROI is tourism pull. Nobody measures ticket conversions; payoff is keeping the city globally relevant.
Augmented Eiffel Tower (2022): AR overlays wrapped around historic landmark. ROI isn’t revenue, it’s cultural supremacy. You made history tweet about you.
Case Files: Virtual & XR
Fortnite x Travis Scott (2020): 12M concurrent viewers, hundreds of millions of replays. ROI = Strategic. Fortnite became a platform, not just a game. Retention over ticketing.
Roblox x Lil Nas X (2020): Same playbook, smaller numbers. ROI = proof Roblox could host culture. Behavioral ROI (merch sales) weak, Strategic ROI strong.
Snapchat Branded Lenses (Ongoing): Built survival on AR ads. ROI is quantifiable (click-through, purchase data), but burns fast. Zero longevity.
Microsoft Mesh / Apple Vision Pro Events (2021–24): Endless demos and press hype. ROI = narrative: “we’re leading the future.” Reality? Nobody remembers the demo a month later.
Case Files: Hybrid Digital / CGI
Vertex CGI / The Mill (2010s–): Cities folding, oceans splitting, surreal brand campaigns. ROI = infinite reuse. Expensive upfront, but assets scale globally. CGI behaves like SaaS.
Hatsune Miku (2007–): Non-existent idol touring for years. ROI = cultural stickiness + merchandising. Spectacle mutated into IP. Compare with “AI influencers” who burn out in months.
Virtual Production Stages / LED Volumes (The Mandalorian, 2019–): Now rented by brands for ads. ROI = efficiency: faster shoots, lower logistics. Not glamorous, but hard savings.
The Measurement Circus: Quantifying Goosebumps
This is where the industry gets desperate. Immersive producers promise brands they can measure emotions.
Facial recognition emotion software → cameras watching audience reactions, classifying smiles vs. frowns. In reality: noisy, biased, easily gamed.
Apps that track face movements → TikTok ads sell this as “emotion analytics.” What it really measures is: did your face move? Congratulations, ROI.
Aura Rings / WHOOP bands → biometric trackers used in “focus groups” to show arousal during activations. Yes, your heart rate went up. Was it awe or just caffeine? Who knows.
Emotive brain scans → EEG headbands in focus groups. They generate beautiful heatmaps, agencies slap them on slides, and claim “proof of impact.”
The absurdity is peak snake oil. Imagine proving ROI by saying: “Look, the limbic system lit up. Pay us another $5 million.”
Brands eat it up because it looks scientific. Investors pretend to believe it because it fills decks. But these tools measure physiology, not economics. They can’t tell if awe converted into sales — only that someone twitched when the fireworks went off.
Strategic Implications
For Brands: If you want conversions, don’t buy drones. If you want prestige, buy drones — but know the difference.For Builders: Stop selling fleet size and start selling narratives. Install real ROI telemetry — QR follow-ups, measurable engagement hooks — or accept that you’re selling fireworks.For Investors: Drone shows and XR pop-ups are capex traps. CGI studios and persistent platforms (Epic, Roblox, teamLab) generate compounding ROI. Back pipelines, not spectacles.
The Hangover of Awe
Immersive experiences thrive on the illusion of permanence. But the show always ends. The audience leaves. The CFO still wants numbers. That’s the brutal truth: awe doesn’t survive an audit. You can measure clicks, shares, and even someone’s heartbeat, but you can’t turn a gasp into EBITDA.
Immersive ROI is real — but it lives in prestige, positioning, and cultural gravity, not in spreadsheets. The winners know they’re buying influence. The losers are the ones still trying to measure goosebumps like CPCs.
Field Note: Fireworks fade. Prestige compounds. The ROI of awe is political, not financial. If you’re still trying to prove it with EEG headbands, congratulations — you’re the business model.
