I will start with the biggest moment of the day and that was a presentation by Kevin Slavin, Managing Director and co-founder of area/code. He gave a presentation on digital gaming, but a different kind of digital gaming. His agency created SharkRunners.com, an interactive game for The Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.

Whats different about this game is its harmonization of the real world with the digital world. Instead of bringing gaming to the computer it brings the computer to the game. What this means is that the game, rather the experience, is grounded in real life experiences and occurrences.

SharkRunners.com is played in real-time and is based on gathering information about sharks to then be rewarded with fictitious money that translates to funding for more shark research. The goal is to have your ship intersect a shark’s path so a dive team can be deployed to research it. The catch is… the shark you are intersecting is a real shark in the open seas that has a gps location device embedded in it. That is the first bit of reality. The second it that being as it is played in real-time it takes hours for your ship to travel. Players do not sit in front of their computers, so if and when their ship intersects a shark’s path, they are text messaged and given three hours to respond and send a dive crew to research it (that part is fictional).

What this game represents is the beautiful mix of digital environment and reality - a concept which I feel my thoughts and ideas frequently if not always revolve around. I contest that nobody else has achieved this harmonization on this scale and challenge us all to set that as a goal with our digital brand thinking and advertising.

We should always bring our attention to grounding a digital campaign in real life - that makes it more holistic and all-encompassing. Because, when consumers are not engaging with the digital world they are inevitable in the real-world and making a ‘cross reality’ experience really is a more viable experience.