Phoebe Smith's rules of engagement

As technology changes, branding and advertising changes too, adapting to new conditions taking shape outside of the TV screen, in a nexus of real-life experiences, activations and immersions. 

“Helo’s founders came from the worlds of films and advertising, and they were looking to fuse those worlds."

With the huge acceleration in technology following the Covid years, the rules of engagement are changing, and one of the pioneers of immersive experiences is creative production company Helo. UK-based Managing Director Phoebe Smith joined them just under a decade ago, when immersive experiences were just getting started.

“Helo’s founders came from the worlds of films and advertising, and they were looking to fuse those worlds, and create storytelling in the real world,” she says. “Prior to that you didn’t think about experiential as entertainment.” 

Above: Helo's founders fused the worlds of film and advertising in a bid to super-charge storytelling and bring it into the real world.

Helo specialises in 'moving experiences', and it doesn’t take long to see how that plays out – in both meanings of the phrase – across its portfolio of immersive work. “It’s the MO for our business,” says Smith, “and our starting point is storytelling. Storytelling is the most effective way to move people emotionally, and to move them to action. We create moving experiences because our work is about the story we’re telling.” 

And to make it real, and to make it safe for anyone standing witness or entering into one of Helo’s fully integrated immersive worlds “you need a cross-disciplinary team”, says Smith, “people who are confident of solving problems in real time. All of us come from slightly different backgrounds, which is why we can put our heads together and solve a lot of those problems.” 

"The music business is not very creative unless you’re a musician. It’s not as glamorous or creative as you think it’s going to be."

Smith’s path to Helo began in the music business. “I was producing events and touring," she says. “Very young. It was my first job, in electronic music. That was lots of fun, but it’s funny, the music business is not very creative unless you’re a musician. It’s not as glamorous or creative as you think it’s going to be. I wanted to get closer to creating things, and moved closer to the space of brands, technology and creative output.” 

That took her to onedotzero, an art studio that ran festivals at London’s South Bank to highlight contemporary art forms and technology. “I worked with them on brand collaborations,” she explains. “We were applying these interesting creative practices to brand campaigns and telling these stories around art and innovation.” After working with the likes of LiveNation and Cirque du Soleil, she met the people at Helo though a client. “It was very serendipitous, and we went from there.” 

Above: Helo's campaign for Michelob Ultra, Dreamcaster, featured a visually impaired sports journalist and the technology that would allow him to ‘see’ a basketball game.

Her time at Helo started with experiential, big-time stunts in the US. “That was our bread and butter,” she says. “It’s evolved since then, driven by the times and technology. Prior to Covid, it was real-world experiences, and we’d make a few films, but it wasn’t completely integrated. Then it was more about integrating that all together. So we began to adopt more technology into our work and brought more tech-based creatives into our roster.” 

“That was nail-biting, but it was a success. We won an Emmy, and it’s one of our benchmark pieces.” 

She highlights the Dreamcaster project for Michelob Ultra as one where numerous complex strands were brought together to make whole experience to work. Dreamcaster was about inclusivity in sport, and featured a visually impaired sports journalist and the technology that would allow him to ‘see’ a basketball game, in real time, at Madison Square Garden, and commentate on it. “We created an environment for him, using AI and machine learning, processing real-time data to feed back to him through sensory information and interactive braille,” she says, “We created the system that would allow him to understand what’s going on in the game, and to commentate live, which was broadcast on ESPN.” A lot of things had to go right, in real time, all the time, with no room for error. “That was nail-biting,” she admits, “but it was a success. We won an Emmy, and it’s one of our benchmark pieces.” 

An OOH public display, the Drone Show for Climate Week, is a Helo stand-out, with 1,000 drones lighting up the night sky above the UN building in New York, spelling out environmental messages and morphing through a range of endangered creatures – big cats, big whales – to a final message: The future is ancestral. 

“That was making a visual statement,” says Smith, “close to the UN building, and witnessed by the thousands of people who were passing by. That kind of stunt is more about getting mass impact,” she adds. “A lot of it is about creating something memorable, that can cut through the increasingly noisy content environment we live in. It’s difficult to get people’s attention on screens, and in New York OOH is everywhere, so you really need to do something special to get eyeballs.”

Above: The Glass Hermit, created by Helo in association with animation studio, Bklind Pig. 

One OOH collaboration, The Glass Hermit, with animation studio Blind Pig, took over Times Square with an AI-enabled short film by Oscar-winning production designer (On Poor Things) Shona Heath. “The idea was to allow Shona to make something that would never be possible in the real world,” says Smith. “Her dream was to work with molten glass, so AI allowed her to introduce that to her linear film piece. And it became this huge moment you couldn’t pass by and not stop and wonder.” 

Of all the work that Helo has produced, it’s In Someone Else’s Shoes for Santander that hits the hardest for Smith. This immersive exhibit featured a family home dropped into New York’s Oculus building in the financial district. Passersby could don headphones and become house visitors then witnesses to the realities of living with domestic violence, and how difficult it is to escape.

“People were genuinely moved. We had a decompression area where people could go afterwards to make sure they were okay."

“It was a brilliant concept and execution, and its effectiveness were perfect at every level,” says Smith. “We had an immersive theatre director to design this, and her speciality was close-interaction storytelling, which is about how you feel stepping in to her world; every step you take she’s thought about what you’re looking at, where your focus is, what you’re hearing, feeling, smelling and creating this very immersive physical world that you journey through. We didn’t have any actors. It was all delivered through audio. But these works are also very artistic, they have the same craft as a piece of art. 

“It was a brilliant way of telling that story and had an incredible impact,” she continues. “People were genuinely moved. We had a decompression area where people could go afterwards to make sure they were okay. We even had to take four or five women to a shelter there and then, as they were actually in that situation. It had that power to it.”