RBC x Music: Measuring Emotional Impact and Intent Through an Augmented Reality Festival Experience
A music festival activation where Emotion Intelligence measured emotional response and motivation through a Pokémon-Go-style augmented reality experience, turning playful participation into defensible insight.
Awards & Recognition
Client Overview
| Industry | Experiential Marketing & Entertainment |
| Company Size | Enterprise (5,000+ employees) |
| Location | Canada |
| Agency Partner | SaltXC |
Challenge
RBC x Music wanted to engage festival-goers in a way that felt native, playful, and aligned with music culture, while also understanding how fans emotionally connected with the brand during the experience.
Traditional event metrics like foot traffic, scans, or participation counts could show activity, but they couldn't answer deeper questions:
- What motivated people to participate?
- Which moments created genuine excitement or curiosity?
- Did the experience signal future engagement with the brand?
The challenge was creating a high-energy festival experience that also produced meaningful, explainable data.
Measurement Approach
Ether applied Emotion Intelligence to an augmented reality experience designed for a live music festival environment.
Festival-goers participated in a Pokemon-Go-style AR journey, where interaction behavior generated signals tied to:
- Curiosity and exploration
- Motivation to continue engaging
- Emotional excitement and reward
Rather than treating the experience as a novelty, Emotion Intelligence interpreted these interaction patterns to understand how the experience was emotionally received, not just how often it was used.
Core Findings
- Emotional response peaked when gameplay aligned with music culture and discovery, not overt brand prompts.
- Motivation signals varied significantly across participant types, revealing distinct engagement patterns within the festival audience.
- Emotion Intelligence surfaced differences in excitement and intent that were not visible through participation counts alone.
- The experience demonstrated that how people play matters more than how many people play.
Measured Signals and Data Capture
- Emotional engagement signals increased as participants progressed through the AR experience.
- Interaction patterns revealed differing levels of motivation and reward response across festival-goers.
- Emotional signals provided clearer insight into future engagement potential than scans or completions alone.
- Rather than capturing static data points, the experience generated emotion-driven insight from live behavior.
Business Impact
Emotion Intelligence enabled RBC x Music to understand not just who participated, but why the experience resonated and what types of engagement mattered most.
The insight helped:
- Validate experiential investment beyond surface metrics
- Identify which experience moments created real emotional connection
- Inform future festival and cultural activations with greater confidence
This transformed the activation from a fun moment into a measurable brand signal.
Key Takeaways
Emotion Intelligence measured emotional impact in a live festival environment through AR gameplay behavior
Interaction signals revealed distinct engagement patterns across participant types that surface-level metrics missed
Emotional response peaked when experiences aligned with music culture and discovery, not overt brand messaging
Live behavioral data provided clearer insight into future engagement potential than scans or completions
The measurement approach transformed a festival activation into a defensible, insight-driven brand signal
Augmented reality created a natural, non-disruptive way to capture emotional data at scale in a high-energy environment
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