Immersion Blog

Battle Tested

Written by Paul J. Zak | Dec 7, 2020 11:07:20 PM

"I INTEROGATE TERRORISTS FOR A LIVING AND I NEED THAT STUFF TOMORROW!"

At 6'4" it is rare for me to be nose to nose with anyone, but "Ron Wilson" was my height and had 20 pounds on me.  Just several inches from my face, he vigorously threw that line at me. 

While I had been contracted to assist the U.S. military on the War on Terror within days of the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, my work to date had been mathematical.  Now, a member of a three-letter agency wanted to apply my neurochemical discoveries to extract information from Al Qaeda operatives. 

That was how I went from developing a method to measure the acute production of oxytocin in human beings to developing a platform to predict if messages and experiences would motivate people to take action. 

A major movie studio used the Immersion platform to rapidly assess which among a dozen movie trailer roughs they should invest in for theatrical promotion.   The studio first measured immersion for all 12 to thin the herd.  They then made edits to the best two and measured again to identify where to fine-tune each trailer for maximum impact.  The result: 50 million people watched the movie in theaters and the studio earned a 250% return on the movie’s budget. 

The studio’s CMO said the Immersion platform was like “magic” because it so accurately predicted outcomes.   That’s a great compliment, but it belies the years of research my team did, the many mistakes we made, and the reason why Immersion predicts so well. 

When lives are on the line, the technology has got to work.  That is how the early R&D on which Immersion is based was tested.  Tested by other labs. Tested on special operators on military bases.  Tested in bunkers in countries I cannot mention.  Some of those tests failed, so we rolled up our sleeves and made it better.  Quickly.

We measured over 100 brain signals simultaneously to identify when people were immersed in an experience.  We then did unnatural things to natural data to maximize predictive accuracy, combining neural signals in usual ways.  Data analysts love Immersion’s metrics because they are unrelated to every other data stream they collect.  This means Immersion immediately improves the predictive accuracy of statistical models.   Clients are even applying machine learning algorithms to Immersion data to extract as many insights from them as possible.

When you need a positive ROX (Return on ExperienceTM), you need to measure your content with Immersion. Immersion is battled tested and is ready to take on your hardest problems. 

 

 

 

 

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