AR / MR / VR, Brand Activation, Event Interactive, Gamification
May 28, 2025

đŸŽ© Why Persona Quizzes Work Like Magic (What They’re Really Doing in Your Marketing Funnel)

And Some Experiential Ways to Activate Them

Let’s be honest — nobody needs to know which AI archetype they are, or what kind of office snack best represents their leadership style
 but people click, they take the quiz, and they share their results. Over and over again.

So what’s really going on here?

It’s not just internet fluff. Persona quizzes are quietly some of the most effective engagement tools in experiential and digital marketing, and there’s research-backed psychology to explain why.

If you’ve ever wanted to pull more meaningful interactions out of thin air (đŸŽ©đŸ°), here’s why persona quizzes might be your next best trick.

1. 🧠 Self-Discovery: People Love a Mirror

At the core of it all: people are deeply curious about themselves.

Psychologists call this the need for self-assessment. In simpler terms, we all crave moments of reflection and insight — even if it’s wrapped in a Buzzfeed-style bow. A good quiz doesn’t just tell you something; it confirms something you already suspected (or maybe suspected)
 and that’s addictive.

“You’re the Visionary Strategist Warlock”

Well damn, maybe I am.

2. ⚡ Instant Gratification = Instant Engagement

Quizzes provide something few other content formats do: a fast feedback loop.

You answer a few questions → get a flashy result → and it feels like a win.

That reward system taps right into the brain’s dopamine center — same one that gets lit up by slot machines, social likes, or checking off a to-do list. It’s light effort, high payoff. And that’s a recipe for stickiness.

Bonus tip: use AR head tilt mechanics for decision making like we did in this recruiting tool for Eastern Washington University, and you not only have instant engagement, you have something that is unique and draws a crowd.

3. 🎯 Personalization Without the Creep Factor

People like things that feel tailored for them, and quizzes deliver that in a friendly, opt-in way.

Where most personalization feels like an algorithm watching you through a peephole, quizzes say:

“Hey, you tell us who you are, and we’ll build something cool around it.”

That’s powerful — especially in experiential marketing, where interactivity and agency are part of the magic show. Then, when you use scientifically backed personas like we did with ResMed, it is super charged.

4. đŸȘ„ Choice Architecture (a.k.a. Making It Easier to Say Yes)

We’re all juggling too many choices. Quizzes solve this by simplifying the path to decision.

Want to recommend a product, experience, or activation flow? Wrap it in a persona quiz. You’re not just suggesting something — you’re guiding them there with a wand made of relevance.

“You’re a Social Explorer → This AR scavenger hunt was made for you.”

That’s not just fun. That’s frictionless UX in disguise.

5. đŸ€ Social Sharing Is the Final Spell

When someone shares their results, they’re not just broadcasting the quiz — they’re broadcasting their identity. And that’s gold – especially because it is associated with your brand.

Good persona quizzes trigger the “Hey look at me” instinct without feeling self-absorbed. They become conversation starters. And with the right visual design and brand voice? They go further than you might expect.

TL;DR: A Good Quiz Feels Like a Magic Trick

  1. It turns self-reflection into entertainment.
  2. It turns passive audiences into engaged participants.
  3. It turns one-time visitors into qualified leads, data points, and fans.
  4. And in the right hands — say, a digital creative agency that’s spent years making interactive experiences that don’t just look good but work — persona quizzes can be part of a deeper immersive strategy that builds connection before the user even steps through the door.

If you’re looking to turn the “waiting room” moments of your brand into something spellbinding, let’s talk.

We’ll bring the wand. You bring the brand.

Team Houdini
0
Brand Activation, Event Interactive, Workflow & Process
May 15, 2025

5 Tips to Maximize Your Digital Interactive Experience

In the world of experiential marketing, creating memorable digital interactions is key. Whether you’re setting up an immersive trade show booth or launching an interactive campaign, these five tips will help you enhance engagement and leave a lasting impression.​

1. Pre-Stoke the Stoke

If you’re planning an exciting and magical experience in a physical space, start building anticipation early. Share teasers and sneak peeks to generate buzz. For instance, if your trade show booth features a supplemental engagement that’s sure to delight, let your audience know in advance.​

By teasing the experience, you not only attract those already interested but also pique the curiosity of passersby who might not have considered engaging otherwise.​

2. Information / Lead Capture (If Possible)

Capturing information and securing opt-ins are invaluable, making digital interactive experiences particularly effective. As guests interact, providing their details becomes seamless.​

While some industries may hesitate, many find that collecting basic information like names and emails is well-received. You can implement a “pay to play” model, requiring contact information for participation, or a freemium approach where engagement is frictionless, and details are needed only for takeaways like swag or user-generated content (UGC).​ Like what we did with the Treefort Music Fest.

This stage is also ideal for introducing a photo waiver, especially if you’re offering takeaways (see the next point). Ensure your terms and conditions, along with a privacy policy, are in place and approved by your legal team or client.​

3. What Is the Takeaway? Get More Views!

Experiential marketing’s power lies in its emotional impact. Witnessing people engage with your experience, smiling and expressing gratitude, is immensely rewarding. However, this impact shouldn’t be limited to those physically present.​

Provide guests with content they can share—be it self-documented moments, materials you supply, or content captured by your team. Ideally, incorporate all three. At a minimum, ensure there’s at least one method for guests to take and share their experience.​

While making meaningful impressions is crucial, quantifying them is equally important. Sharing these impactful moments through social media and other channels can amplify your reach, turning hundreds of in-person smiles into millions online.​

Bonus: Consider offering a digital experience that guests can take with them to further educate or create additional touchpoints. For example, in the ResMed Sleep Lounge project, after completing a sleep persona quiz, guests could scan a QR code to learn more about their persona and access additional resources. A web-based AR Munchies game with a live leaderboard added a layer of friendly competition.​

4. Analytics

Data collection is vital for measuring ROI and identifying areas for improvement. Whether your experience is simple or complex, local or web-based, tracking metrics like the number of guests, engagement levels, content interaction durations, and areas with low engagement provides valuable insights.​

Analyzing this data helps refine future experiences, ensuring they are more effective and engaging.​ A great example of this is the talent acquisition kiosk we built for Riot Games.

5. The Afterburn

Your event was a success—congratulations! But don’t stop there. Post-event content can rekindle interest and extend the experience’s lifespan. Share behind-the-scenes footage, recap videos, sizzle reels, interviews, or reimagined versions of the experience. Consider email campaigns to keep the momentum going.​

The possibilities are vast and limited only by your imagination and planning. Keep the success of your engagement alive, ensuring it has a lasting impact rather than fading quickly.​

Final Thoughts

Maximizing your digital interactive experience involves more than just the event itself. By building anticipation, capturing valuable information, providing shareable takeaways, analyzing engagement data, and maintaining post-event momentum, you can create a powerful and enduring impact.​

Remember, the goal is not only to create memorable moments but also to extend their reach and longevity. With thoughtful planning and execution, your digital interactive experiences can continue to resonate long after the event concludes.

Team Houdini
0
AR / MR / VR, Brand Activation, Case Studies, Productivity, Workflow & Process
January 29, 2025

How gymnastics scoring changed how we think about resourcing our team in Asana.

How do you assign work:

  • Based on who is available.
  • Based on who is capable.

What if everytime, we based it on both?

Like the whole country, I’m usually glued to the Olympics, and somehow, someway, gymnastics is always makes our country proud with their achievements, although we’ve let them down in our collective character and care for them as individuals.

Something that’s always caught my eye is the scoring for gymnastics events. If you don’t know how it works, my summary:

  • Difficulty is a set score you go into an event with based on your routine. These scores usually range in the 6–7 area based on a standard set of criteria.
  • Deductions are taken from a max of ten, also pre-determined based on various ‘faults.’

So going into a particular event, an athlete is forced to balance their capability to perform a given action along with their ability to executed it as expected. This is dynamite logic that can be applied to any scenario, but especially in my context — how our staff can stretch their limits while also bringing their best within the time allotted.

Note on Simone Biles’ greatness: Her combination of difficult routines and flawless execution is why she’s probably the greatest gymnast who has every lived. Her ‘starting score’ is so much higher than anyone else’s, it would take catastrophe (which has happend like once ever) for her to lose.

So how can we apply this concept to our teams? Asana has a really dynamite function in its Portfolio feature called ‘Workload.’ How it helps us lead our teams better:

  • Empowers our team to do their best work in the time they need to make it happen while delivering a project on time.
  • Establishes an outcomes based culture instead of an hours logged one.

Try this:

Map a project out by allocating effort across the timeline. The example below shows the estimated effort over the course of the preferred timeline.

Assess the ideal assignee based on capacity and determine if this is an opportunity to stretch their capabilities. You can see that this project’s timeline and required effort will stress everyones capacity (red is no bueno, blue is muy bueno) to execute well except for two specific team members.

The more I use tools like this to help our team execute more consistently by helping them balance their capacity to perform with their capability to execute, the more likely we’ll all deliver what’s expected when it’s expected. Who knows, maybe you’ll give someone a shot to knock it out of the park who you may not have considered in the first place.

James Clair
0
Brand Activation, Custom Development, Event Interactive, Product Activation, Productivity, UX / UI Design, Workflow & Process
January 27, 2025

5 Best Ways to Get Ahead of Your Next Interactive Web Experience Project

While we work with a lot of very experienced teams around the world on digital experiences, activations and web-experiences, we work with just as many teams who aren’t regularly doing digital. For those clients, it can be daunting, and there is a lot of information out there that may or may not apply to you and your current situation for B2B and experiential marketing (and plenty of other scenarios, really). Here are 5 regularly consistent points that come up that can save a lot of time, heart-ache, and can seem like a magic wand waving over a project to get it to the finish line efficiently.

The Top 5 Things to Have Prepared

1 of 5:  Privacy Policy / Terms & Conditions / Cookie Policy – “The Legalese,” as they say

  • Ensuring you have your legalese i’s crossed and t’s dotted is about the easiest thing you can get the ball rolling on early, and stay ahead of launching your website or experience. It is way more exciting to see your designs coming together, and playing around with the staging link and doing QA – it just feels like you are making progress and checking off tasks left and right. 
  • But once we get right to the finish line, and the Privacy Policy isn’t ready, or the Terms & Conditions aren’t there, or a fully approved Cookie Policy isn’t sourced (assuming we aren’t the ones providing that), everything comes to a screeching halt and those seatbelts engage in full force. Youch!
  • So, as soon as you know you are doing a website, whether it is a simple landing page, a small interactive, a web AR experience, start getting these 3 things in motion and approved so that once QA is all done and the kit and kaboodle is ready to launch, you get to roll right into that launch and start cheersing some butter beer.

2 of 5:  The Right People in the Room

  • Nothing is more disappointing than working on an activation that is ready to go live and have some stakeholder who was not included come in and shut the whole thing down, or introduce nearly insurmountable hurdles in the final hour. Sadly, this happens despite our best efforts to avoid this, even after establishing processes to hedge against this.
  • Some questions to ask as you get into a digital project or activation to help grease the wheels:
    • Who from the IT team do we need to include in this discussion/project during production to make this as smooth as possible?
    • Who has the veto authority over this project and any of its deliverables? How can we include them at the right times?
    • Is this the kind of project that the legal team needs to review? If yes, then get a debrief meeting set asap and get the guardrails defined.
    • Who from the Brand Management team needs to be included, or the Creative Directors who will have final say on look/feel? They need to be included at the outset of any interactive experience.

3 of 5:  Brand Guides and Approved Assets (and the right file types!)

  • This is one of the first questions we ask when collaborating with an existing brand/IP/company when we are engaged to design an experience. True to having the right people in the room, if we aren’t starting with the right material, things get derailed and potentially shut down. 
  • Every now and again, we encounter a brand/company that doesn’t have a fully fleshed out Brand Guide, or even a curated library of assets that is central to an organization. In these scenarios, lots of questions and check-ins with the Right People in the Room helps to smooth over any potential hangups this can introduce. 
  • Similar to the Brand Guide, what are the approved assets that can be used, or the content that will be implemented into an experience? Who owns them, and are they in a sharable location with our team? This conversation can get started even before signing an SOW with us, and can be refined during a kickoff call so that any and all assets that could be used are prepped and ready for us to run with by the time we get to design.
  • Now, the prep part of approved assets is potentially a much longer conversation, but a few quickies to pre-heat the cauldron:
    • In the digital world, we are often trying to work with the largest versions possible, and then we can scale them down. Like a haircut, you can always take hair away, you can’t add it back.
    • Vector art is what we prefer for brand assets. 
    • Powerpoint is not a design file

    • Videos can be compressed/optimized on our end, but it is always helpful if they are compressed for us prior to implementation.

4 of 5:  Necessary Access for Integrations

  • Almost all the web experiences we build have some degree of 3rd party integrations. Whether it is analytics through our partner’s/client’s accounts, CRM integration, or a career embed, we often need to have access to the platforms we are integrating to effectively implement and then test. 
  • For our much larger clients, they have procedures that need to followed to allow either the proper access or the proper permissions to be able to set up the integrations, i.e. API integrations.
  • One workaround for this for some integrations is to set them up for our clients and pass them over/migrate them to our clients upon launch. That said, the note about procedures/permissions applies, and this approach can’t work for the majority of the integrations we work with.

5 of 5:  PII – Who’s Responsible

  • We work in a lot of different industries, and one thing that is consistent across all industries is respecting PII and everything associated with it. For example, there have been quite a few pharmaceutical projects we have worked on where they strictly do not collect any contact information.
Penn Brownlee
0
Brand Activation, Custom Development, Event Interactive, Gamification, Product Activation
January 27, 2025

Transforming Brand Engagement: The Houdini Interactive Journey

In an increasingly digital world, traditional marketing tactics are no longer enough to capture and retain the attention of today’s consumers. Brands need to find new and innovative ways to engage their audience, to create experiences that not only grab attention but also leave a lasting impression.

At Houdini Interactive, we understand the power of immersive experiences in capturing the hearts and minds of consumers. That’s why we’ve dedicated ourselves to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) technology, web-based experiences and gamification (and so much more) to create experiences that are not just seen but felt.

Our journey began with a simple idea: to transform brand engagement through the power of interaction. We believed that by creating immersive experiences that blur the lines between the physical and digital worlds (insert buzz word “phygital”), we could forge deeper connections between brands and their audience, connections that go beyond transactional interactions to become meaningful relationships.

From the very beginning, our focus has been on innovation. We’ve invested in cutting-edge technology and assembled a team of creative minds and creative technologists who are passionate about pushing the limits of what’s possible. Together, we’ve developed a broad range of immersive solutions that are designed to meet the diverse needs of today’s brands, from digital interactive permanent installs at museums to virtual product experiences.

But our journey is about more than just technology; it’s about people. It’s about understanding the needs and desires of our clients and their audiences and using our expertise to create experiences that resonate on a deeper level. It’s about collaboration and partnership, working hand in hand with our clients to bring their vision to life.

As we look to the future, our commitment to innovation remains unwavering. We’re constantly exploring new technologies and techniques, seeking out new ways to create experiences that captivate and inspire and tell a meaningful story. We’re excited to continue our journey, to push the boundaries of what’s possible and to redefine brand engagement for the digital age.

So, if you’re ready to transform your brand engagement and create experiences that truly resonate with your audience, we invite you to join us on this journey. Connect with Houdini Interactive today and let’s create something extraordinary together. #BrandEngagement #Innovation #ConnectWithUs

Penn Brownlee
0
Brand Activation, Productivity, Workflow & Process
January 6, 2025

Marketing outcomes: never lose your dinosaur

Recently, we just started spinning up some marketing magic. We’re talking Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Mailchimp campaigns, etc. We all struggle with making this a priority for our brands, but once we start firing them off
it typically goes better than we expected

Then fatigue and blurry ROI starts to make us question how we’re doing it and even worse, have imposter syndrome on why we started in the first place. Over the years, regardless of the company, I get reminded that the best outcomes for marketing aren’t easily found on the balance sheet.

🩖 Instead, our best outcome is not losing our dinosaur.

💒 Practice what you preach

I first got a real taste of what it was like to be who you are, everywhere you are at Crossroads Community Church. There’s a simple reason they’ve grown to be a top 5 church nationwide: they speak up, all the time, everywhere, all at once.

In a piece by Bloomberg, of all the photos they could show how the church is disrupting the ministry marketplace, they chose
 a soda machine?

  • There are more opportunities for people to get to know you than you think there are.
  • Our brand voice can be as impactful on the front of a soda machine in the hallway as it is on the main stage.

🧠 Words create worlds

I lost my dinosaur for a couple of years until I started the consulting arm for a mobile app developer. In my experience working with clients with vision for the next great app, I felt they all suffered from the same core symptom: we think everyone wants what we have to offer them.

What I learned at Crossroads (which was founded by former P&G brand managers) was cheeky candor is fun, pointed and infectious. I deployed it at will so we could have an honest conversation about whether or not anyone really wants your app. Of course, Mailchimp campaigns were a big part of our outbound strategy.

Surprisingly, the hardest rub I ever received from our voice had nothing to do with it at all, instead it was a really displeased email subscriber.

Most brands would just unsubscribe and talk sh*t about him at the water cooler. Oh, but not us, that’s not on brand. I emailed him directly back, in part:

Dear, ______ –

Appreciate your willingness to let us know directly this upset you so much. We enjoy these types of emails. They are very much in-line with our culture here. We are happy to let you know how we resolved this for you:

  • Nothing sly about simple unsubscribe buttons. They are at the bottom of every email. Whether they come from TJ Maxxx, Target or your local small business. We are attaching a screengrab where you’ll see that. Just in case you have someone else you want to not receive any messages from who uses Mailchimp.
  • We noticed when we subscribed to your daily devotional (yes, we do our homework here), that you are using what’s called a double opt out strategy. This is when a user has to click twice to actually unsubscribe by confirming the email they want to have removed.
  • We use a single opt out strategy. Plain and simple. One click and you’re done. We went ahead and clicked that button for you. And we’re attaching the line-item from our CMS to show you that it’s been removed

We don’t send this email as a gotcha moment, but we hope it makes you take a beat before sending a similar message to anyone else.

🩖 wanna see some coolshđŸȘ„t

When we’re talking brand voice and outbound marketing, it can all come to an abrupt halt if we choose to spend more time talking about ourselves rather than listening to what we sound like when we talk about others. It seems obvious when you step back for a moment: what we sound like to others is all that matters.

You know that friend that whenever you’re telling a story, they seven ways to Kevin Bacon find a way to tell you a similar story about them? Yah, guilty. That’s kinda the point here, we don’t need to talk about ourselves for others to get to know us. Curiosity is reciprocal.

Take a look at your brand guidelines. What would it look like for you to add a section like:

  • What interests us (Brand Intrigue)
  • Who we’re friends with (Brand Association)
  • Who we trust (Brand Perception)

If we did, it would feature some pretty cool people doing some pretty cool shi*t. Real recognize real.

Recognizing the dope things around us is the surefire way for us not to lose our dinosaur.

James Clair
0
3D Tech, AR / MR / VR, Brand Activation, Custom Development, Event Interactive, Product Design, Productivity, Workflow & Process
August 1, 2024

If you really want to change everything, you have to use your imagination

best prac·tice | noun

commerical or professional procedures that are accepted or prescribed as being correct or most effective

đŸ€” Recenly, I sat in a meeting with a think-tank team made up of capable, invested and determined-to-get-things-right-this-time-people. The question for this particular session was: what are the blue-sky ideas that you would implement if you had the power, authority and resources to do so?

10 minutes into our discussion it hit me
 we were over-valuing experience and under-estimating our imagination. All I was hearing were best practices. Simple, low-hanging fruit, easy win ideas that honestly could be implemented simply by someone choosing to do it at a regular rhythm, with follow-up that involved collaboration with at least one other person. That’s not to say they weren’t great ideas. I just wasn’t hearing them as original.

🧙 Then I tossed out what I thought was the first truly blue-sky idea I’d heard all meeting: we need a magic harry-potter sorting hat that helps guide people to where they should be based on more than just logistics, ie, time, place, etc.

What I was getting at is we need to lean into our creative strength and turn that weird but strangely accurate wizard hat into a digital product. That it needs to be so good, so precise and so well built for the long run that you can’t deny how spot on it was in leading you to where you needed to be.

We do a lot more reimagining of best practices than actually using our imagination.

Have you ever tried to Google a question like this:

  • Tips for building a great website.
  • How much does a mobile app cost?
  • Keys to marketing that works.
  • Ways to skin a cat.

What do you usually get as results in your search? Stuff like this probably


  • 7 Keys that Don’t Work for Business Today
  • 12 Ways You Can Improve Your Website
  • 19 Essentials to a Great Mobile App
  • (According to most, there are 50 ways to skin a cat.)

‘Best practices’ are simply the average of what everyone else has already done. Here’s the reality: you’re never going to find innovation rooted in a best practice.

So here’s the question for you this week: if you had the power, authority and resources — what would your blue sky idea be? Use your imagination.

James Clair
0
Copyright Houdini Interactive 2025. All Rights Reserved
Privacy Settings
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. If you are using our Services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. We also use content and scripts from third parties that may use tracking technologies. You can selectively provide your consent below to allow such third party embeds. For complete information about the cookies we use, data we collect and how we process them, please check our Privacy Policy
Youtube
Consent to display content from - Youtube
Vimeo
Consent to display content from - Vimeo
Google Maps
Consent to display content from - Google
Save