We Are Collider launches AI tool ‘ROXi’ to predict ROI for brand experiences
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New predictive tool tackles experiential’s biggest frustration of projecting campaign value before an event takes place.
We Are Collider, the brand experience agency for clients including Amazon Games, John Lewis and Red Bull, has developed a proprietary tool called ROXi that uses AI to predict and measure the ROI of brand experiences. ROXi has been designed to help clients secure budgets from stakeholders by projecting the ROI of a brand experience.
Although experiential ROI can already be measured through metrics like footfall, content shares and earned media value; these can only be reported post-event. With Bizzabo’s State of Events and Industry Benchmarks finding 70 percent of event organisers and brand marketers explicitly struggle to measure and demonstrate ROI effectively, ROXi will fill the gap by linking campaign investment to predicted efficacy.
ROXi was conceived by We Are Collider’s Managing Director, Tracy Sorgiovanni, who said: “Advertising and performance marketing have well-established, real-time measurable metrics like CPC, CPM, ROAS, conversion rate and attribution models. The feedback loop is tight and the causal chain from spend to outcome is relatively direct. This gives marketers and CFOs a level of confidence and comparability when it comes to this part of the marketing mix. But in experiential, integrated tools to provide the hard data to support and predict ROI are in short supply. ROXi changes this. So much so that it will give us and our clients a serious competitive edge.”
ROXi predicts a brand experience’s efficacy and potential ROI using a mix of AI and benchmarking calculations. It also suggests concept revisions that could improve end results. Input variables include attendee numbers, budget, paid media investment, influencer attendance and campaign type (eg: B2B or PR stunt).
ROXi was developed in collaboration with Arq, the agency’s innovation lab headed by Charlotte Bunyan (a winner of WACL’s award for ‘women leading the way in AI and tech’). It was trained on We Are Collider’s own data taken from case studies and behavioural science research. The tool additionally uses a Retrieval-Augmented Generation technique to gather industry benchmarks for similar campaigns. Results are presented as an overall ROI score alongside a breakdown of potential reach.
As Tracy Sorgiovanni explains: “Creating something without precedent like this hasn’t been easy. We’ve had to do a lot of digging to develop specific experiential formulae using a combination of industry benchmarks, data modelling and our own research. The hard work is all worth it, though, as it’s another milestone in proving that experiential is a highly effective marketing channel.”