Futurescapes: Communicating Your Big Idea Through an Immersive Experience

John Severance

Increasingly, companies are tasked with depicting how a disruptive innovation will impact the future. This requires more than a storyline and PowerPoint slide — especially when an innovation will change the world in truly novel ways.

Automakers have concept cars. Architects have 3D models. Communicators need their own prototype. At Everhouse, we call it a futurescape.

We define a futurescape as a tangible and comprehensive depiction of an innovative idea’s future impact. This is a prototype of a future where your idea, innovation, or technology exists and thrives, so that others can better understand your idea, its implications, and its impact. This model can come in the form of a series of short stories, interactive exhibits, a virtual reality experience, or detailed illustrations.

Take the innovation of a flying car. A futurescape for a flying car might take the form of a 3D city rendered in virtual reality. In this VR world, users might “walk” through the carless streets, which have become open-air markets and urban farms. In this futurescape, maybe all driving is automatic too, so when the viewer steps into a flying car, they find a carpool of networking job seekers, an executive celebrating business victories with a cocktail from his swanky in-car bar, or a mom in a salon-car getting a manicure on her way to pick up the kids from school.

People best understand by experience, so creating a slice of the future that people can see, feel, taste, and/or smell will help you garner stakeholder buy-in, build excitement, and communicate effectively.

Here’s some steps you can follow to build your own futurescape:

Step 1: Shift Your Mindset

Your first priority is to shift from market development mode into storytelling mode. What is the desired outcome for your innovation? Take a step back from the nitty-gritty details of your strategic roadmap and clearly define your idea’s unique value proposition.

Step 2: Define Your Setting

As in all good storytelling, it’s important to root people in a sense of time and place. For your futurescape, start by identifying what setting can show the true scale or impact of your Innovator’s Intent. For example, does your futurescape need to show an entire country and its economic structure? Do you need to show the social dynamics on a city block? Maybe just someone’s living room or a grocery store aisle?

Step 3: Develop Your Main Characters

Ultimately, your audience is the main character for your futurescape. However, it’s important to identify whose shoes they’re stepping into in your futurescape. Who will be using your innovation in the future?

Think about the typical guidelines for persona development, but remember your characters live in the future. Human nature probably won’t change, but your characters may face problems or concerns that we haven’t faced yet in today’s world. Try and flesh out your characters concerns, desires, and fears from the perspective of your futurescape, instead of mapping modern pain points on a future state.

Step 4: Add Action

Add some structure to your futurescape in the form of a light narrative. We recommend keeping the narrative simple, so the focus remains on the futurescape itself. Choose any type of action that will help your viewer experience your futurescape.

Step 5: Add Detail

It’s time to let your imagination run wild. This is your chance to make up new places, foods, celebrities, social structures, local slang, street names, government types—you name it. Add as much specific detail as you can, whether directly related to your innovation or not.

It’s these small details that make your futurescape feel both real and achievable. It’s a classic case of the power of “show not tell:”

If you’re stuck and having trouble adding detail to your futurescape, consider the following questions:

How might your innovation be used in unexpected ways or adapted to different niche applications?
What new jobs, stores, professions might your innovation lead to?
If your innovation exists, what other technologies might exist as well?

How might your innovation impact what someone sees? Hears? Smells? Feels?

Four Futurescape Antidotes to an Abstract Pitch

Making your innovation real takes more than just getting the technology developed and delivered to the right hands. First it has to be conceptually adopted and believed in order to make those first crucial steps into the physical world. In a recent post, we talked about how creating a futurescape can be a tangible and comprehensive depiction of an innovative idea’s future impact.

This is where you take your futurescape and make it tangible and immersive. Most individuals and even companies probably don’t have the funds to create a full-scale exhibit of their futurescape, similar to Bill Gates’ original Xanadu 2.0. However, there are several formats from which to choose that are sure to fit your audience and budget. Consider the following options:

1. Written Stories and Illustrated Vignettes

We all know it’s tough for consumers to stomach a wall of text, so combining text and illustration in unique ways is a great, budget-friendly option for your futurescape. Maybe you create a series of highly stylized storyboards depicting key scenes in your futurescape. You could also commission a graphic novelist. Illustrated vignettes with light copy are a great way to capture emotion and tone.

A good example: We recommend looking for artists outside your organization with distinctive styles and portfolios. For example, we used Adrian Fernandez to create moody, futuristic illustrations for a client, seen throughout this Insight.

2. Video/Animation

Video production has come a long way over the past two decades and today, it’s often an affordable, go-to option for creating content. We believe that video is a great vehicle for a futurescape, but with proper time, attention, and investment. For a futurescape, we recommend finding a creative team with a track record of imaginative, forward-looking storytelling. It may be worth hiring a creative director from outside the marketing world to help you convey your futurescape.

A good example: We love how Corning Glass uses video. Way back in 2011, the company created a futurescape around glass innovations. The video was so popular that the company created a follow-up a year later.

3. Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR)

AR and VR can transport people to places that are otherwise impractical or currently nonexistent. With it becoming more accessible and affordable, now is a great time for companies to explore AR/VR as an immersive storytelling format. If you’re considering using AR/VR, make sure it’s strategic and not simply for that wow factor.

A good example: In 2017, Palo Alto Networks created a VR experience to demonstrate for prospective employees what the future might look like with the company’s security systems in place. We like how this VR experience puts the viewer in a familiar situation — heading to a job interview over public transportation — but in a novel environment shaped by Palo Alto Networks’ technology.

4. Models/Exhibits

Like AR/VR, building your futurescape as a physical model or exhibit is a great option to create a fully immersive and interactive experience. Models and exhibits can be set up at tradeshows, in your business lobby, or at museums. You can even create entire events around your exhibit and invite customers, industry influencers, and employees to experience it. This format lends itself well to sparking conversations about your innovation and the future.

A good example: In 2011, London-based ecoLogicStudio transformed the Swedish region of Osterlen into a futuristic exhibit all about algae farming. Through a collection of interactive sites and events, ecoLogicStudio demonstrated how algae farming could be used to transform the region’s economic and urban systems.

Through these tangible steps, you can leverage the power of a futurescape to vividly imagine the future where your innovation lives.

Insights

Podcast: What To Do When Your Product Is Too Complex for Slides

Most B2B companies are still trying to explain highly complex solutions with slide decks, brochures, and PDFs. The response from buyers (and everyone else) is always the same: “I can’t see it.”“I just can’t picture what you mean.” It’s because whatever these companies are trying to explain is bigger, deeper, and more detailed than the medium they are using to convey it. Imagine if there was a new tool. An interactive world your buyers could explore to see the full picture and value of what you do. That’s what I explore in this episode of the Make It Matter podcast. I sat down with Sean Bruce, partner at Cadpeople—a Scotland-based visual communication studio that has spent three decades turning complex ideas into engaging visual worlds. What exactly is this visual world thing? The concept: A visual, explorable digital environment that shows your entire solution—exactly as it works in the real world. Think of it as a comprehensive visual explanation. The goal: Take something that’s normally hard to picture and turn it into something people can finally see and understand. At Everhouse, we call it a Storyworld. Cadpeople calls it a Digital Universe. Cadpeople, by the way, is the primary development partner for our Storyworld platform. In the podcast, Sean shows a Digital Universe that Cadpeople created for Siemens. Check it out and you can see the very thing I am explaining. The roots of this approach for Cadpeople go back to their early history in architectural visualization. Before they ever touched B2B marketing, they were designing lifelike environments—spaces with flow, scale, light, realism, and movement. When they began working with advanced technology companies, they realized something powerful: the same architectural principles used to help people understand a building could help people understand a business. A Storyworld is not a video, not a slide deck, and not a brochure. It is a digital place where your products live in their real-world context, and where buyers and employees can see how everything connects. If you’ve ever thought, “I wish people could just see what we do,” this conversation is about what happens when they can.

Free Tool: Creative Concepting Card Deck

Bring the Good Stuff I’ve been writing a lot about concepting—because it sits at the very heart of the creative process. Too often, teams short-change this step or skip it altogether, moving straight from information to production. But in between is where the magic happens. Without proper concepting, production output is often just a dressed-up version of the raw material. This is especially true when it comes to product marketing. You’re constantly pushing products to market—each a hair better than what it replaces, each entering a marketplace of lookalike options. You lean on buzzwords (flexible), evergreen benefits (automated), small victories (optimized), or puffed-up superlatives (revolutionary). You wonder what’s the hook. Is it a key feature? Or is strong creative? The truth is, it’s both. And they meet in concepting. Introducing the Concepting Prompt Deck Today I want to put something practical in your hands — two sets of concept ideation cards, a simple set of instructions, and a process you can start using today. The deck features: How the Deck Works When you put these cards in play, you begin asking sharper, more imaginative questions: Putting Concepting into Practice There’s both an art and a science to concepting. That’s why the deck also includes guidance on: It’s designed for flexibility: you can use it in workshop mode to fuel group ideation, or as a daily game to keep your own creative edge sharp. Learn from a Concepting Expert For more on how concepting works in practice, check out this episode of the Make It Matter podcast. I spoke with concepting expert Shachar Meron, who breaks down how to get into the right creative state, push past the first obvious answer, and shape a direction that will connect with buyers.

Podcast: How to Craft a Standout Creative Idea

Grabbing attention in today’s market is harder than ever. Everyone’s talking, hyping, overpromising. So how do you create the one idea in 10,000 that actually lands? It’s the question every creative team faces. And when they crack it—when it clicks—it’s magic. Take Nike’s Just Do It. Apple’s Think Different. Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. Hall-of-fame concepts. All born from one clear, powerful idea. So, How Do You Get There? That’s theme of this episode of the Make it Matter podcast. John Severance talks with Shachar Meron, partner at Bluegreen Branding and senior lecturer in advertising and brand strategy at the University of Illinois, about what it takes to develop a creative concept that cuts through. Drawing on years of agency experience, Schachar walks us through the process—from writing a tight brief to finding that one clear, powerful insight that unlocks everything else. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at how standout ideas move from strategy to impact.

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