App Sec & Dev Ops
Sonatype AR
AR EXPERIENCE & BRANDED GAME
A demo booth for your brand? Snooze. Sonatype needed an out-of-this world experience for upcoming events that would show, not tell their products. And what better way than by expanding their branded storyworld into AR and video games? All systems go.
The opportunity
Interactive engagement with AR
Sonatype is a full-spectrum software supply chain management platform to help security teams and developers build more securely at scale. Following a successful end-to-end website redesign project we had recently completed for Sonatype, they came to us with a new endeavour.
A series of important application security conferences were approaching, and they wanted to educate prospects about their products while ‘wow-ing’ them with an engaging, interactive experience.
Our Strategy
The challenge
Blending digital and physical touchpoints
Creating a concept for a trade show is inherently challenging. How do you create a physical space that actually engages attendees for a digital product? Sonatype wanted a booth experience that would catch people’s attention in a room overflowing with hundreds of other vendors.
We needed to concept, pitch, develop, and execute several ideas within a short timeline—the first tradeshow was only three weeks away. Additionally, the experience needed to be adaptable—we had to think broadly about how to build something that would work for multiple trade shows in the coming year and onwards.
The research
Finding tech to back creative
Having led Sonatype’s end-to-end website redesign, including many branding touchpoints, we had context of their products and a strong foundation to build from. For their website, we had designed a 3D visual storyworld that represented Sonatype’s core products: large spaceships that defend against malware, identify vulnerabilities, and protect large-scale software products.
Now we were ready to take the storyworld even further.
We looked into a wide array of technologies and experiences, including analyzing current AR applications and booth designs to ensure our concepts were both innovative and practical.
This research guided us to develop three potential concepts: an augmented reality composite, an escape room concept, and a video game aptly named ‘Code Invaders.’ Each needed a strong tech stack that would be high-volume and reliable to avoid any crashes at a trade show.
The direction
Augmented reality all the way
The Sonatype team selected our augmented reality concept to kick off their first trade show that was fast approaching. Their team was enthusiastic about the engagement potential of AR, the shorter timeline to create, and that it could be expanded upon for future trade shows.
The AR Sonatype Spaceship experience began with scanning a QR code which we designed on colourfully illuminated table cubes and stickers. We also suggested a floor map as a cohesive and themed background to launch the experience.
Once scanned, the user was invited to launch into a AR experience designed to familiarise people with their products in an interactive way.
In the Sonatype storyworld, the spaceship represents the product a company is building. While exploring the storyworld, the user is faced with different animation sequences showcasing how the Repository Firewall, Nexus Repository, and Lifecycle Sonatype products work in tandem to protect open source code.
The animation sequence begins with a blue shield representing the Repository Firewall. A red component approaches and is destroyed, blocking malicious components at the door.
Next, blue hexagon components come out of a conveyor belt and attach to the spaceship, representing the Nexus Repository—a central repository that allows fast and reliable builds.
Lastly, one component turns red, and another orange. Both components are ejected and replaced with healthy blue ones, representing how Lifecycle automatically finds and fixes open source vulnerabilities at every stage of the software development lifecycle.
After each animation sequence, the user is prompted to enter their name and email address to connect with the Sonatype team at a later time. These prompts were strategically included to capture useful lead generation information while the user is engaged in the game.
While we were building the initial AR experience, Sonatype also gave us the green light to begin developing our game concept “Code Invaders”. Following the success of the first trade show, we delivered a fully interactive video game that further built upon the Sonatype storyworld experience. The video game would be available at future trade shows as a unique, engaging way to wow booth visitors.
Our Solution
The results
A storyworld success
With the successful interactive AR experience, Sonatype had over 2,200 booth visitors launch the QR code at their first trade show. It provided a fun, interactive, educational, and memorable experience for booth visitors that Sonatype could reuse and continue building upon for future trade shows.
At their next tradeshow, Code Invaders became another interactive tool in the Sonatype toolbox to show prospects how their products work in an engaging way.
2,200+
AR experience launches
The moral of the story
The details matter
There were so many details that went into the AR trade show experience being a success. With a short three week timeline, the Sonatype team requested our help with last minute booth messaging.
Not only were we able to provide an interactive AR experience, but we also leveraged the confident yet playful brand voice to craft clever booth messaging to capture their audience.
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From engaging copy, to QR code spaceship stickers and lightboxes, to making Code Invaders work with a real joystick, we truly delivered in the featured experience and in the details. Ultimately, we had a big hand in creating a tradeshow concept that was not only easy to set up, but also seamless to reuse and build upon across future events.
“OneNet you outdid yourself!!
You totally delivered everything I was hoping for! The booth looks amazing.
So many people loved the stickers and the QR code on it. Most people were super excited and the [AR experience] was a really fun thing. We’re going to do the AR experience again.’’”
Nikki Meyer, Senior Corporate Events Manager at Sonatype
