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Behind the FourthWall
As part of our research this year we have spoken to a number of our clients, and one of the things they want to hear from us are the latest innovations or ideas that can be incorporated into their own in-person activations.
That’s why we’re launching ‘Behind the FourthWall’, a twice-yearly briefing on what’s exciting in our world.
Each issue, we’ll bring you three areas of inspiration:
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Brand Activations - what's turning heads in the broader brand world, and how it could translate into your employee and graduate engagement activity.
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Technology Innovations - the emerging tech we're exploring, and how it could elevate your next activation.
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Latest Market Updates - research, trends, and insights from across experiential marketing, graduate attraction, and employee engagement.
None of these are prescriptive; they’re conversation starters. If something sparks an idea, we’d love to hear about it.
Brand Activations
The consumer brand world is a rich source of inspiration for employee engagement and graduate attraction. The best campaigns tap into emotion, community, and identity - exactly the levers that matter in your internal activations too. Here’s what’s been catching our eye so far this year:
E.ON “Big Dip”
It's worth considering what external campaigns you're currently running and how they could be translated to your employee engagement efforts. E.ON's "Big Dip" is a good example of exactly that in action: they took their external customer campaign and turned it inward, repurposing it to help employees feel emotionally connected to an ongoing business transformation.
Why it matters for you:
Repurposing an existing external campaign like this is also a smart cost-saving exercise: the creative thinking, brand assets, and language already exist, so you're not starting from scratch to build something new for an internal audience. Rather than simply announcing the change, E.ON invited employees to feel part of it, using familiar, playful brand language to bridge the gap between external identity and internal culture.
As organisations continue to go through significant change (whether that's transformation, restructuring, or evolving employer brand), the instinct is often to over-communicate through more emails, more Town Halls, more PowerPoint presentations… but sharing information isn't the same as getting buy-in. Employees often resist because they don't feel part of it. Getting internal buy-in matters just as much as customer engagement, arguably more, since disengaged employees are far more visible (and costly) to a business than a lukewarm customer.
E.ON's approach flips that dynamic. By borrowing the same brand world their customers already recognise, they turned a top-down announcement into something their employees could embrace and become advocates for. It's a powerful lesson for any internal campaign: consistency between how you talk to your customers and how you talk to your people builds trust in both directions, and it signals that employees aren't an afterthought in the brand story.
Barbie x Coachella
Mattel’s Barbie activation at Coachella was a masterclass in immersive brand experience. They transformed their music festival pop-up into a full brand world that people could step into. The activation created shareable moments at every turn, turning attendees into brand advocates.
Why it matters for you:
This is the same approach that we took with the AI Trailer activation we delivered for Lloyds Banking Group, just on a bigger scale. The principle is the same: give people a world to step into and they’ll do the storytelling for you.
Whether you’re recruiting graduates or engaging existing employees, this ‘brand world’ model creates the kind of memorable, shareable moments that traditional stands and banners simply can’t. When someone can physically walk into your employer brand and touch it, photograph it, and be part of it, they stop being an audience and become a participant - and participants talk. When looking specifically at graduate attraction, that means the difference between a stand students walk past and an experience they queue for, film, and share with their peers via social media or word-of-mouth.
In a world increasingly dominated by shareable moments and online presence, creating something that your employees or prospective employees will talk about online creates much bigger reach and brand advocacy than anything you share yourself.
Heineken - The Clinker
Heineken’s ‘Clinker’ activation at Coachella was a digital-meets-physical matchmaking experience: a platform that connected festival-goers who shared interests and then facilitated real-world meet-ups. The technology identified ‘matches’ based on shared music preferences and festival activity, then brought them together in real life over a Heineken.
Why it matters for you:
The core insight here is simple but powerful: most large-scale events create interactions, but very few create connections. Employees attend a company-wide conference and spend three days surrounded by colleagues from other departments they’ll never speak to again; new starters go through an onboarding week, meet many new people, and retain maybe two names.
Matching technology like The Clinker reframes the challenge entirely. Rather than simply creating more interactions, it identifies the right interactions and gives people a genuine bridge into something lasting. Applied to an employee context, it could surface unexpected connections across departments, pair new starters with colleagues who share similar career interests or backgrounds, or help employees at a large company event find the people most relevant to their work.
The result is an activation that doesn’t just feel memorable in the room - it creates relationships that extend well beyond it. That’s the kind of ROI that’s genuinely hard to achieve through traditional event formats.
Technology Innovations
We’re always exploring technologies that could elevate your activations. These two are on our radar right now:
AI-powered holograms let guests hold real-time, multilingual conversations with a holographic figure. Unlike pre-recorded displays, these are fully interactive: natural language processing keeps the exchange fluid and authentic so no two conversations are the same.
Major organisations are already using this technology: LaGuardia Airport uses interactive AI holograms for multilingual passenger support, and Billie Eilish appeared as a conversational hologram across 47 US shopping centres to engage fans directly. What used to be a novelty is now becoming a genuine operational tool, and the reason it has our attention isn’t just the “wow factor”, it’s the problem it quietly solves.
Why it matters for you:
Your CEO or Senior Leader can’t physically be present at every employee event across different geographies, but a hologram of them can. That turns a single recording session into unlimited authentic-feeling Q&A sessions, without diluting the seniority or credibility of who’s answering. Also, every hologram interaction draws from the same underlying brand voice and messaging so your EVP stays consistent across all locations - something that’s hard to guarantee with multiple human representatives across various events.
This is a scalable stand-in for scarce expert time (that comes without the cost or logistics of travel), letting one recorded session with a senior leader serve multiple events over one campaign, freeing up leadership time while keeping their presence felt everywhere.
E-Paper turns static signage into something dynamic, sustainable, and versatile. Unlike traditional digital screens, it’s ultra-low energy (running for weeks on a single charge), has near zero-glare, and can refresh content remotely in real time. It’s already gaining ground in retail, and we think it’s about to become standard in the experiential world.
Why it matters for you:
Employee events and graduate attraction activations run on last-minute changes: a location change, a representative drops out, a queue needs redirecting. Traditional signage means reprinting or physically swapping boards; e-paper means updating every screen remotely and instantly, without anyone touching a single display on-site. That’s a meaningful reduction in both cost and the logistical scramble that comes with running signage across an event or campaign.
It also opens up personalisation at a scale that wasn’t previously practical. Because content refreshes digitally, rather than being fixed at print, signs could update based on data, greeting employees at different locations or graduates at different universities (e.g., “Hello Reading!” one day and “Hello Leeds!” the next) creating a tailored feel without the cost of one-off printing for every location.
The displays are lightweight, battery-powered for weeks, and don’t need a constant power source which makes them extremely practical for multi-location campaigns. The sustainability angle is a bonus - it’s a message worth being able to tell: even your signage reflects your values.
Latest Market Updates
This is where FourthWall's position is unique. We sit at the intersection of experiential marketing and future talent - so we can draw on research from both worlds and share what it means for your campaigns and activations.
The blending of physical and digital (phygital) has been a topic in experiential marketing for several years. What’s changed is the expectation: it’s no longer enough to have a digital element to your activation as a differentiator. Audiences now expect seamlessly integrated physical-digital experiences as standard.
EventBrite’s 2026 Social Study ‘Reset to Real’, points to a counter-movement happening at the same time: as digital experiences become ever-present, the value of genuine human moments is rising. Bizzabo’s 2026 State of Events research backs this up from the organiser side: 78% say in-person events remain their most impactful marketing channel. The data points to the same conclusion - digital isn’t competing with in-person, it’s being asked to earn its place alongside it.
The sweet spot (and where FourthWall operates) is using digital to enhance and extend what’s happening physically, not replace it.
Why it matters for you:
The practical test for any activation is to separate what happens at the event, from what happens after it, then check whether the two are actually connected. A strong physical moment that ends the second someone walks away is a missed opportunity; a digital layer bolted on for the sake of having one usually feels like that. The activations that work hardest are the ones where the digital element gives people a reason to keep engaging, whether that’s revisiting content, continuing a journey they started at the event, or sharing something that reaches people who weren’t there.
One layer that’s easy to overlook is the human one. The technology is what draws people in by creating a moment of curiosity that stops someone in their tracks and pulls them towards an activation. But it’s the people around it who land the brand values and make the messages stick. Our SketchBots activation is a good example of this in practice: the AI-powered sketch technology is the hook, but it’s the trained ambassadors standing alongside it who turns a fun, memorable moment into a genuine conversation about career opportunities, culture, and fit. Digital creates the opening; human converts it.
Sources: Eventbrite Social Study 2026 |
Modern graduate audiences have grown up in a digital landscape saturated with AI-generated content and heavily curated corporate campaigns. They can instantly spot an overly polished, scripted narrative, and increasingly, they’re actively put off by it.
Deloitte’s 2026 Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey (22,500+ respondents across 44 countries) finds that these generations are prioritising stability, sustainability, and genuine connection over performative signals of success. They want to see the real culture of your organisation, not a highlight reel.
Handshake’s State of the Graduate report backs this up: more than half of students entered university with a ‘dream job’ in mind and have since changed it, because they’re doing more research and seeking more authentic signals before deciding where to apply
Why it matters for you:
Experiential formats now outperform traditional recruitment advertising because they create real, unscripted moments, and the data backs up why that matters. Handshake finds graduates need an average of 8 touchpoints before they apply, and that a strong employer reputation drives applications far more than brand familiarity (64% vs. just 25% swayed by a recognisable name). In other words, being well-known counts for far less than being genuinely trusted - and trust isn’t built through a single polished campaign, it’s built cumulatively, through repeated, credible contact.
That reframes what a “good” touchpoint looks like. A slick video might tick a brand-awareness box, but it’s one touchpoint, and a passive one. 10 minutes at a stand where a student can ask an unscripted question, push back, or hear a real employee talk honestly about the job counts for more, both because it’s memorable and because it reads as evidence rather than marketing. Students are increasingly good at telling the difference between the two, and they’re actively factoring it into where they apply.
Activations shouldn’t be measured only on reach or footfall. Ask whether each touchpoint is building toward that cumulative trust, and whether what a student experiences with your team on the day is something they;d actually vouch for to a friend. That’s a harder thing to manufacture than a good headline video, but it’s the thing that’s actually moving decisions right now.
Let's Talk
Every idea in this document is a potential conversation. Whether something has caught your eye, you want to dig into one of the trends, or you’re thinking about an upcoming activation you’d like to approach differently then we’d love to hear from you!
Real Stories, Real Satisfaction
With a saturated marketplace and a constant battle for fresh talent, FourthWall helps us stand out from the crowd. We work with FourthWall from concept to delivery - and the awards we've won together are a testament to the team and what they produce. It's not often you can say you fully trust your brand with another team, but we trust FourthWall to always deliver."
Lloyds Banking Group
The FourthWall team supported me to deliver our first social impact-focused Year 10 work insight week as part of Deloitte’s 5 Million Futures education programme. I had a challenging delivery timeline, an idea that I needed help to pull out of my head and two concurrent weeks to deliver in Birmingham and Manchester. From briefing until the delivery wrap up with the facilitators, the team were supportive, proactive and focused on helping me make the activity a success for our student participants. They helped me to shape the agenda and content of the week as well as engaging four fantastic facilitators with experience of working and building relationships with this age group. I felt confident that we could deliver a great experience and we did - the students and our volunteers really engaged with the weeks and I achieved my objective of supporting these young people to take a peek into the world of work before making the leap. We’re now holding a follow up employability session as they start in Year 11 and hope they will join us on our early careers journey. A huge thanks to the FourthWall team for their help, delivery expertise and professionalism!
barlays bank
In a competitive market where fresh talent is always in demand, FourthWall gives us the edge we need to rise above the noise. From initial concept to final execution, their partnership has been instrumental in our success—evident in the awards we've earned together. Trusting another team with your brand is rare, but with FourthWall, we have complete confidence that they’ll always deliver excellence.
Max Johnson
