Opus Agency and Gramercy Tech take EM inside the Grand Ex Award-winning Google Cloud Tech Immersion training event
Impressing an audience of global technical go-to-market professionals with a technology-focused event is an ambitious request, but that was Google Cloud’s brief for its Tech Immersion training program. “It’s a tough crowd because these are technologists who have seen it all,” says Mia Rovegno, group creative director at Opus Agency.
Across three events in London, Los Angeles and Singapore, the brand, and its partners Opus Agency and Gramercy Tech, set out to empower attendees with domain-specific, cross-functional knowledge of Google Cloud’s capabilities that went beyond hands-on training, peer-to-peer collaboration and breakout sessions.
The solution came in the form of The Vault, “a layered journey in which exploration leads to discovery.” Here, experiential learning was prioritized over traditional instruction, an immersive installation brought AI to life, soundscapes created transformative environments, and hidden speakeasies hosted regionally authentic celebrations.
“A lot of people come to a training and expect to be sitting with their laptops out, staring at screens all day and being kind of disengaged in a way,” says Rovegno, creative lead for Google Cloud Tech Immersion. “The task that was given to us was, how do we put people at the wheel so that they’re the protagonists of their own journey and excited to uncover what’s next, while giving them opportunities to share their skills in a multisensory experience.”
Let’s delve into this multifaceted b-to-b event that redefined what a training session could be, and discover the details that led to its crowning as the winner of the 2026 Grand Ex Award, recognizing the best experiential campaign of the year.
THE PATH TO POTENTIAL
The theme for Google Cloud Tech Immersion was “Unlock knowledge. Uncover potential,” and a key icon became a central motif of the journey, beginning at registration, where it appeared as a wayfinding tool. Before entering The Vault, attendees were met with The Threshold, a vault-inspired wall with glowing lock and key graphics and an alluring question: Once you unlock knowledge, what potential will you uncover?
Inside, attendees were encouraged to explore the space one layer at a time. “The deeper you go, the deeper you learn,” Rovegno explains. At Precipice Park, made up of real trees, plants and flowers native to the region of the host city, attendees could gather for impromptu, peer-led talks and content creation moments.
The Arbor of Answers featured tablets and headphones nestled in trees, which participants could put on to listen to on-demand, “mini podcasts” of expert insights. Another audio activation, Pathways to Potential, allowed attendees to step onto “lily pads” and, through spatial audio, hear success stories from regional leaders at Google Cloud.
The Intersection included a popular Demo Bar, Challengers’ Corner with writable surfaces where attendees collaborated on solving problems, and Expert Exchange community boards filled with sticky notes displaying queries, shared insights and contact info.
In the evening, the glowing key icons returned to guide attendees to “Unlock the Night,” hidden speakeasies featuring local musicians, djs and regional cuisine. The venue was flipped for a nighttime setting, and participants looked for hidden keys that led to either a throwback-themed party or one with a future-forward vibe.
“Never underestimate the power of story driving the event. If the narrative is really strong, people latch onto it,” Rovegno says. “When you engage with technology, instead of being technology-first and then figuring out the why afterward, how the tech actually enhances the story is the question we should be asking, rather than making it seem like it fits. That’s something that we really invested in this time around.”
FINE-TUNING AN AI-DRIVEN EXPERIENCE
The biggest tech activation and centerpiece of the event was the Portal to Potential. Attendees answered prompts on a touchscreen that generated AI imagery reflecting their aspirational responses. The co-created environment was then projected on the portal’s larger-than-life screen, and users could be immersed in their creation by stepping into the infinity-like
structure, which Opus Agency designed as a multilayered LED arc with reflective flooring, kinetic lighting, sound, atmospheric haze effects and multiple video layers.
Gramercy Tech built the back-end system connecting user prompts to three of Google’s AI platforms: Gemini (AI assistant), Imagen (text-to-image model) and Veo (AI video generator). Because the events took place in early 2025, with their development in the works long before that, the AI tech that was available to the team at the time wasn’t as robust as it is now.
“All the advances we’ve had in the last two years were zero back then,” says Jeremy Patuto, ceo of Gramercy Tech. “Google had just released Veo 3, and it wasn’t even ready until a week and a half before the event. We were having to build this experience thinking that we could probably take advantage of this in about a week, but make it cool with just a flat image, as well, because they could only do images at the time.”
One of the portal’s biggest challenges was helping attendees finesse their prompts to achieve the most relevant imagery results. As Patuto puts it, “We built a prompt, to prompt people on how to write their prompts.” Attendees typing in phrases like “the future” wasn’t going to cut it.
“We worked on creating parameters for the color palette and the style that were right for the aesthetic of the event, but also weren’t going to [fall into] AI slop,” Rovegno says. “We were looking at how it could still feel like it had that human touch but enhanced by AI. There was a lot of prompting of anti-prompts, like people shouldn’t mention celebrities or politicians and all of these things that you need to be careful about so you’re not generating imagery that’s not inclusive, alienating or off-topic.”
Still, Patuto adds that some attendees tried to test the safeguards, but the AI was programmed to respond that those actions were “not in the spirit of this event.”
‘KEYS’ TO SUCCESS
Rovegno and Patuto agree that giving attendees the agency to wander and explore the footprint was essential to the immersive experience. As the event traveled from city to city, it became evident that attendees wanted “serendipitous, unscheduled time” to socialize, Rovegno says, and Precipice Park—modeled after a green third space in a town—was tweaked to fit that need with cafés and areas to hang out.
“We decided that it was a little tricky in our first location to discover it, so in the next one, we opened it up more so people could immediately be released right into the park space and feel the warmth of it and like they could be casual, play chess in the corner or grab a coffee with friends,” she says. “We created more of a free-form social space.”
The sound design played a big role in the experience, and Opus Agency brought in a musician and sound designer who worked with the immersive theatrical production “Sleep No More” to use music to transition through different phases of the event. Music movements were timed to the day’s content to motivate attendees to settle in or move on to the next layer, or to even pump up the energy levels, Rovegno says.
“My big takeaway is: It’s worth it to take a risk and try something new,” she says. “It felt like a proof of concept of how we created this very interactive environment that looked nothing like what people would expect in a training session and saw the impact that that had on people really owning the experience.”
Potential unlocked.
Photo credits: Kellie Cushing; Mia Rovegno
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This story appeared in the Summer 2026 issue
