Jim Beam makes a prized bourbon, The Devil’s Cut, but you can’t see what makes this spirit different from the outside. You have to know how it’s made, and to illustrate that, Jim Beam worked with Bottle Rocket to create an immersive VR experience to dramatize the journey bourbon takes to become The Devil’s Cut. Only in VR could you get right inside the bottle! There is, of course, an assumption made by all who seek to boost these technologies, which is that their effects are inevitably benign. But when the physical world becomes really indistinguishable from the digital, do we gain? Do we communicate better – or less? Do we take more out of life – or less? To be honest, at this stage – who knows? But a rational scepticism at least puts these questions on the table. The case for the “metaverse” sweeping all ahead of it is not yet proven. It may seem that I’m “down” on VR/AR. Not at all. It is very exciting and it will move out from its hard core of gamesters into the world of advertising. Here’s what it offers: • Perspective: we can hyper-immerse as we tour through reality. Where we seek to simulate a product, we will be able to do so with an intensity never before managed. Imagine, for instance, wristwatch advertising. For years, designers have tried to make us believe we could see inside the workings in 2D. Now we’ll be able to travel inside and around the mechanism of every last finely crafted Rolex or Piaget. • Context: providing extra meaning through explanation and references. Imagine opening and deploying a new food processor for the first time. You’re led not just through the basics of how to assemble and operate it – but into making perfect mayonnaise, which does not curdle as each drop of oil melds into the emulsion, speeding up and slowing down with all the mentoring you might expect from Martha Stewart if she was standing beside you. • Intensity: take any piece of emotive creativity, and it can be intensified a hundred-fold – at a cost, of course. Advertising has always appropriated the term “anthem” to describe its big set-pieces. “Anthemic” reality will make some corporate advertising seem very pallid. If you attach yourself to the values of the rainforest, how much more valuable is a hyper-immersive experience compared to