How Taylor Swift’s Tour Inspired a New Mantra for Our Innovation Team
Like millions of people in America, the highlight of my springtime events was attending the Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour”. I’ll confess, before May, I wasn’t a self-proclaimed Swiftie —I didn’t really get into anything that wasn’t a radio hit until 2019, and had purchased the tickets for my wife as a Christmas present.
It had been a while since I attended a stadium show of any kind, which made this my first time experiencing the immersive light-up bracelets artists like Swift have come to use during the performance over the past ~5 years. I was geeking out. How did they make these work? How did they know where I was to make the shapes and patterns? The bracelets were handed out at the door — they had no idea where I was going to sit, so they couldn’t be linked up in advance. I had to know.
Give most technologists the problem of synchronizing 70,000 light-up bracelets, and we’d be creating WiFi maps, identifying bluetooth capabilities, exploring beacon options, and evaluating NFC and companion apps.
I doubt many would ask “how about using infrared light?” You mean the technology that’s controlled my TV remote since the 1980's? That can’t be the best solution.
You can imagine my surprise when I learned that was exactly how it works.
(The creators do have other technology options for varying applications, including RF and Bluetooth, but let’s put that to the side for now.)
Infrared is Nothing New (sorry for the pun, Swifties). On the most basic level, your TV remote is programmed to send binary bits of invisible light to the receiver, which reads it like morse code and performs the desired action.
For stadium shows like this, infrared light is directed at all or part of the crowd to activate the bracelets in a way that will match the lighting effects being used on stage. To make shapes, they use masks over the light, or scatter the IR to make variable patterns.
The programming results in an impressive display, allows everything from washing the audience in color synched to the show, to Coldplay’s “Sky full of Stars” effect or BTS “wave of color” that moved through the crowd.
What’s fascinating is how the bracelets change the culture of the concert. Because the light is immersive, it creates a sense of community and unity of the large audience with the stage and performers below. Contrast that with the traditional way of lighting a crowd, which involved harsh uplighting from the floor and resulted in an unequal experience, with floor attendees feeling immersed and the bowl attendees feeling like they were looking in on the experience.
So What is Our Swift-Inspired Mantra?:
Innovative Products Don’t Have to be Built with Innovative Technology
I confess, this new mantra makes me feel really seen. How many times have I tried to use new technology to solve an old problem? When have I over-engineered a creative idea?
Every team’s mandate is different, but my team’s is summed up in part:
“…Our innovation teams build products to meet emerging and disruptive trends, and deploy to the market in areas of strategic significance for the company and our partners.”
Nowhere are we asked to use the newest technology, or only consider the flashiest features. We need to build products that will meet customers where they are going to be in 2–3 years. Understanding and building to the trends is most important, and most people won’t ever care how we made it work (present company excluded).
The “full-circle” moment for me was realizing how well these bracelets align with a trend we began watching years ago: the experience economy. Consumers increasingly want to spend money on experiences and feel fully immersed in the moment. Solving that desire for attendees is exactly where PixMob (the company creating the bracelets) found their sweet spot.
For me, this new mantra is a great grounding tool when determining what we’re building and what we’re trying to solve for. It’s not a directive excluding the use of innovative tech, but a reminder that amazing new products can be built with components that might already be sitting on your shelf.
