IP Activations: Turning Intellectual Property Into Immersive Worlds With Moment Factory

Over the years, Moment Factory has had the privilege of translating some of the most iconic creative universes into physical realities. We've brought our expertise to brands around the world, to some of the biggest names in music and sports, and to leaders of themed entertainment, like Disney and Universal. And in spring 2027, we’ll team up with The Pokémon Company International to launch an immersive Pokémon experience, in partnership with Mitsui Fudosan, giving fans the opportunity to step into the role of a Trainer.

Projects like these continue to show us how important it is to treat source material with care. Understanding the lore, the characters, the tone, and the emotional connections fans have cultivated with an IP over time is what makes us able to build something that’s faithful to what came before, while still reaching beyond it. Done well, an IP activation can feel at once completely inevitable and yet still full of surprises.

Here are some of the ways we’re collaborating with IP holders to make the jump into location-based entertainment.

TURN FANS INTO PLAYERS INSIDE IP-BASED WORLDS

Gamification is one way to widen an IP’s reach, making it accessible to casual visitors and die-hard fans alike. When we keep game rules and interactions simple, we make it enjoyable for newcomers, while still leaving room for Easter eggs that reward those more fluent in the world. Along the way, everyone gets to feel the joy, excitement, and belonging that comes from play — emotions that then become inseparable from the IP that made them possible.

REALMADRID GAMES

With Realmadrid Games, a succession of interactive spaces allows every fan who's ever dreamed what it would be like to join the club to actually do so, progressing from rookie to elite team member within the iconic Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. 

AUGMENTED GAMES AT SPACE CENTER HOUSTON

For Space Center Houston, we’ve adapted two games from our Augmented Games library to run in parallel to a major global sporting event. Every move players make in the games is tracked and mapped to a simulated lunar mission, creating an IP cross-over with two paths to visitor wish fulfillment: the chance to compete like a pro athlete and to "journey" to the Moon.

GIVE YOUR MISSION-DRIVEN IP A PHYSICAL PRESENCE

If your IP exists to do good in the real world, it should meet its audiences there, too. Because immersive experiences are inherently participatory, they can be powerful tools for mission-driven initiatives looking to move people from passive support to meaningful action. They also have the added benefit of attracting culturally curious crowds eager for what’s next in the world of innovative experiences — people who may have otherwise never crossed paths with the cause.

HEART STRINGS BY UNICEF USA

In Heart Strings, our collaboration with UNICEF USA, guests were invited to move through a series of interactive spaces, contributing small actions to create a universal song. Just taking part in the experience made them active participants in the cause — already contributing, already engaged, and more likely to stay that way even after it ends.

ANIMATION ADVENTURE WITH MOLLY OF DENALI

The approach isn’t limited to non-profits or explicitly mission-driven IPs. Take Molly of Denali, an animated series that champions cultural representation, digital literacy, and making education entertaining and accessible. For it, Animation Adventure at Science World in Vancouver, a hands-on experience empowering young visitors to live out those values beyond the screen, felt like a logical next step.

GO BIG IN CELEBRATING WHAT MATTERS TO YOUR BRAND

Too often, we see experiential designers trying to rework what already works. But when an IP already resonates, the job is to dig into what’s fuelling that connection and bring it into sharper focus. Sometimes that means literally amplifying what’s resonating on a larger-than-life sensory scale.

CIPRIANI 25 BROADWAY

At Cipriani 25 Broadway, state-of-the-art multimedia technologies — think pixel-precise projection mapping and ultra spatialized sound — have allowed us to remake a heritage venue into a high-tech canvas capable of morphing to the needs of any brand identity. It has hosted everything from a luxe finale to the Water.org/Stella Artois “Let’s Do Dinner: Summer Series” to a fun and exclusive Snapchat party, with both evenings elevated by multisensory branding and a 360-degree immersive atmosphere.

ARC'TERYX, FOR THE LOVE OF WINTER

Meanwhile, for Arc’teryx, we staged a sensory celebration that brought the brand’s origins to life. For the Love of Winter transported guests to the snowy terrain of Canada’s coastal mountains — right in the middle of New York City — to experience the raw seasonal extremes that birthed the brand’s high-performance gear. The pop-up event proved that even IPs without an intricate cast of characters or dense lore still carry enough "world" to fully immerse audiences in.

CREATE AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE WITH ALL-NEW IP POTENTIAL

While much of our IP work starts with a client’s pre-existing canon, sometimes we are also tasked with creating a brand-new IP for them. With strong character development, a distinct visual language, and sticky storytelling, the immersive experiences we’ve created for clients have been the starting point of worlds that then expand into other mediums.

LES ABYSSES DE LUMIÈRE AT AQUASCOPE

This was the case with Les Abysses de Lumière, an immersive indoor water park experience at Aquascope, which brought cute and quirky Kraki into being. The creature was introduced as a fun in-world character but quickly became something guests latched onto. That emotional pull inspired the client to bring Kraki’s presence out of the experience and into the gift shop, letting fans take a piece of the IP home with them.

CHANNELYOUR STORY THROUGH OUR PROPRIETARY IP

Sometimes, we work with clients sitting on a great story, but still looking for a surefire way to make it land. They come to us with the desire for a clear creative vision and a tested technical framework into which it can be inscribed. Licensing our IP gives them that structure, while keeping things flexible enough to adapt to their site-specific context.

LUMINA NIGHT WALKS

Take our Lumina Night Walks, enchanted nighttime journeys through natural sites, now spanning more than 25 locations worldwide. We’ve used the format to bring all kinds of stories to life, from the evolution of a 1,000-year-old French estate to the resilience of the Acadian people in New Brunswick.

THE AURA SERIES

Another example is our AURA series, immersive nighttime experiences sparking the rediscovery of heritage sites around the world. With over 2.2 million visitors and millions in ticket revenue globally, these permanent experiences are creating ongoing engagement and sustained awareness in a way a short-lived activation can’t.

TAKE YOUR GLOBALLY RECOGNIZED IP ON A MULTI-CITY TOUR

Much of being a fan happens through the buffer of screens and sidelines. So, when we’re developing an IP-driven experience, it’s with an eye to collapsing that distance and giving fans a physical place to actually live the worlds they love (or, hopefully, will soon). When we take those experiences on tour, we collapse that distance even further.

Deep roots in the music industry mean we’ve spent years honing the art of touring: modular set designs, flexible multimedia content, and a global network of on-the-ground collaborators that make multi-city logistics seem easy. More than that, these experiences have taught us the value of meeting fans where they are.

THE MESSI EXPERIENCE

The Messi Experience, created, produced, and designed in collaboration with Primo Entertainment, has already narrowed the gap between the soccer star and his fans in 12 cities around the world with its interactive journey through his life and career. Touring the experience has become a way of showing audiences that the relationship isn’t one-sided, signalling to local fandoms that they are seen, valued, and worth going the extra mile for.

PIONEERING THE EXPERIENTIAL ERA OF IP

Staying authentic to what came before is a crucial part of creating any IP-driven immersive experience. But so is looking ahead and asking how the experiences we bring into the world can add value to the cultures and communities that have formed around them. How can they build on the connections people already have, and how can they make them even more exciting, expansive, and alive?

We’ve learned to focus on designing for what can’t otherwise be watched or consumed on a screen: energy in a room, presence in a physical environment, a sense of scale, the ways people emotionally move through space together. The impact of all of this is certainly harder to measure than clicks or likes on a page. But, in our experience, it’s what people remember most, and why some of the most enduring IPs are choosing not to stay confined to a single medium.

If you’re curious about activating your IP in an experiential setting — or want to see how one of our IPs can amplify your story — let’s talk.