Imagine this: a guest walks up to your activation booth. They're handed a pair of aviator goggles and a flight cap. They step in front of the camera, and suddenly — they're soaring. Thousands of feet in the air. Wind in their face. Your brand's world stretched out beneath them.
They didn't board a plane. They didn't go anywhere. But for the next sixty seconds, they genuinely flew.
That's exactly what happened when Action Flipbooks partnered with Sacramento Municipal Utility District at the Capital California Airshow. SMUD guests stepped up, suited up, and took flight in a fully custom green screen video experience — soaring over the utility's renewable power infrastructure, props and all, video delivered to their phone before they'd even taken the goggles off. The line never stopped moving. The energy never dropped. And every person who walked away with that video shared it — because how often do you get to send your friends a video of yourself flying?
That activation is one of our favorites. Not because it was complicated — it wasn't. But because it nailed the thing that separates great brand activations from forgettable ones: it put the guest inside an experience they could never have any other way.
Here's why adventure activations are in a category of their own — and how brands and event planners anywhere in the world can build one.
The Psychology of "I Can't Believe I Just Did That"
There's a specific kind of memory that forms around novel, slightly-out-of-your-comfort-zone experiences. Psychologists call it the "peak-end rule" — we remember experiences most vividly at their emotional peak and at the end. Adventure activations are engineered almost entirely around that peak moment: the instant the guest sees themselves in the video, flying over a city or racing down a track, and their brain registers genuine disbelief and delight simultaneously.
That's a different neurological response than "that was a nice event." That's the response that produces the stories people tell — at dinner that night, in the office on Monday, to anyone who will listen for the next week. "You're not going to believe what I did at that activation." And then they pull out their phone and show the video.
For brands investing in experiential marketing, this is the outcome worth designing for. Not impressions. Not foot traffic counts. The moment where someone can't believe what they just experienced and immediately wants to show someone else.
Flying: The Activation That Never Gets Old
Of all the adventure scenarios we've built, flying consistently produces the strongest guest reaction. There's something primal about it — humans have dreamed about flight since the beginning of recorded history. Putting someone in a cockpit, or strapping wings to their back, or launching them into a branded sky taps into something genuinely elemental.
The SMUD airshow activation worked so well because the theme was perfectly matched to the context. Guests were already at an air show, already in a mindset of wonder and aviation. The green screen experience let them step from spectator to pilot in sixty seconds — and the branded backdrop (renewable energy infrastructure, SMUD's actual service territory) meant every video was a piece of mission-aligned branded content, not just a fun gimmick.
Flying activations work for an enormous range of clients and contexts. Airlines, aerospace companies, energy brands, military branches, tourism boards, theme parks, tech companies doing futuristic campaigns, automotive brands with performance positioning — any brand whose identity connects to freedom, speed, ambition, or innovation has a natural entry point into a flight-themed activation.
Our green screen video activations can place guests in any aircraft, any altitude, any branded sky you can imagine. Custom sound design, motion-matched video backgrounds, props that complete the physical experience — the result is a video that looks and feels like the real thing, produced on the spot and delivered instantly.
Driving: Speed, Freedom, and Pure Brand Energy
If flying is the ultimate fantasy, driving is the ultimate aspiration — and it's one of the most versatile adventure activation concepts we build. Put a guest behind the wheel of a custom racing scene, a branded road trip, a cinematic car commercial — and they become the lead in a story they've imagined a hundred times.
Driving activations are particularly powerful for automotive brands (obviously), but the applications go much further. Tech companies launching new platforms. Insurance brands reframing their relationship to freedom and mobility. Energy companies connecting their product to how people move through the world. Sports brands. Travel brands. Consumer goods companies that want their product associated with the feeling of the open road.
The genius of a well-designed driving activation is that it's immediately relatable. Everyone knows what it feels like to be behind the wheel of something fast on an open road — or to dream about it. A green screen video that puts them in that moment, with your brand woven into every frame of the background, creates an association that no billboard or digital ad can replicate.
We've built driving activations for trade shows, corporate events, product launches, and brand tours. The scenes range from formula racing circuits to scenic coastal highways to fully fantastical branded environments. Every one is custom-built for the client and the campaign.
Beyond Flying and Driving: The Full World of Adventure Activations
Flying and driving are our two most requested adventure formats, but the creative canvas for immersive green screen experiences is genuinely limitless. Some of the activation concepts we've built and love:
Surfing and water sports. Guests grab a board (or a wakeboard, or a kayak paddle) and get dropped into a massive wave, a glassy lake, or a branded waterway. Incredible for outdoor brands, lifestyle companies, beverage brands, and any client targeting an active or coastal audience.
Space and zero gravity. Astronaut suits, mission control backgrounds, the surface of another planet — space activations produce some of the most dramatic, most-shared videos we've ever produced. Perfect for tech companies, aerospace brands, science museums, entertainment properties, and any brand that wants to position itself as visionary and forward-looking.
Extreme sports. Skiing down a branded mountain. Skydiving over a custom landscape. Rock climbing a virtual face. These activations work especially well for sports brands, energy drink companies, outdoor retailers, and any client whose brand is built around performance and adrenaline.
On-set and cinematic experiences. Putting guests inside a movie scene, a TV show world, or a fully original cinematic environment. This is a natural for entertainment companies doing promotional activations — we've produced activations for major studios that place fans directly inside the world of a film or show, with custom sound design and visual effects that make the whole thing feel genuinely real.
Historical and aspirational scenarios. Driving a classic car through a specific era. Walking on the moon. Standing on a record-breaking summit. The scenarios that tap into shared cultural moments and aspirations produce powerful emotional resonance — and powerful content.
Every one of these formats works as a green screen video activation , a green screen photo experience , or a custom flipbook — or all three combined. The flipbook format is particularly extraordinary for adventure activations because the physical act of flipping through the pages animates the motion — a skydiver actually falling, a car actually accelerating, a pilot actually banking through a turn. It's genuinely magical in a way that a static photo can't touch.
What Makes an Adventure Activation Work: The Three Non-Negotiables
Not all adventure activations land equally. The ones that consistently produce the strongest guest reactions and the most shareable content share three things in common.
The props are real. The SMUD activation worked as well as it did partly because of the goggles and the flight cap. Physical props that guests wear or hold complete the psychological immersion in a way that no digital element can. When you're holding a steering wheel or wearing a helmet or gripping a surfboard, your body is already in the story before the camera even fires. We source, design, and provide custom props for every adventure activation we produce.
The background is custom, not stock. Generic green screen backgrounds feel like green screen backgrounds. Custom-built environments — whether they're real locations we've captured, digitally created worlds, or branded campaign assets — feel like the real thing. The difference in guest reaction is immediately noticeable. This is one of the areas where Action Flipbooks is genuinely different from most activation providers: we build original backgrounds, not libraries of stock footage.
The delivery is instant. The moment of peak excitement is right after the experience — in the 30 seconds when the guest is still wearing the goggles and grinning. That's when they want to share. Our video and photo delivery systems get content to guests' phones within seconds of the experience ending, capturing that peak moment before it fades. A video that arrives three days later by email is a missed opportunity. A video that arrives before the guest has walked five feet from the booth is a social post waiting to happen.
Adventure Activations for Every Scale of Event
One of the things we love most about adventure-format activations is how well they scale. The SMUD airshow setup was a single-station activation at a public outdoor event. We've also produced multi-station adventure experiences for conferences with thousands of attendees, mobile touring activations that travel city to city for months, and custom installations for intimate VIP events where every single detail is bespoke.
For trade shows, a well-designed adventure activation is the single most effective crowd-generation tool on the floor. The spectacle of watching someone "fly" or "race" draws people in from three aisles away. The line it creates signals to every passing attendee that something worth experiencing is happening at your booth.
For corporate events and brand tours, adventure activations create the kind of shared experience that bonds teams and audiences. Everyone has a story. Everyone has a video. The conversation continues long after the event ends.
For product launches and brand campaigns, a custom adventure environment built around your campaign narrative is the most immersive possible way to put people inside your brand's world — literally.
Action Flipbooks produces adventure activations nationwide and internationally. We handle creative concept, background production, prop sourcing, on-site staffing, and instant content delivery — everything from the first idea to the last guest's video in their inbox.
What Experience Do You Want to Give Your Guests?
That's really the question at the center of every great activation we've ever built. Not "what photo opportunity can we create?" but "what is the one experience our guests have always wanted to have, and how do we give it to them in sixty seconds?"
Flying. Racing. Surfing. Soaring through space. Standing on top of the world. These aren't just fun gimmicks — they're the experiences that live in people's imaginations, the ones they've daydreamed about. When a brand gives someone that experience, even virtually, even for a minute, they create a connection that's genuinely hard to manufacture any other way.
If you're ready to build something that adventurous — something your guests will be talking about long after the event is over — we'd love to hear what you're imagining.
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