Client: Shocap Entertainment
Industry: XR and Live Immersive Entertainment
Creative Partners: Animatrik Film Design, Lifelike & Believable Animation Design, The 7 Fingers / Les 7 Doigts
Agency Services: Fractional Marketing and Business Development Director, Industry Advisory, PR and Communications, Business Strategy, Strategic Introductions, Partnerships, Digital Content, Advertising, Social Media, Website and Social Media Management, Community Engagement
Locations: Vancouver, BC and Montréal, Quebec
The Challenge: How do you market an entertainment experience that doesn’t fit neatly into only one existing category?
Shocap Entertainment, an award winning live entertainment and technology company with two Epic MegaGrants under its belt, was developing a new generation of cinematic quality live and virtual entertainment combining live performers, contemporary circus, theatre, music, motion capture, real-time digital humans, 3D animation, virtual production, gaming and XR along with their RingMaster IP.
LiViCi: Carry Me Home
The flagship project was LiViCi (Live & Virtual Circus): Carry Me Home, a ticketed hybrid concert and immersive experience created through the collaboration of Shocap Entertainment, Animatrik Film Design, Lifelike & Believable Animation Design and The 7 Fingers / Les 7 Doigts. The production combined Didier Stowe’s live music with death-defying circus acrobatics, dance and theatrical performance, alongside real-time animation and digital characters, Optitrak motion capture, Unreal Engine, game mechanics, Primosa LED walls, virtual reality headsets HP Reverb and Oculus Quest and CG virtual world environments.
The result was a four-audience model: people could experience the show as an onstage performance, simulcast livestream through a browser, as an interactive gaming experience on mobile devices or through immersive VR.
Siobhán had previously collaborated with Athomas Goldberg, Shocap’s Co-founder on multiple immersive real-time human performance projects. Already with a trusted relationship, she was brought on board to help define the story, build awareness, develop strategic relationships and create the communications ecosystem needed to take Shocap’s ambitious technology-driven productions to audiences, media, industry partners and the wider entertainment marketplace.
The challenge was as much about communicating the innovation as creating it: investors and audiences needed to understand why these productions were more than livestreams or virtual events.
The Strategy: Siobhán developed a communications strategy around a simple premise: The future of live entertainment isn’t about replacing the live experience — it’s about bringing audiences together across physical and digital worlds simultaneously.
This positioning helped Shocap communicate its work as a new entertainment format rather than simply a collection of technology demonstrations.
Siobhán worked as Shocap’s Marketing and Business Development Director and industry advisor, translating complex technical and creative concepts into accessible stories for media, audiences, technology partners, commercial prospects and the creative industries.
The work brought together:
- Strategic marketing and positioning
- PR and media relations
- Business strategy and industry advisory
- Strategic network and business introductions
- Technology and telecommunications relationship development
- Partnership communications
- Digital content and online advertising placement
- Website and social media management
- Social media and community engagement
- Industry and stakeholder communications
- Collaboration across creative, production and technology teams
- Maintaining relationships across Canada’s creative technology ecosystem, including DigiBC, Spark CG, Spark FX and Spark CG Society
Strategic Partnerships and Industry Network: A significant part of IRM’s contribution was connecting Shocap’s creative vision with the technology and business ecosystem required to bring it to market.
Siobhán secured a sponsorship with HP for Reverb XR headsets and Z technology, while also facilitating introductions and collaboration with telecommunications companies and other potential strategic partners such as high performance tech corporations NVIDIA, AWS, Epic Games, creative tech and consumer brands.
The wider project ecosystem included AMPD, Creative BC, LiveSwitch, PureWeb and Heavenue for cloud hosting, livestreaming, pixel streaming alongside Shocap’s numerous creative and technology collaborators OptiTrack, NVIDIA, HP, Autodesk, Apple iPhone and ARKit with Unreal Engine and LiveLink for face tracking and retargeting.
Siobhán also maintained an active dialogue with Canada’s creative technology community, including networks such as DigiBC, Spark CG, Spark FX and Spark CG Society, helping keep industry stakeholders informed as LiViCi developed.
This relationship-building extended beyond a single production, supporting Shocap’s broader business development and positioning within the rapidly evolving XR, virtual production and immersive entertainment sectors.
PR, Content and Digital Communications: IRM developed communications that made an inherently complex production accessible and newsworthy.
Content focused not only on the underlying technology but on the human experience — the emotional connection of live music and circus, the excitement of entering another world, and the ability for audiences to share an experience regardless of where they were geographically located.
IRM supported media relations, digital content creation, advertising, social media and community engagement around the project. The Carry Me Home premiere was livestreamed through Maestro.TV, giving world-wide audiences access to an interactive web-based experience – as Community Manager, Siobhán aka @LiviciTiger engaged with online viewers for positive sentiment throughout the live shows. Alongside inperson audiences at Animatrik’s sound stage in Vancouver, and a watch party in Montréal with access to VR headsets – the concert was truly a global experience.
The campaign generated visibility across entertainment, technology and creative-industry media and other international and Canadian outlets, including partner collaboration receiving coverage by Live Design and The Ticketing Business.
Industry Recognition
LiViCi’s innovative approach had already attracted industry recognition, receiving the ‘Audience Award at RealTime Live!’ 2021 for its real-time immersive circus performance.
The project subsequently became a showcase for how technologies traditionally associated with film, animation and games could be applied to live entertainment. Shocap’s work attracted further industry attention through partnerships and coverage highlighting its approach to real-time virtual production, mixed reality and the future of music, circus and theatre.
A Global Premiere: On June 4, 2022, Carry Me Home premiered from Animatrik Film Design’s studio in Burnaby, Vancouver.
The production connected audiences across multiple locations and time zones, demonstrating the potential of a live event designed simultaneously for physical and digital audiences.
In a memorable moment that captured the emotional potential of the experience, singer Didier Stowe proposed to The 7 Fingers performer Verónica Herrera during the concert — an unmistakably human moment inside one of the production’s most technologically ambitious environments.
Extending the Story: Shocap’s Virtual Theatre
The agency relationship extended beyond LiViCi into communications support for Shocap’s growing portfolio of virtual and immersive theatre.
For off Broadway production, The Orchard, Shocap’s in-person, immersive, interactive online adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, starring Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov, IRM supported communications and created editorial content explaining the experience and its innovative approach to physical and online theatre.
IRM also supported communications around Maamawi (ᒫᒪᐏ): Together Through the Fire, an immersive experience bringing together Indigenous storytelling, live performance, motion capture and emerging virtual technologies.
For both productions, Siobhán contributed to website content and social media helping Shocap articulate the creative, cultural and technological significance of productions that challenged conventional definitions of theatre and live performance.
The Impact: IRM’s role helped Shocap move beyond simply building innovative entertainment experiences to building the narrative, partnerships and industry awareness around them.
Through strategic marketing, communications, PR, network development, technology and telecommunications introductions, digital content and community engagement, Shocap was positioned at the intersection of:
Live Entertainment + Theatre + Circus + Music + XR + Virtual Production + VFX + Gaming + Immersive Experiences
The relationship supported multiple productions and helped establish a consistent public voice for Shocap’s broader vision of bringing live entertainment into new physical and virtual worlds. From Carry Me Home to The Orchard and Maamawi, Siobhán helped communicate a fundamental shift in how audiences can experience performance: not simply watching a show online, but entering a shared world where live performance, technology and storytelling converge.
Together, these projects demonstrated the breadth of Shocap’s vision — from circus and music to theatre, interactive worlds and immersive experiences.
Let’s talk
Discover more from Instinctively Real Media | Global Creative Agency
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.