Three of the world's largest technology brands-Google, Salesforce, and Qualcomm-turned physical, hands-on experiences into a combined nine awards at the 2026 Eventex and Ex Awards. The wins, announced by design and engineering studio Left Field Labs, point to a clear shift: major tech companies are using experiential marketing to close a widening trust gap that keynotes and white papers cannot bridge.
The recognition spans three distinct programs, but each solves the same underlying problem. Buyers, partners, and developers are increasingly skeptical of abstract AI claims. Belief, the team found, forms when people can walk into a space, touch the technology, and understand it on their own terms.
Agentic AI on Main Street: Salesforce's largest Dreamforce experience
For Dreamforce 2025, Left Field Labs designed and built Agentforce City-a working American Main Street the size of a football field and a half inside the Moscone Center. The installation contained 17 branded storefronts across seven industries and 32 live demos. Participating brands included Equinox, Lululemon, Volkswagen, Pandora, and PepsiCo. The goal was to translate Salesforce's agentic AI platform into something attendees could walk into, smell, touch, and immediately understand.
The results were concrete. Roughly 40,000 people experienced Agentforce City in person, generating 16,000 digital scans-a +1376% increase in scans year over year. The work won Best Use of Event Technology at Event Marketer's Ex Awards, plus three Gold and one Silver at the Eventex Awards 2026. It was the studio's third year partnering with Salesforce on Dreamforce, and the work has since grown to anchor the company's full-year events strategy for 2026.
Putting edge AI directly in attendees' hands at Snapdragon Summit
Qualcomm needed to prove that on-device, agentic AI was not a roadmap promise but already running, already fast, and already real. Left Field Labs built an immersive summit experience that pulled the technology out of the spec sheet. An agentic Q&A tool enabled unscripted, real-time interaction with Qualcomm's CEO. A series of "try for yourself" modules covering deck creation, travel experiences, and other use cases made the company's edge AI capabilities testable on the spot.
The work earned three Eventex silvers. Qualcomm has relied on the studio to shape several award-winning immersive experiences centered on edge compute, building on years of trust between the two teams.
Turning a calendar date into a developer challenge for Google I/O
For three consecutive years, Left Field Labs has helped Google transform the I/O Save the Date from a simple calendar announcement into an event the global developer community actively anticipates. Last year's puzzle, Prism Shift, challenged players to manipulate beams of light through mirrors and prisms. Gemini-powered riddles unlocked bonus worlds as players progressed, turning a date reveal into a hands-on demonstration of what building with Gemini looks like in practice.
The experience smashed engagement records and earned positive media attention from the tech industry. The work took gold for branded games at the Eventex 2026 awards. The studio has worked with Google for 18 years, and the tradition illustrates what long partnership makes possible: each year adds complexity, and each year the experience levels up.
Why this matters for marketers
The pattern across these nine awards is more instructive than any single win. The world's most recognized technology brands are investing in physical, human-scale experience because it does what no other medium can. It converts skepticism into understanding, and understanding into belief. For marketers, the signal is that experiential work is no longer a supporting act to a product launch-it is becoming the primary vehicle for earning trust when abstract claims fall short. As the team at Left Field Labs put it, "It's the work that's getting harder to ignore."
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