Have you ever wondered what it would take to get 25 senior executives fully engaged and on the edge of their seats? That’s exactly what happened when Immersive Labs and our partner, Mastercard, travelled to Pakistan to deliver a Crisis Sim for one of the country’s largest banks. In this blog, we’ll share how we achieved it and how you can create a dynamic Crisis Sim experience.
Let's start with the requirements. In this case, they were clear:
1) To have a fully customised exercise focusing on payment risks and cyber threats like fraud, ransomware, and cash-outs. This is the domain expertise of Mastercard, who had no issues creating this in the Immersive platform with our review and guidance.
2) To deliver this on-site in front of 25 senior execs (including the CEO, CTO, CISO, CFO, and numerous heads of departments). It’s definitely not easy getting this many board members together in one room, so we had to make the first best impression!
What did we do, and why was it a success?
The stakeholders told us that they’d run tabletop exercises before, so this wasn’t new to them. So, how did we turn what they expected to be a routine drill into an edge-of-the-seat experience? What made our approach unique?
Realistic AI-generated videos
The amazing Crisis Sim content creation team at Immersive Labs used generative AI to create highly realistic videos that felt as though they were straight from a Pakistani news channel. Mastercard provided us with a few scripts and ideas that helped bring the AI videos to life.
AI video of a news reporter tailored to resemble the Pakistani news channel.
AI video of a news reporter tailored to resemble the Pakistani news channel.
Why did the execs jump out of their seats?
That’s because we included the following in the videos:
- Footage of their building on the news and customer dissatisfaction over cyberattack repercussions.
- News reporters with local accents and dress styles mentioning the bank and stakeholders, and unhappy Tweets flooding social media.
- A video of their CEO, not his real face of course, but we used his name when it came to an inject where the stakeholders voted for ‘releasing a press statement to the public’. They even specifically asked us to ensure none of these videos leaked! But each video included the message “Exercise use only – not based on real events”.
AI video of the CEO giving a press conference.
Collaboration
This success was a team effort. Getting any presentation done right, especially in person, requires planning and knowing your audience. This is where Mastercard brought their expertise to create and tailor the Crisis Sim exercise while we supported with our guidance and previous customer experience knowledge. Our roles, tasks, and responsibilities were clear. Top tip: If you’re planning an exercise, collaborate with others for ideas and support.
Double act presentation
Presenting as a team made all the difference. Mastercard’s expertise in engaging senior execs helped animate the session and avoid awkward silences, while I focused on facilitating the exercise. Doing this alone can be tricky – I’ve personally struggled with awkward silences during solo Crisis Sim sessions while juggling scenario questions, multiple responses, feedback, and facilitation all at once. Sharing the load was crucial, especially in a U-shaped room where I couldn’t easily move around. In this case, I didn’t need to worry about moving away from my laptop, leaving the close-up engagement completely for Mastercard to lead on.
Image example of the U-shaped conference room this took place in.
The feedback
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive – they said it was their first experience with such a tabletop exercise, a stark contrast to their initial expectations. The AI videos sparked significant interest and curiosity.
The collaboration between Mastercard and Immersive Labs successfully delivered an educational, engaging, and tailored exercise. The bank expressed interest in running a wider crisis drill in 2025 with multiple banks. So look forward to hearing about that in the future!
Finding AI video scenarios in our Crisis Sim Catalogue
If you clicked on any of the AI images above thinking it was a video, I’d like to apologise. They were just screenshots as the actual videos included sensitive, bank-specific details like names and locations that we can’t share externally.
If you’d like to explore AI video scenarios in our Crisis Sim platform, check out titles like:
Immerser
