Adage just released its Annual A-List & Creativity Awards Finalist. These awards honor the forward-thinking leaders, top agencies and creative innovators in the industry today.
The Experiential Campaign of the Year category has 3 finalists, and they are definitely reflecting the changes on the industry on what is considered “experiential”.
Check it out.
Live in 1999. Today, ahead of its time.
There’s always something very special and exciting about live events. Even more in these days, when “experiential” and ‘immersive” are every brand’s aspiration. But looking back at Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty 1999’s Fashion Show we still can see something unique and one of a kind, but mostly ahead of its time.
Nature versus machine, fear, exaltation and sensuality were recurrent themes on McQueen’s work and he always turned it up to 11 with his fully theatrical fashion shows. Combining his famous sophisticated craftsmanship and tailoring with his fearless and experimental artistic expression, he took fashion shows beyond a simple display of clothing.
Savage Beauty show ended with Shalom Harlow standing at the edge of a turntable, her arms above her head, protecting herself from two robot arms spraying paint on her virginal white dress.
21 years later, when fear of automation is a current topic in today's culture and society, Savage Beauty ending is still as relevant and powerful as ever.
Winning the environmental challenge game.
Plastic recycling is as much of a hot topic today as it was at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. Only 4% of the waste is recycled in Russia, making hosting an event with hundreds of thousands of attendees an environmental challenge. With an average attendance of 47.371 people per game, fans left behind more than just good memories of the event. They left hundreds of thousands of Budweiser red white cups too.
Being an official the FIFA World Cup sponsor and a social responsible brand, Budweiser decided to do something about it. The solution was to create an innovative and eco-conscious new sports facility in Sochi, Russia.
ReCup Arena is a football pitch made entirely out of more than 50,000 Budweiser Red Light Cups that were collected at arenas and the FIFA Fan Fests after the tournament in 2018.
The eco-conscious arena was an architectural, engineering and design solution that became a free community platform and more broadly helped to drew attention to the plastic recycling problem. Everybody wins!
Guess who’s coming for dinner?
To amplify the brand’s commitment to innovation and creativity, Rag & Bone returned to NYC 2019 Fashion Week with an innovative conceptual video titled ”A Last Supper”.
50 guests including Lakeith Stanfield, Emma Roberts, Carolyn Murphy, Justin Theroux and Oscar Isaac were invited to a dinner party at the The Weylin in Brooklyn. Obviously, all guests showed up to to this stylished and well choreographed experience wearing Rag & Bone’s upcoming Fall/Winter collection.
An Artificial Intelligence machine created by technologist Ross Goodwin was also invited as a special guest. The AI system captured point cloud data of the attendees using computer vision and a depth camera. Throughout the evening, the guests were also captured with cameras to generate data, creating a representation of how the AI sees the world. Towards the end of the night, words and phrases used by guests were transformed into a piece of work displayed on a screen in front of their eyes, in the voice of musician Thom Yorke which was recorded prior to the event.
This content was incorporated into live futuristic video-scapes created by audio-visual composer Tarik Barri in real time.
Opening the magic box.
Imagine a film featuring the the first ever synchronized live performance featuring projected 3D computer graphics, robots and actors. Now add to it the principles of Stage Magic. The result is a mind-blowing experience that takes CG into the real world. Flat walls transform in to 3D cubes, objects levitate and teleport -- it's magic.
The project uses two IRIS and one SCOUT robotic motion control platforms (based on Kuka robots) plus two powerful high-resolution projectors to reveal secrets that magicians usually don’t. As the film unfolds, Box reveals the secret to each mesmerizing technique as it gradually unveils the robotic mechanism hidden behind every illusion.
Bot & Dolly, a San Francisco based robot-centric design and engineering company, produced this work to serve as both an artistic statement and technical demonstration. It is the culmination of multiple technologies, including large scale robotics, projection mapping, and software engineering. They believe this methodology has tremendous potential to radically transform theatrical presentations, define new genres of expression, and literally tear down the fourth wall in theatrical productions and experiences.
Surprise and delight in the heart of NYC
Within the next three decades, the United Nations predicts that the world’s number of city dwellers will balloon to more than 6.5 billion people and encompass 68 percent of the global population.
That’s why that reimaging urban spaces has become more than just a trend, but an opportunity to reshape citizens interactions with the city itself.
Created by Lateral Office, a Toronto based experimental design practice that operates at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism, Impulse is an installation made of a dozen illuminated seesaws. Ranging in length from 16 to 24 feet, the installation aspires to be inclusive and engaging to a wide-ranging public and to activate public space, by engaging ideas of urban play.
This dynamic playground took over the Garment street area with their repetitive units of light and sound that can be activated and played by the public to create a temporal, ever-changing event.
Impulse embodies ideas of serialism, repetition, and variation to produce zones of intensity and calm. It offers a much-needed break from the always crazy and ever busy NYC life and encourages people to engage with public space for the sheer delight of being together, to play and laugh collectively.
Gonna get myself (dis)connected
‘Epic Parties Imagined by You’ is a yearlong series of acts where the beer brand Desperados looks to consumers to come up with party ideas.
Karolina Gilob, a Desperado consumer, felt phones were negatively affecting the way people socialise, and imagined a party to help people get disconnected.
Upon arrival, guests handed over their mobile in exchange for a beer. Following this, the phones were linked up and played synchronized animations in time with the music. Linked together, 2,000 phone screens created a light show, which played synchronised animations to the music.
Very clever are successful activation that tapped on the “getting disconnected” spirit to get people connected to a brand and create an entirely immersive experience designed by consumers.
Making Complex, simple. And very clever.
ComplexCon, Complex magazine’s famous 2-day future-festival in California features everything from sport to style, innovation to education.
One of the most popular attractions at the convention is the ‘sneaker drop’, where major shoe brands create and release one-off exclusives for the event. Needless to say, that every time it creates a Black Friday type of chaos.
Adidas came up with a solution that it was as simple as it could be: an event app. But here it is also where it gets clever, really clever.
Inside the AR powered app, there was a virtual map that led the user to adidas waypoints, which alerts users when and where the drops would happen. At the waypoint, users would find a large, adidas-branded countdown cube hanging from the ceiling that activated the app on their phone. Using the camera function you could scan the cube and have a chance to win/buy the product,
If you “won” the product, the app unlocks the product at a pickup location near by.
The gamifying experience was an overwhelming success and the unlock the drop videos went quickly viral adding more views to the brand whopping 6.5 million images shared on Twitter and Instagram each month.
Everything around us is constantly recording data. But are we aware of this?
This question was the starting point for Refik Anadol, world renowned media artist, to create Machine Hallucinations. Anadol’s first large scale installation in NYC is a mixed reality experiment deploying machine learning algorithms on a dataset of over 300 million images—representing a wide-ranging selection of architectural styles and movements—to reveal the hidden connections between these moments in architectural history.
The installation harnesses machine learning to render New York's most famous buildings in stunning new ways, illuminating the city's architectural past, present and future.
Focusing in the invisible story of data, Anadol’s work always pushes the boundaries of art and technology. In this case, the machine hallucination journey to process NYC architectural data.
This incredibly immersive experience is literally tripping.
Making an idea pop.
Coke’s Happiness machine was designed to highlight the genuine delight that Coke brings to consumers by delivering small “doses of happiness” through relatively mundane activities. It was so successful that Coke took the concept on the road and turned it into a brand activation.
The truth is that the brand’s most famous stunt started as just an idea for a piece of digital content. That only shows the amplification potential of a great activation concept.
In the era of paid, earned & owned media, brand activations can reach a much broader impact through social and digital.
Back in 2010, by posting on YouTube and Facebook and activating bloggers and social influencers, the video went quickly viral, hitting over one million viewers only on the first week. From a viral sensation it became part of pop culture.
How design and experiential can help to raise awareness on a national emergency.
Prescribed to Death: A Memorial to the Victims of the Opioid Crisis exhibit puts a face on the worst drug crisis in recorded U.S. history, personalizing an issue that has been declared a public health emergency.
The memorial opened in Chicago where the public, prominent politicians and health professionals were confronted with a riveting wall memorializing 22,000 individual victims' faces carved on replicas of opioid pills.
Every 24 minutes, another victim's face was carved on a new pill. Victim advocate rooms let visitors hear their stories, see their personal belongings, and speak with surviving loved ones.
Meet your synthetic self.
In the future you might face a unique and entirely new reflection of yourself: synthetic self.
Commissioned by The Barbican, London for the entrance of the exhibition AI: More Than Human, this interactive experience combines AI and kinetic technologies. It presented to visitors a non-human animated figure that wiggles, shifts, and bends in tandem with the user, showing up to 47,000 possible variations in appearance.
The animation also evolves alongside the user, becoming more agile as it learns movements specific to the visitor’s body.
The exhibition received over 88,000 visitors, making it one of the most successful exhibitions to have been hosted at the Barbican Centre. The interested generated around the exhibit is also a proof point of the ever-evolving relationship between man and machine.
A deep dive into the emotional, chaotic, and poetic inner world of Van Gogh’s mind.
Atelier des Lumières Parisian immersive exhibition hall always brings the best in immersive experiences combining art and technology. After Klimt’s successful show, this year it was Van Gogh’s turn.
Using 140 video projectors and a spatialized sound system, the highly unique multimedia equipment covering 3,300 m², extending from the floors to the ceilings and over walls up to 10 m high, Starry Night is a sensorial feast.
Van Gogh’s work, although limited to the canvas, always had a highly immersive element in it. Starry Time captures that element and literally thrown it into the space.
Projected on all the surface of the Atelier, the experience retraces the intense life of the artist, who was never recognized in his lifetime. During the last ten years of his life, painted more than 2,000 pictures, which are now in collections around the world.
The machine was the idea.
Charles & Ray Eames were definitely ahead of their time. Even today, their work is still around us, remaining a reference of modernity.
In 1957, Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America, commissioned the duo to design the Solar Do-Nothing-Machine to show the virtues of aluminum to create unusual things. The machine was also one of the first uses of solar power to produce electricity.
The Eameses were true believers in the power of toys, and this formidable non-utilitarian creation is a good example of their geniuses in using innocent devices and mechanisms to help explain complex solutions in a simple and playful way.
This pre-activation era installation shows how their visionary approach to design is still very much relevant today.
A shopping window with a twist.
Since Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol pushed the boundaries of what’s considered art by bringing a toilet and soup can into a museum, several artists have been challenging the role of art in society and who defines it.
Banksy is a legitimate heir of these trailblazers and his irreverent and socially charged work never lets us down. If art has no purpose, the artist’s latest expression puts a new spin on this paradigm. In fact, this time it isn’t art at all.
The mysteriously subversive artist has launched his own merchandise line to protect his brand against a greeting-card company that is trying to "seize legal custody" of his name.
Gross Domestic Product is a temporary pop-up shop where the products are there for display purposes only. It is also Banksy’s newest installation to critique global society’s major issues of forced human migration, animal exploitation and the surveillance state. Art or not, this activation shows the stopping power of great design with a message.
Writings on the wall. And everywhere.
From its iconic 1997 manifesto ad until now, the Apple brand has built a history of celebrating the ones who dare to see things differently. Adding depth and perspective to the brand ethos, this installation video took it to another level.
To demonstrate how the brand encourages people to look at things differently, each anamorphic message beautifully comes into focus as the camera moves and positions at a certain angle. It is such a remarkable combination of minimalist and polished design with a lot of planning and hard work to make it come to life.
It is so cool that it makes us wonder why it wasn’t done outdoor or somewhere else people could actually interact with it? In short, why didn’t Apple make an activation of it?
Take a look.
The New York Times wanted to bring its highly acclaimed The Truth is Worth campaign to hit the streets. Literally.
The Truth Is Local experiential activation transformed a series of storefronts in the city’s five boroughs to highlight stories uncovered by the Times. Using QR codes, people walking by selected storefront located at some iconic NYC neighborhood could access voice recordings profiling some of the newspaper impactful stories.
The combination of physical installation and digital content creates a journalistic experience that ultimately leave the person feeling they understand the world better. And then let them spread the word.
Find out more here:
This Pill will open up your appetite for creativity.
Every year on the 10th December, the Nobel Prizes are awarded at a lavish ceremony in Oslo. The night’s pièce de resistance is the exclusive dinner served to the laureates.
Lidl, the Swedish chain of discount supermarkets, decided to highjack the event by building a 1:1 replica of the venue and providing 1300 guests with a one-of-a-kind fine dining experience to rival the Nobel Prize banquet itself.
This case study checks many boxes: live event, PR stunt, digital content, social activation, brand and shopping experience.
Bon apetit!
The show must go on. And on.
Karl Lagerfeld, the recently deceased genius fashion designer behind the Channel brand, definitely knew how to put on a show.
In fact, for decades he not only pushed fashion innovation and creativity, but he also created very elaborate, theatrical and one of a kind fashion shows.
This episode of “7 days out”, a Netflix behind the scenes documentary counting down the 7 days leading up to some of the major live events in the world, profiles the 2015 Channel show at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Karl Lagerfeld also knew a little thing or two about getting people talking, this fashion show and documentary are great examples of how live events can live forever as content.
This pill will make you travel back in time.
The year is 2011, and T-mobile was cashing in on the success of Rovio’s Angry Bird smartphone game with “Angry Birds Live,” a viral campaign featuring a re-enactment of events in Barcelona.
In an elaborate live activation version, a smartphone was connected to an air cannon, and used to launch real Angry Birds to explode green pigs and destroy their hideouts.
It’s a great and inspiring combination of live event, digital and environmental design to create highly engaging interaction and an ever-lasting attention grabbing piece of pop culture.
Have fun!