This experience was one of several concepts within the overarching creative platform, The Youniverse, conceived by Albie Alexander @ Refinery 29, who originally pulled me in to help bring to life. It debuted in London and toured a dozen countries.
Ocular Odyssey was a journey through the window to the soul - the human eye. I pulled in the visualization team at De-Yan, who are both friends and high-gloss designers. The approach had people take a selfie, used computer vision to isolate their eye, and then generate a dynamic visualization that refracted the image through a prism. This was amplified by the fragmented reflections that surround the space.
Secret: One of the clients had a phobia of eyes, so to make the review process easier, I had the experience dynamically populate golden retrievers. Started off each creative review with a smile.
When Don Kim and Daniel Gruden asked if I’d help recreate a scene from Kubrik’s Space Odyssey in 31 days, I didn’t even ask why. I literally ran down the street to their office and dove in. The anti-gravity reference was the inspiration behind the Fall 2018 Asics Hypergel launch and Vice’s I Move Me campaign.
The result was a 30ft rotating wheel connected to 70+ dynamic visualizations projected on a 45 ft backdrop. A 15ft techno crane helped capture the ambiguity of space, while two dancers and a killer crew, including the talented duo at Lobster Eye and Santiago Gonzalez, captured a challenger shoe brand's entry into lifestyle without losing its athletic heritage.
This was the most challenging project of my career. It used every lesson I’ve ever learned, from the pitch to the delivery. Some of the highlights…built the pitch during SXSW, flew to LA solo to pitch to a boardroom of a dozen strangers, created a demo video of the tech at work so Acura (the attempt at making us a legitimate contender), shot a national spot for the TLX (not the original plan), directed the first mass live broadcast event on Facebook Live, created a custom AR helmet in 2.5 weeks, oversaw the launch of a 3 Acre AR race that dynamically changed with crowd input…and pulled off the impossible.
When “that’s a wrap” echoed in the hangar, the team rushed the car like we won the World Series. Most surreal victory of my life.
One of the first people I met in NYC five years ago was Fred Gerantabee. At that time, he was at Grey NYC and gave me my first shot at VR creative. Fast forward to 2018 and he was leading digital at COTY looking for a standout innovation for Covergirl’s new flagship store in Times Square.
Olivia, the AI beauty insider would become the worlds first AI retail concierge. Built on a host of Google services (dialogue flow, speech-to-text, etc), we would transform Covergirl Madison Kirkbride into the digital face of Covergirls flagship store.
Bonus: Olivia was shortlisted for Innovation at the Glossy Awards in 2019.
The second of three rooms with Refinery29 to launch the Samsung S10. This experience highlighted the human voice. The idea of creating a smaller space that primes people for what they think is another infinity room, but upon speaking find an entire universe surrounds them.
By using two way mirrors and controlled lighting, we created two environments - one high-gloss white light infinity space with a focus on the person, and a contrasting dark space revealing a responsive infinite universe of light that shifted based on volume, pitch, and intonations of the human voice.
A project that started with helping an agency out of a bind became a three-year touring experience that launched at Disney World in 2017.
Cigna wanted to get people to think about their health in new ways. The purpose of Bioball was to connect people to their health using the core four biometric numbers, while providing a physically active entertainment experience. The Bioball was a custom made ball that read the players pulse which would then influence gameplay. The two-player game had players capture as many biometric orbs as they could to unlock their own core four health indicators. Progress would appear discreetly on the Microsoft Hololens headset, which also created a 3D effect to the gameplay.
This was an ambitious exercise in balancing what people love to do, what brands want to say, and what clients require when working with innovation.
There are only a handful of projects that I’ll remember 30 years from now. The Whole Story is one of them. A mobile platform created to shine a spotlight, became a tool for a movement that resulted in a real life statue being placed in Central Park.
The Whole Story is a platform that places AR statues of notable women in history beside statues of men. Derived from the insight that over 93% of the statues in North America are of men. In Central Park, there was Tinker Bell and even a dog…but no women.
I wanted the act of placing the statue to feel real and permanent, so the digital experience required a person to be in the place they wished to have the statue. For launch, we brought in the Girl Scouts to explore the park and place dozens of statues paying tribute to these amazing women.
Thumbs up: This project went on to shortlist in six categories at Cannes.
Augmented reality isn’t just experienced with the eyes. We helped the US Parks Service celebrate its 102nd birthday with custom made city-cancelling headphones.
Putting on the headphones cancelled out the sound of the city and replaced it with a streaming of audio from the national parks. A completely self contained experience, no downloads or bluetooth connectivity.
An escape from race and a moment to reset. The experience launched in Seattle, surprisingly one of the nosiest cities on the continent, surrounded by accessible national parks.
My favorite experience for the global Samsung S10 launch. I might be bias as this was an idea that I’ve been working with in some way or another for a few years - the use of responsive heart rate visualizations to connect people to something physical - in this case a field of LED grass.
The other reason I loved this experience was how it evolved during the creative process with the team at Refinery29 and De-yan. It became an own-able Samsung experience that had the soul of Refinery29. For those looking to snap photos, the visual story unfolded as two heartbeats merged together and lit up the room. For those looking to explore, they were rewarded as well, as their touch shifted the waves of heartbeat visualizations creating a unique experience.
I had just opened our office in Brooklyn, wondering if NYC over LA would pay off for quickly building our experiential portfolio. It was 11:30pm when my phone lit up with a text from someone I met at SXSW while riding a petty-cab. Jennifer McBride, leading digital production at JWT, was looking to build an AI acting judge for the Tribeca Film Festival.
Yes, we built a fully functioning AI judge that gave people a rating on their acting skill (humble brag). What excited me most, was the choice to ditch the physical structure as a spectacle and allow the audience to become the spectacle. An experience driven by the people engaged with it. We added a surprising moment where after people acted their chosen scene, the audition played back revealing them in the scene.
What started as a 3-day activation became a 20+ location New York tour. The phrase “No one puts baby in a corner” reached its peak use the spring of 2017, and the TriBeca ReActor pulled in three Cannes Lions that June.
If ever there was a case study for the value of content and play, this would be it. We were brought in to launch Fugglers - a plushy toy targeting millennials that had the subtly of a Garbage Pale Kid and the collectibility of a Beanie Baby.
There was no budget for mass media, so we went rogue. We turned the back room of a bar in Austin into an Adoption Center for Fugglers, where people were screened to see if they could survive these horrid creatures. Filmed it, generated more content, and created 8 months of social media posts. With a budget just over six figures on a 3 month push, the brand launched to press fanfare, grew from 1200 to 50k online fans, reached millions, and met its revenue targets.
On a blind test people often felt the scent of Suave body wash was as luxurious as brands ten times the cost. Working with VICE we created a fake scent art gallery, filmed it, and had each visitor meet the artist behind each scent…Suave.
Designing the over-the-top experience so that people walked through an obscure and pretentious art gallery was so entertaining. I remember sketching out triangles and circles for the design team to bring to life in 3D…using glass and domes and just basically creating shapes that would guide people the space, feel intimate, but be easily filmed. We brought in a great crew I had worked with in the past to film in Austin, and the action filled three-days became the hero spot for the 2018 campaign.
If you told 16 year-old me that someday I’d play music on a BBQ with DJ Jazzy Jeff, I would have laughed, because I wanted to be a dentist. Adult me is glad I’m not a dentist, as this is a lot more fun.
Taking a legacy brand like McCormicks and creating conversation requires some bravery. Allowing us to fabricate a BBQ that became a responsive grill to create a soundtrack while cooking is definitely brave. I was really worried this would just feel like a joke when DJ Jazzy Jeff tried it. But the opposite was true, he loved it. Myron Mixon loved it, and together they made some great hamburgers and built some tracks that had the crowd buzzing. A ton of press, the product at the center of the action, most fun project of 2019.
