D&AD 2019: Design for brand experiences
Designing a more human future with technology
Clients: Samsung, Nike, Shiseido
Agency: R/GA
Guest speaker: Ilia Uvarov (Executive Creative Director - R/GA)
'The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. Brands have to cannibalise themselves before others will.' In a world of constant technological disruption, Ilia pointed out that it is better to disrupt your own business model before the market does it for you.
He gave a brief introduction to the changes R/GA made itself internally. Self-disruption is a driving force of R/GA. Starting out as a VFX company, R/GA made its success on creating title effects for films and commercials. Seeing the internet started to take off and realising its potential, R/GA decided to reinvent itself as an interactive agency. Today the agency helps re-imagine how brands interact with people, and it has a venture branch to invest in start-ups.
Ilia predicted the next five key shifts in the technology: voice becomes the next great UI, wearable tech gets more pervasive, AI starts to manipulate reality, reality will be replicated in AR and humans begin to go virtual.
When it comes to how a company can disrupt itself, the key components include the following:
A brand purpose which inspires and motivates the audience.
Creating new technology habits using innovation that the audience adopts and deliver on that brand promise.
Using products to connect and create new services that form an “ecosystem”.
Creating technology habits that live in interfaces and experiences through design – keeping design at the heart of decisions.
Use data to transform customer experiences. Move away from the idea of consumers to users and, ultimately, to “membership.”
Live in culture.
Mixed reality device - Magic Leap
Website: Magic Leap
R/GA have invested in start-up business, Magic Leap. Their product is a lightweight, wearable device that lets users interact with digital content. It superimposes 3D CG imagery over real world objects, by ‘projecting a digital light field into the user's eye’.
Mixed reality campaign - Samsung Galaxy Skin
A mobile campaign R/GA created for Samsung. The gamers received real-life 'Supply Boxes' – a play on Fortnite game terminology – containing the Galaxy Note9 smartphone with an exclusive Fortnite 'skin'. Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins, professional gamer and influencer, first unveiled this Galaxy Skin during a livestream watched by millions of fans.
The campaign generated approximately 2.6 billion social media impressions and made the Galaxy Skin one of the most talked about and most-wanted skins for playing Fortnite.
(Info from Samsung news.)
AR Jordan
The challenge: for the first time, Nike would be selling the shoes to a generation that has never witnessed Michael Jordan’s legendary dunk.
R/GA created an “AR Jordan”. Using augmented reality technology, He was imposed onto a basketball court in LA, where fans could see his frozen Dunk from the ground via Snapchat. With just a tap, viewers could purchase the latest model of the Air Jordan III, and they were then delivered to their homes within two hours. It was a three-way tech collaboration between Snapchat as the exclusive social platform, Shopify as the check-out partner, and Darkstore as the fulfillment and delivery platform.
Educate and celebrate diversity - Shiseido My Crayon Project
Japan is one of the world’s most homogenous nations. In schools across Japan, small differences in skin-tone are easily noticed; mixed-race children are often bullied. In 2018, Shiseido set out to educate children with a program designed to celebrate differences, using help from a crayon.
Partnering with schools, they held combined art and ethics classes. Shiseido scientists scanned each child’s skin to create a unique personal colour profile. They then created a personalised crayon with the identical colour and labelled each with the child’s name. Children received the pack in the classroom, drew themselves, swapped crayons and drew each other, producing an experience applauded by both pupils and teachers.
Watch the video: Spikes Asia
Images source: Spikes Asia