High Five: From Apathy to Possibility

Perfectly tying into the most successful Netflix show of all time by using facial recognition software to let you order a pizza with 'your mind'...yes please. I love the genius mix of tech and culture here. The beautifully design app, rich content with the 'Stranger Things' cast, and the deep backstory of the Hawkins National Lab experiment gone array make the idea much bigger than just branded entertainment.

Another brilliant tech and culture example, this campaign turns a trip to the British Museum into an interactive, AR experience that explores the true histories of works of art stolen from other cultures. What makes this work so memorable is that it is essentially hijacking the museum and using tech to fill in the gaps the artefact placards leave out. The content for the campaign is all storytelling by people from countries the artefacts had been stolen from, which brings powerful human emotion to what could’ve been more sterile and data-driven tech.

I love this because it’s literally inspired by simply breaking a rule. Coors Light and Mischief found a way to get around NFL rules prohibiting active players from directly endorsing beer by having Patrick Mahomes pitch a branded flashlight. 'The Coors Light' - a long, silver flashlight that carries the brand’s name - is promoted by Mahomes and described as being built from 'high-quality steel so it feels as cold as the Rocky Mountains'. When this came out it was impossible not to laugh and appreciate the cleverness here. Well done.

This work recently won a Grand Prix for our agency at Cannes. It goes beyond advertising by actually inventing a new way to use the product. 'Speaking in Colour' is a voice-activated AI colour system that produces hues based on human inspiration. For example, by simply speaking: 'Crystal clear, Caribbean water', millions of images are analysed in a search algorithm, and optical recognition technology creates a custom colour palette. Using the intuitive power of AI, any colour can be fine-tuned by saying: 'A little brighter' or 'Blend in a bit more blue' to find that one-in-a-million colour. The experience is wildly affective, letting you find new colours that could otherwise be impossible to describe. For the first time ever, colour can be spoken into existence.

Lastly, I wanted to include this insanely simple one to remind us all how a good insight can go a long way in making memorable work. Air conditioning brand Midea and Pereira O’Dell came up with this solution to the insufferable sticky summer heat - a really boring movie. Pereira O’Dell created '90 Minutes of Air Conditioning', an actual 90-minute film featuring nothing but one of the brand’s A.C. units blowing cool air into a room. That’s it. The film ran and attendees were given refreshments and air conditioning as they watched.