CMO Academy Immersive Experience

Challenge:

In welcoming fifty global Fortune 500 senior marketing executives to its annual conference, Deloitte wanted to bring to life a representation of the CMOs’  challenge in navigating the ever-evolving marketing landscape and inspire them to think creatively in embracing the future.

With marketing processes, methods, technologies, consumer behaviors and business models all evolving in real time, CMOs have lots more to worry about than what commercial is running on this year’s Big Game broadcast.

Deloitte’s annual leadership development conference is designed to help future CMOs understand this changing landscape, as well as provide the opportunity to network, and ultimately develop a relationship with the Deloitte brand as a trusted partner in helping them face their toughest challenges on the job.

So when it came to kicking off Deloitte’s recent CMO Academy session, “” bringing this constant state of evolution to life wasn’t just a theme, it was an opportunity for us to create an immersive, data-driven creative experience.

The ask was to create an immersive, interactive, generative experience in which the attendees collaborated to create the final product. This experience was to represent the future state of marketing in which the creative content isn’t simply served, but is an experience in itself, with the consumer shaping his/her own personal version.

Solution:

The resulting concept was inspired by the compression and expansion of time made visible by time-lapse video and animations, in which over the two hour interactive time of the event, attendees would draw frames, which would be compiled into a final film.

During the event, guests would roll one of six glowing crystal balls placed beneath a 40′ floating projection canopy, designed by Dave & Gabe and fabricated by Gamma NYC.  Rolling the ball would draw brush strokes upon this canvas – the speed and direction of the movements yielding unique styles and looks, slowly revealing the impression of a scene from a 3D animation. Because each participation interaction was different, the resulting depth, color and flourish of the animation constantly changed, making it an exciting and dynamic interactive experience.

Every fifteen seconds, we would store the frame the guests had painted, clear away the canvas, and allow them to begin painting the next frame. Once the two hours of interactive time had concluded, we gathered all of the frames that had been drawn, then sequenced them into a new animation uniquely created by the interactions of the guests.

We initially storyboarded a short animation that expressed the themes of Perpetual Evolution and worked with Terra Henderson who vividly designed and animated the story in 3D. These individual frames were then used as the source inputs to a custom GLSL system designed by Vincent Houzé.   The ball movements would spawn brush strokes with colors and sizes derived from the source 3D animation, and continue to spawn from those locations creating the effect of a living painting. During the interactive time, a generative music composition made by Jon Baken formed a sonic backdrop for the event.

The completed video animation was then rendered and presented across the canopy as an animated short film titled “Perpetual Evolution” at the close of the evening, also featuring a unique score also made by Jon Baken. The participants were also given a sharable link to the final animation, as well as a copy to take with them as a keepsake representing the evolution of marketing and the CMO’s expansive role within it.

Team:

Deloitte Producer and Creative Director –  Marcus DePaula

Deloitte Executive Producer –  Alan Schulman

Deloitte Art Director –  Eubin Kim

Design, Direction, Software & Hardware Development –  Dave Rife & Gabe Liberti

Animation Design –  Terra Henderson (terrahenderson.com)

Animation Effects –  Vincent Houzé (foliativ.net)

Music Composition –  Jon Baken

Digital Fabrication –  Marcus Metzger & Aaron Lobdell (gamma.nyc)

Production coordination –  Jen Vance

Photo and Video documentation –  Marcus DePaula