Featuring in no particular order:
John Malkovich
Pikachu
Joe Wilkinson
Lakwena
Britney Spears’ Boyfriend
Kermit
Aimee Carrero
Martin Parr
Jesus
and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Mobile AR Thriller by Doug Liman and his team at 30Ninjas developed for VERIZON
Starring Amandla Stenberg and Myha'la Herrold
“Mr Right” is an interactive rom-com from “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig - starring Sam Asghari and Aimee Carrerro.
Download app here: https://yourmrright.app/
We meet Sophia just as she’s received an invitation to her ex-boyfriend’s wedding. Still heartbroken, she attempts to win him back by passing off a newly developed robot as her date.
This is an entirely new piece of entertainment: rather than passively watching the narrative unfold, viewers of Mr. Right take control of Sophia’s story in this mobile-first experience that can result in one of seventeen different endings.
The film is powered by Verizon - one of the largest wireless carriers in the United States - promoting their extensive 5G coverage. In order to fully experience the film, viewers use features on their phones to explore the story, including AR and interaction throughout.
We made a trailer and 30’ cut down which is being distributed to the 30m strong Verizon customer base and promoted in social and beyond.
MEET YOU OUT THERE GLOBAL LAUNCH CAMPAIGN
Creators of Pokemon Go, Niantic’s first-ever global brand campaign.
Every day across the world, Niantic encourages people to get outside, explore, and connect with friends - old and new. This film celebrates our mission and global community. We remain ever inspired to help people discover the magic and stories of places around them.
Creative direction of film and graphic system in film.
Creative direction of 3D airship.
Creative direction of end ident.
Creative Direction of digital OOH advertising.
Collaboration with Gravity Road, Pulse, Buck, Territory, Mat Voyce and MPC.
Collaboration with Lakwena for art in film and merchandising.
Adweek Article
Film on YouTube
Film on Insta
Film on Twitter
Film on Facebook
Brand and Comms work for business founded by one half of Groove Armada, Andy Cato.
Social campaign for Premium Snacking Brand.
Introduction of Joe Wilkinson as brand “spokesperson“.
Development of #seriously as brand platform.
Brand “newspaper“ THE BOOK OF PIG.
100% CGI. 100% sustainable image and content production.
CGI product renders of all cans and RnD can renders.
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I AM PUNK
LAUNCH OF BREWDOG’S SIGNATURE BEER: PUNK IPA
BrewDog is co-owned by private investors called "PUNKS". The I AM PUNK campaign dispelled the myth that craft beer is for hipsters by showing the everyday characters that had chosen to invest in BrewDog. Positioning Punk as a spirit - not a look.
We travelled the length and breadth of the country to meet and photograph those PUNKS for our campaign. From Fraserborough - founder James Watt’s home - down to Cornwall and back again.
We photographed over 2000 PUNKS in a weekend at the AGM (Annual General Mayhem) in Aberdeen and gave the photos to PUNKS to put on social.
We developed a tool, so people could put the I AM PUNK lettering on their photo. #IAMPUNK trended, and together with flyposters, OOH, and guerilla stickers launched BrewDog as a beer to be reckoned with.
We also conceived, directed, designed and shot the cover for CONTAGIOUS magazine. Smashing a bottle against a wall is more difficult than it sounds, but that's a story for another day.
If you have a super nimble finger scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page to find some content we shot on our travels through the land of BrewDog.
High end WEB AR APP.
How do you get people to interact with a brand when all pubs are shut during a pandemic? With an AR experience that puts a vortex on your outside table and lets you take a selfie with a tentacle round your neck.
Scan the QR code to try the experience if you dare.
TASTE THE FEELING - GOBAL COKE RED RELAUNCH
There is no taste like a fresh sizzling Coke. A taste that is as unique as it’s impossible to describe.
The brief for this global relaunch of Coke Red was to remind people of the magic taste of Coke and the memories it invokes.
Introducing a giant thirsty tongue.
National Trust – 125th Anniversary Campaign
“We all want quiet. We all want beauty... We all need space. Unless we have it, we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.“
Humanity’s need for tranquility hasn’t changed much in the past century.
Taking a quote from the organisation’s co-founder Octavia Hill from 1883 as its core message, the film juxtaposes the all-too-familiar chaos of modern-day life with the calm tranquility offered by a visit to one of the charity’s countryside properties, and makes us all want to escape immediately.
HACKING CHUCKS
A set of three films exploring ways to hack a pair of Converse Chucks. To launch the Converse Chuck hacking community on G+ we collaborated with coders, animators and a real life robot to inspire people to get creative with their Chucks.
FILM ONE Parts of the shoe are disassembled to perform as instruments. Together they play an original track only to re-assemble into a more colourful pair of chucks in a crazy stop-frame animation movie.
FILM TWO A robot comes to life after hours to carve a set of Chucks out of a styrofoam block. What you see actually happened. We programmed the robot and left it to it.
FILM THREE Collaborating with an artist/technologist in Italy we kitted out a contemporary dance troupe from Perugia with Chucks that connect via cables from the soles to iPhones. Every movement produces a sound that then was mixed into a track.
We also designed a font and posters from parts of the shoe.
Initial ideas presented to Converse on a TUMBLR
Banner ads for crypto trading platform.
INSTAGRAM UNFILTERED
A series of films made for Instagram that tackle the real issues faced by young people using Instagram.
The first season was a honest and powerful look at bullying directed by Jonah Hill (His first commercial work).
The first TV spot in the UK for Facebook Portal.
A brother and sister fight for their mum’s love during Mother’s Day.
3 million views and counting.
CHROME RACER
Cannes Gold - Mobile
A Chrome Experiment from Google Creative Lab. A simple idea that was incredibly hard to bring to life. Using Web GL we made a slot car game (digital Scalectrix!) that allowed multiple users on different platforms to race each other. Oh and Giorgio Moroder did the soundtrack.
SONY BRAVIA COLOUR LIKE NO OTHER
The Sony Bravia Colour Wall was an idea that won us the Sony digital business back in 2007. It was one of those rare occasions where the pitch work ran.
We knew we had to do something pretty special to compete with the amazing TV spots Fallon were making. The line back then was like no other so we made a website in Papervision that was truly like no other.
The site is no longer live but won a Silver at the One Show and many other awards including D&AD.
SONY VAIO MALKOVICH ONLINE SCRIPT PROJECT
We asked the community to write an ongoing film script of which John Malkovich had written the first scene. For six months he chose scenes from submissions and a final script was filmed. Made in 2007. Crowdsourcing before the word had been invented, I think.
SONY EXPERIA JOHNNY X 9 PART THRILLER
‘Johnny X’ is a fast-paced 9 part episodic thriller in which the hero uses the X1 to piece together elements of his life following his kidnap by an organised gang. Johnny’s search to uncover who he is dramatises the fact that no two X1s are the same and completely individual to the user’s own life.
The script, written by Dare and directed by Stuart Douglas at Nice Shirt Films, was filmed over a 10 day period Bangkok.
SONY TWILIGHT FOOTBALL VIRAL
We shot this viral clip (yes viral clip) to create excitement for the Sony Twilight Football event.
Produced on a shoestring budget with a real bull, real footballers and real recortadores (chaps jumping bulls) it has over one million views on the Youtube (all real human views, no purchased robot views). No bulls were hurt in the making of this. Only the football got a little, shall we say, deflated... Directed by the wonderful Kim Gehring.
DESKCRUSHER
Vodafone gave us a pretty uninspiring brief asking us to talk about "Normalising Mobile Working". We scratched our heads for a bit and then it hit us: Since the Vodafone Blackberry allows you to work on the move, you might as well get rid of your desk. And the Desk Crusher was born.
LIVE GUY
To launch the world's first laptop with built in GPS and Vodafone 3G connection we created Live Guy, a chap travelling around the UK blogging, erm, live from his Dell "Inspiron" Netbook. Twist: Find him and you win his netbook. (the promo film should have won an award for best use of Lewis Hamilton.)
COINS VIRAL
What better way to demonstrate that Vodafone customers could win £10,000 towards their new business idea than making a film using 10,000 actual pound coins. We never knew money can be this heavy. Apparently we also set a world record for most coins used in a domino-effect, but didn't know it at the time.
WATERSLIDE EXTREME GAME
Our first foray into Appland. A branded game using the iPhone's accelerometer. It hit the App store and became the number one branded game in 52 countries. 1 in 3 people in the UK had the game on their iPhone. Most people in the US thought Barclaycard was a games manufacturer at the time.
ROLLERCOASTER EXTREME
Yes you guessed it, is the follow up to Waterslide Extreme. It's bigger, more colourful and possibly even better.
TOYS AR APP
In a world first we managed to make AR work without a crappy symbol you point at, but found a way to implement skin-tracking technology to make the Barclaycard Toys spring to life right in the palm of your hand. Or on a giant hand on a wall.
BESPOKE BALLADS for BESPOKE OFFERS
Yes, offers worth singing about that's what they are.
Barclaycards Bespoke Offer service is called Bespoke, so we bespoke sung about it.
And what's more bespoke than a ballad based on your own personal Twitter feed?
It doesn't get more bespokerer. Massively helped by our friends from Unit 9 and four exceptional musical superstar acts, we made about 80 BESPOKE BALLADS in 5 days.
Featuring:
The Brett Domino Trio and Joel Veitch - Rathergood.com
Written recorded and put online immediately. Yep that's about 15 a day - one every two hours all unique and about two minutes long.
Which equals (hits F12 for calculator) approximately three hours of branded content. There we've said it: Branded content. If you multiply this with the over one million views you get about 104 views per second.
Surely that's some sort of record, no? No. (Pst. Some obligatory behind the scenes pics here)
BAND AID
Cannes Gold - Mobile
A little piece of magic for the kids. We made an AR app that brought Muppets characters to life when they scanned special Band Aids. Working with Disney and Johnson & Johnson this was a lesson in making complex technology seem amazingly fun and simple. The bigger idea was to turn this into an ongoing media platform but sadly that didn’t make it. Still the kids had a lot of fun and we won a stack of awards.
A book we made with world renown Magnum photographer Martin Parr.
Back in 2005 the Sony Ericsson K750 was the first mobile phone with a decent camera. Our idea was that it was the first phone that took shots good enough to keep. So we gave a phone to famous photographer Martin Parr. We made a site where he uploaded photos taken with the phone and asked fans to take similar shots.
The site was cool but we also made a book. The book is now a collectors item selling for around £250. It's true.
In a first in book publishing we launched "The Fry Chronicles" - part two of Stephen's autobiography - as an app we called My Fry.
We unpicked, tagged up and put back together his wonderful book in a multi award winning and category defining app.
A true collaboration of minds between us, data artist Stepanie Posavec, Jeremy Ettinghausen at Penguin and Mr Fry himself.
BMW Z4 AR TEST DRIVE
There is nothing like a test drive to sell a car. So we created a test drive with a difference. A virtual test drive that allows you to drive the Z4 literally anywhere. Even in the Tate Modern. Until we got kicked out filming.
BMW ULTIMATE TRACK
An iPad/iPhone driving game with a difference. You can draw the track and then save and share it on the Facebook.
DOTS / GE - GRAVITY DAY
One Show Silver - Interactive
Dots is a beautiful mobile game that has been the no.1 game in most countries at some point. We partnered with GE (General Electric) to showcase their Gravity Day Activation. We built a new level for the game called Gravity Mode. If you pressed a little GE button all the dots would fall down to reset the board. In the space of a week that little GE button was pressed 172 Million times. And we turned the mode into a feature that users paid for. Everyone is a winner.
PONCHO / APPLE - PLANET OF THE APPS
Simple enough brief. Get Poncho, a weather app, onto the new Apple show, Planet of the Apps. A sort of Shark Tank meets The Voice for apps. . We made the cutest audition film. Trained the founders of Poncho how to deal with a TV show and crew and then to pitch to Lightspeed Ventures (funders of Snapchat amongst others). The result: Gwyneth Paltrow picks us, becomes our mentor for 10 weeks (she was very smart and very lovely) we get to the final and win $2m in funding. Yes - two million dollars for a cute cat that sends you a personal weather forecast and gif every day. That’s Silicon Valley.
PONCHO FACEBOOK MESSENGER BOT
Poncho, a weather app, was asked by Facebook to be one of the first bots to launch on FaceBook Messenger. Working directly with the Facebook developers we launched our bot live on stage with Zuck at their Developers Conference. Pretty Big Deal. Our weather bot cat went on to be the most successful and well liked bot on the platform with over 50% retention rate after 7 days. It was the first bot that people actually loved.
A very ambitious campaign to deepen Beck's longstanding affiliation with art and music. We built a custom music mixer asking people to create their own tracks from Moby samples and then invited artists to paint live in a studio to these tracks. To handle the live feed we had a special pipe built and put a satellite dish on the roof of the recording studio.
No7 FACE STUDY
When do we ever look at someone’s face, properly in all it’s beautiful detail? This tool, internally dubbed as “Google Maps of the Face” allows the user to explore a natural face to discover the science behind skin ageing and find the best age-defying products for your skin.
We developed this tool in collaboration with the scientists at the skin lab at Boots HQ Nottingham.
While running Dare in 2006 we couldn’t find any good young digital creatives so we decided to make them ourselves. We came up with the idea of creating DARESCHOOL - a graduate trainee program for creatives.
In the first year the application process was a live chat with Marjorie on the web for everyone to see. This was the first time live video had been used in this way. People would call the number just to see what happened. It was a lot of fun, we won a lot of awards, but the main thing was that we got five great creatives from it.
The second call for entries was conceived as an ironic take on the omnipresent and sometimes irritating infographic. It worked to attract candidates and win lots of awards. It failed to stop the infographic madness. The animation got staff pick on Vimeo.
The third instalment saw us take to the streets of London to reel off a host of internet cliches that we thought needed to be called out. With no budget we bagged us a Campaign Big award. Nice.
YES YOU CAN CAMPAIGN
Drinks in a can? Can you? Yes you can. Meet Can Man and his effortlessly stylish world of effortlessly stylish stylishness.
BAILEYS CHEEKY TREAT
What started as a downloadable pdf for a cupcake recipe using Baileys quickly turned into a FB connected microsite (oh yes). Connect and you get sexy James undressing while he bakes, don't connect and you get his funny brother Brian.
BAILEYS BISCOTTI
This humble little Facebook app smashed all sampling expectations by 1000% (or something) and launched the new Baileys Biscotti flavour across Europe. Yum.
NOW OR NEVER
To relaunch Doritos we hijacked a person in LA and took him to SXSW on a private Jet. We posted this film 12 hours later.
SCHOOL OF PRONUNCIATION
Huawei's global partnership with the Arsenal Football Club provided the perfect opportunity to create a co-branded film.
We created a silly viral (yes, it made it onto the Sun homepage) playing on the fact that no-one really knows how to say "Huawei".
Introducing Gordon Friend from the School of Pronunciation.
HELP REMEDIES
One Show Silver - Entertainment
A simple idea - when you get sick, you try to figure out who to blame. We made a facebook app that scanned friends posts to see if they had been complaining of feeling ill or been out partying too much. And then blocked them. At a time when everyone was trying to get friends on Facebook we decided to get rid of them. This idea resonated globally appearing in every newspaper, most news channels and getting slots on The Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel shows in the US. All this without a single dollar spent. It was an idea about a virus that went….viral.
Our in house podcast that became a critical and popular hit.
We wanted to make a podcast as we were investing in a lot of audio companies and our thesis is the best way to learn about an area is to build something.
Our idea was to tell the story of a young woman moving to New York to work in the tech industry, specifically to be an intern at Betaworks and to make a podcast called the Intern.
A little meta perhaps but the podcast was a huge success. It was frequently named in best off lists, featured by Apple but more importantly reached a huge audience. The film below gives you a quick snapshot but the whole story is written up here.
African Surf brand that will launch in the US this year.
THE QUIETEST SHOW ON EARTH
Audience Award Winner - SXSW
As an antidote to all the big flashy activations with bands and festivals we made something much quieter. We took 10 people on a hike in the desert and then played them a one off acoustic show from acclaimed artist Andrew Bird. The songs from the show were then sold on iTunes to raise money for the National Parks. This quiet idea made a lot of noise getting a ton of interest in the music press and beyond the normal channels for Nature Valley.
The Little Giant Squid: Born at the bottom of the deep dark ocean he dreams of a bigger world with sunshine, humans, music and ping pong tables.
An interactive book written and illustrated by us for parents to read at bedtime or for little first time readers.
Inspired by a trip to Pixar where we we broke into a boardroom and decided to write a film on the spot. Maybe one day this story will become an animated feature. We did send the script to Jack Nicholson who we’d like to cast as the wise sea urchin.
Wahanda brand launch across London. Working with the inspiration that is is Malika Favre.
Wahanda was subsequently rebranded across Europe as Treatwell. Photography by the wonderful Heather Favell Illustrations by the marvellous Thomas Danthony. Backdrops painted by me.
It’s like Warhol’s Interview Magazine, only that the conversations happen during a game of ping pong.
