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Facebook created AR Studio, an integrated development and distribution platform that allows brands and individuals to create, upload and manage custom AR effects from their own pages.

To help introduce this new platform to the world, they teamed up with VFX studios and world renowned artists, musicians, and television and film properties to create compelling, personalized AR experiences for rabid fan-base participation.

The Mill hired us as their creative development arm for these initiatives. Since it was such a nascent platform at the time, we were first asked to evaluate its creative potential by working directly with Facebook engineers while the product was still in closed beta. We then partnered with The Mill to help pitch experiences for each campaign to both Facebook and their end clients.

It was not just a new platform for Facebook, but also a new type of work for The Mill; as such, we partnered with business owners to draft internal production processes, and identified creative solutions for some of the platform's greatest challenges.

In all, we created AR effects for the promotion of HBO's Game of Thrones, Netflix's Stranger Things, Lionsgate's My Little Pony, Lady Gaga's Five Foot Two, Taylor Swift's Reputation, and Takashi Murakami's exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

The resulting experiences were widely adopted and shared, not only by fans, but by show talent and artists themselves, engaging fans all over the world and encouraging them to share their own.

http://creativity-online.com/work/hbo-game-of-thrones-game-of-thrones-night-king-camera-effect/52546

http://www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-night-king-game-of-thrones-ar-camera-effect/

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/08/26/game-thrones-rolls-out-ar-camera-effect-facebook

Vans is not only a strong brand with a loyal following, but also happens to be a sleeper retail success story. They've transformed their brick and mortar stores from selling skate shoes into a full blown SoCal experience.

So it makes sense that they would want to push the boundaries of browser-based augmented reality with an in-store experience for the launch of skate icon Tony Trujillo's latest shoe, the TNT Advanced Prototype.

We partnered with the Vans digital team on their approach for creating the installation, reviewing their code architecture, and helping to customize assets while optimizing the experience.

The result was a 3D, AR experience that allowed consumers to rotate the shoe in space to see it from all sides, as well as explore inside to better understand how high quality material, coupled with innovative technology, helped to create the best skate shoe on the planet.

Mobile applications used for ephemeral campaigns are tough; consumers don't want to download them and brands shouldn't waste time convincing them to do so. Vans' interest in pushing the envelope to instead create a web-based experience was a breath of fresh air for everyone.

Part of the Advertising Week brand, PopIcon is a digital destination that celebrates all things icon and pop culture, from animated characters on cereal boxes, to team mascots audiences around the world cheer for on and off the field.

To celebrate its Walk of Fame induction ceremony, an awards dinner was held during Advertising Week 2018 where mascot winners were brought to the stage and awarded their Walk of Fame rights.

To help drive awareness of the event in the main Advertising Week conference hall, as well as provide entertainment during the cocktail hour of the awards dinner, we built a magic mirror that allowed guests to turn themselves into their favorite world famous brand mascots.

Using a 4k video camera, we tracked users' faces as they walked by each of the installations. The moment a face was recognized, a random brand mascot’s hat, hair, beard, or glasses appeared out of thin air, like magic, turning their faces into the recognizable characters.

Without the need for any user interaction, the PopIcon Magic Mirror provided endless entertainment seamlessly, and countless selfie photos taken, shared and tagged.

Companion print magazine mobile applications are nothing new. For years they've been used to distribute exclusive content and in turn, help retain and increase subscriptions. So when W Magazine was putting together their Fall 2017 issue, they knew they had an opportunity to push the technical and artistic boundaries by partnering with world-renowned fashion photographer and video artist Steven Klein.

We were hired by The Mill as the technology partner to update and deploy W Magazine's official mobile application. We then partnered with Steven Klein to help craft an interactive narrative for the photography and video he had shot with Katy Perry for the issue's cover and interior spreads.

Working with The Mill, we identified a way to recreate the cover of the magazine (Katy Perry's head) in 3D, allowing for an interactive, table-of-content videos to literally jump out of the page. Users were instructed to touch parts of her face to reveal additional content, and inside the magazine, consumers were able to reveal additional parallaxing video of Katy in a variety of audio-led visual narratives.

We also represented The Mill operationally, working directly with Conde Nast's digital team on all operations necessary to develop and deploy both Android and iOS versions of the app to the Google Play and App store.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/10/w-magazine-augmented-reality-katy-perry-fashion-cover

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/w-magazine-brings-katy-perrys-world-life-first-augmented-reality-september-issue-1028202

http://wwd.com/business-news/media/katy-perry-w-magazine-september-issue-10959331

https://www.wmagazine.com/story/katy-perry-w-magazine-september-issue-stefano-tonchi-editors-letter

Commissioned by Samsung for the launch of their new experience stores, Social Galaxy is an interactive art installation that captures your past, mirrors your present, and projects your vision of the future.

Consumers submit their Instagram handle and enter an infinitely reflected, mirrored tunnel, filled with their Instagram photos and captions rendered upon Samsung monitors, phones and tablets. An installation perfectly aligned for the selfie-age, the experience explores the convergence of social technology and the human condition.

We partnered with Kenzo Digital Immersive to install Social Galaxy in Samsung stores all around the world, including at a pop-up brand store at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

As with any bespoke experience, each installation is highly customized due to the physical and technical constraints of each store, as well as Samsung's requested updates. With each new installation, we worked with Kenzo's producers, fabricators and on-site installers to re-architect the system.

Experiential marketing is content marketing and Samsung knows the power of organically spread geo-tagged selfies. Deploying Social Galaxy around world makes it that much easier for an international audience to participate.

Part of the Advertising Week brand, PopIcon is a digital destination that celebrates all things icon and pop culture, from animated characters on cereal boxes, to team mascots audiences around the world cheer for on and off the field.

To celebrate its Walk of Fame induction ceremony, an awards dinner was held during Advertising Week 2018 where mascot winners were brought to the stage and awarded their Walk of Fame rights.

We partnered with the Vans digital team on their approach for creating the installation, reviewing their code architecture, and helping to customize assets while optimizing the experience.

To help drive awareness of the event in the main Advertising Week conference hall, as well as provide entertainment during the cocktail hour of the awards dinner, we built a magic mirror that allowed guests to turn themselves into their favorite world famous brand mascots.

Using a 4k video camera, we tracked users' faces as they walked by each of the installations. The moment a face was recognized, a random brand mascot’s hat, hair, beard, or glasses appeared out of thin air, like magic, turning their faces into the recognizable characters.

Without the need for any user interaction, the PopIcon Magic Mirror provided endless entertainment seamlessly, and countless selfie photos taken, shared and tagged.

The Moody Gardens Aquarium in Galveston, Texas, is ten-story, 1.5-million-gallon aquarium pyramid housing ocean life from all around the globe. When Ralph Appelbaum Associates was commissioned to help renovate and create new content for the structure, they were also looking for technical solutions for their newly purchased digital displays and large format table video player.

We partnered with RAA to design, develop and install a robust content management system that distributes exhibit information and animal content to dozens of custom developed animated screens at each exhibit, as well as publish event times to a variety of kiosk screens throughout the aquarium. Additionally, we developed a custom HAP video player capable of rendering a fifteen-foot, 10k animation on a centerpiece tabletop.

Tzumi is a diversified consumer electronics company with extensive reach into national big box retail distribution. But when they created a competing product to the omnipresent Popsocket, the Nuckee, they decided to change their normal go-to-market strategy and focus first on organic social spread as a way to build market share.

We were first engaged as business consultants, tasked with helping to articulate a technical social strategy that allowed for seamless spread of user generated content via a digital ecosystem that included an an ecommerce store, powered by an on-demand contest mobile application. The brain of the operation would be a bespoke content management system connecting the two platforms behind the scenes.

The mobile applications, built for both iOS and Android, allow consumers to create their own custom designed Nuckees, but with a twist: sure, they can buy what they design, but they can also win cash prizes, and even possibly rev-share from units sold. That's because the customizer also acts as an on-demand contest application. Users can like, share and submit any design they wish whenever they're notified that a new contest has been released.

Through a robust CMS, Tzumi is able to create design contests of any theme or prize, deploying to and in the process communicating with thousands of users simultaneously. Each contest incentivizes consumers to share their custom design on Instagram, garnering likes in the process, and inching their way closer to a cash prize. And with the click of a button, Tzumi is also able to present these user generated designs as new products in their Nuckees Shopify store, allowing consumers to be part of the retail process, sharing revenue with each design sold.

Bloomberg Businessweek's annual Design Conference brings together top industry leaders to discuss innovation across design and business. When putting together the official site, they knew they needed a unique approach for such a unique set of conference participants.

We worked with the creative design team at Bloomberg Businessweek to digitize their progressive design concept for the event and issue which changes each year. What was previously considered a mundane conference website directing audience members to panel descriptions and schedules became a novel design experience in its own right.

The Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group represents some of New York City's most luxurious real estate. So when they enlisted the creative agency, Ludique, to create the official site for their new east-side property, Coda, they knew they needed something special.

We partnered with Ludique to create a bespoke official site whose design captures the feel of the Coda property using large scale building photography, and high quality brand assets created by Ludique.

Powered by a customized and robust CMS, the Corcoran team is able to update in perpetuity both the site assets and its availabilities as apartments are purchased in real time.

Brands are always looking to find new ways to tell their heritage story. But when you have more than 140 years of history to talk about, there's actually good reason. The Mill hired us to help create the Jack Daniel's VR app for trade show usage, a new tool in their sales tactics arsenal.

Localized into twelve different languages, we used the Unity game engine and the Oculus Mobile SDK for Samsung's Gear VR headset, we were able to push the performance of Samsung's Galaxy S7 devices to smoothly playback full 360 degree video at 4k resolution using the next-gen h.265 video codec.