Pick up the lobster telephone at the Dalí Museum, a replica of Dalí's own, and Salvador Dalí answers. Not a recording, not a menu of questions. Him, live, in his own voice. You can ask about Picasso, or about Gala, or what he made of death. You can also just tell him about your morning and let him take it somewhere strange. The conversation goes wherever you take it, though Dalí being Dalí, he has opinions about where that should be. Ask him something dull and he'll steer you somewhere better.
We brought him back once before, with Dalí Lives, a digital recreation that let visitors meet the artist through pre-generated video. He spoke and you watched. Every word he could say, we wrote in advance. This time nobody knows what he's going to say, including us.
The voice was built with ElevenLabs out of archival recordings, and we were listening for specific things: the accent drifting between Spanish, French and English, the theatrical timing, the way he leans on a word until it means something else. The personality came out of his own writing and decades of interviews, tuned until his answers sound like him thinking rather than a model reciting. Then all of it had to arrive fast enough to feel like a phone call. Wait a second too long for an answer and you stop talking to Dalí and start waiting on a computer. Most of the work went into that second.
Dalí spent his career reaching for whatever medium was newest. Film, holography, stereoscopic painting, usually before anyone had worked out what it was for. There's something fitting about him being the one on the other end of the line this time.
A year after the museum installation, we gave him a phone number. Dial Dalí let anyone call the artist from anywhere in the world, no ticket required.
Salvador Dalí’s art was shaped by his fascination with dreams – the way they blur reality and imagination. That idea inspired us to create Dream Tapestry, an interactive experience that invites visitors of the Dalí Museum to explore their own subconscious, just as Dalí did.
In collaboration with OpenAI, we brought DALL·E to the Dalí Museum, giving visitors the chance to turn their dreams into art. By simply describing their dream, they could watch as AI transformed their words into vivid, surreal paintings. Then we took it a step further: every few minutes, the system wove six individual dream paintings into a collective tapestry, reflecting the shared mystery of dreams.
So far, visitors have dreamed over 100,000 artworks, creating a constantly evolving tapestry of personal and collective imagination displayed on the museum’s walls.
Launched November 2022
“We’re making Rubles worthless to Russia, and yet valuable to the people of Ukraine”.
When Russia invaded Ukraine their currency, the Ruble. plummeted in value. Clemens Zlami managed to get his hands on about 7,500 of them, just before they were banned in the western world. To get our hands on more, we had to resort to smuggling.
We got two more stashes of Rubles in St. Petersburg and Iraq, and secretly brought them to the US. The worthless money was then shipped to 30 artists from around the world who turned them into art.
The project turned 43,250 rubles (worth $300) into just under $20,000 USD in humanitarian aid.
The art was sold collection as 1/1 NFTs, each NFT came with the matching framed IRL artwork. 100% of sales were donated to the CARE.org humanitarian aid program in Ukraine.
In July 2021, Cheetos teamed up with adidas and Bad Bunny to drop a limited-edition fashion line. But with bots and resellers snatching up products left and right, we needed a clever way to make sure real fans were the ones getting their hands on the new gear.
So, we built a “real-Cheetos-fan” detector that recognized the famous orange dust on people’s fingers. All you had to do was show off your Cheetos-stained fingertips on any camera, and you’d unlock access to the exclusive collection—something no bot could fake.
For years, I've been wanting to create a content platform where the only way to access the content was on a Doritos chip — a platform where everything is "Doritos Exclusive."
We tried to bring this idea to life many times, but it wasn't until the technology was ready that we managed to make it happen. We trained our own model that can detect and segment Doritos chips in real time on your phone, even telling them apart from competitors. Over months, we manually labeled, segmented, and entered thousands of images of Doritos into our dataset.
To launch the idea during the Super Bowl, we partnered with Megan Thee Stallion and Snapchat. Megan created an exclusive song and music video called "Flamin' Hottie." Using augmented reality on Snapchat, fans could unlock this exclusive content by scanning a Doritos chip with their phones. All they had to do was open the app, point their camera at a Doritos chip, and enjoy the exclusive music video.
Since 1975, many renowned artists have used BMWs as canvases to leave their creative creative mark on the brand. In 2020, we decided to take the next step in combining art and engineering.
So, we tasked AI to design the artwork for our most sophisticated vehicle yet: the 8 Gran Coupe. Inviting a new intelligence to leave its mark on BMW and design The Ultimate Masterpiece.
Released • May 2021
Fear can make you see crazy things. Like a gun. That’s a sad truth for black Americans, who are three times more likely than white people to be killed by police. To raise awareness of this issue and to offer a solution, we partnered with Courageous Conversation Global Foundation, to launch the “Not a Gun” campaign.
Inspired by real cases, the 360-campaign includes an outdoor and print portion that re-imagines products such as candy bars and cell phones in the hands of people of color, re-labeling them to say “Not a Gun.”
In addition, we produced a film that follows a a black man ordering a candy bar, just like his white counterparts. But instead of being handed candy, he’s handed a gun. The film highlights the disturbing issue of unconscious bias against people of color in situations where firearms are presumed to be present.
The work all leads to notagun.org, where people can sign a petition calling for more de-escalation training in police departments, as well calling for them to take unconscious-bias training administered by CCGF.
Salvador Dalí once said, “If someday I may die, though it is unlikely, I hope the people in the cafés will say, ‘Dalí has died, but not entirely.’”
Inspired by his words, we set out to create an experience that would keep Dalí’s spirit alive, and give visitors of the Dalí Museum the chance to learn about his life and work from the person who knew him best: the artist himself.
Using AI and deepfake technology, a tool known for more controversial uses to celebrate Dalí’s life and work. We started by training a machine learning model on hundreds of archival photos and videos of Dalí to capture his likeness, mannerisms, and expressions. We then superimposed this digital recreation onto an actor, combining Dalí’s unique personality with an authentic physical presence.
Launched April 2019
Awards
Silver – Digital Craft: AI Storytelling – Cannes Lions 2019
Silver – Design: Digital Installations & Events – Cannes Lions 2019
2 Shortlists — Cannes Lions 2019
Timed with Women’s History Month, we partnered with Daughters of the Evolution to create Lessons in Herstory, an app that uses augmented reality to celebrate stories of women often missing from history textbooks.
When users open the app and scan an image of a male historical figure inA History of US, Book 5: Liberty for All? 1820–1860, the app unlocks a story of an important female historical figure from that same period. For example, when a user scans President Zachary Taylor, they will see an illustration and story of Cathay Williams, the first African American woman to enlist in the army (using a disguise and a pseudonym) during the Civil War, when women were prohibited from entering the military.
The app currently features stories of 75 women from the 19th century and is available on the App Store.
Download the App
Launched March 2019
Awards
2 Golds — Mobile – Cannes Lions 2019
Shortlist — Glass – Cannes Lions 2019
2 Shortlists — Digital Craft – Cannes Lions 2019
Shortlist — Sustainable Development Goals Craft – Cannes Lions 2019
1 Gold — Clio 2019
2 Silvers — Clio 2019
2 Bronzes — Clio 2019
“The dumbest use of AI the world has ever seen.”
From smart assistants to self driving cars, Artificial Intelligence is everywhere today. How could we make Cheetos, a snack brand with zero background in technology, a part of the conversation?
So what we did was train one of the first branded style transfer models on Cheetos. We then created an app that using that same model could turn everything you point your camera towards, into Cheetos.
Download the app
Launched March 2018
Awards
Silver — Use of Technology — ADC Awards 2019
Bronze Cube — Interactive — ADC Awards 2019
Bronze — Digital Craft : Advanced Learning Technologies — Cannes Lions 2018
Shortlist — Medium Innovation — Clio Awards 2018
With the World Cup taking place in Russia this year, Xfinity has decided to help fans sneakily watch the games during work hours. The Secret Screen is a specially engineered tablet hidden inside a notebook. To the naked eye, it appears to be nothing more than a paper-white digital screen, but when users put on their special polarized glasses, the live-stream of World Cup games from the Xfinity Stream app becomes visible.
Secret Screens have been distributed to soccer fans across the country just in time for the World Cup, ensuring that they never miss a game.
Client • Xfinity
Agency • Goodby Silverstein & Partners
In the 2012 election, only 45 percent of young Americans turned out to vote. And since Rock the Vote’s mission is to increase youth-voter turnout, they needed to make voting more attractive to their target audience.
But incentivizing anyone to vote is illegal. So we needed an innovative way to reach youth and get them to the polls on Election Day.
So we created Election FM, a mobile music site that launched brand-new, never-before-heard music on Election Day. But it worked only if you were near a polling station.
We partnered with three popular bands—Watsky, the Head and the Heart and Local Natives—to release new Election Day songs exclusively on Election FM. The music could be heard only within 300 feet of official US polling stations. Once users were within 300 feet of their polling places, the music was automatically unlocked to stream on their phones. All they had to do was stay within the listening radius to hear all the songs. If they left the area, the music stopped.
The site became active when the polls opened on Election Day, November 8, 2016, and shut down once the polls closed, creating a one-day-only music event streaming at approximately 100,000 polling locations.
Featured in Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Billboard, Fuse TV, Contagious, Trendhunter, Yahoo! Music, Consequence of Sound, The Drum, Campaign Live, SF & Denver Egotist, brandchannel:, MediaPost, Creativity-Online, Adweek, and more.
Do you love Berlin as much as Lufthansa does? If so, you can win a new life there, we pay alles. All you have to do is to change your name. To Klaus-Heidi.
Introducing, Klaus-Heidi
By selling the dream of Berlin rather than the cheap Berlin Lufthansa wanted to grab an emotional advantage on the competitive Stockholm-Berlin Route. Playing off Swedes love for the city, we offered up one free new life including a one-way ticket, a pre-payed apartment and everything you needed to start fresh. The catch? You had to prove your dedication by legally changing you name to Klaus-Heidi, a unisex double name fit for the modern Berliner. We launched the challenge through a integrated campaign.
The results
Klaus-Heidi made headlines all over the world, reaching over 240 millions impressions. During its peak the campaign stood for 25% of mentions of Lufthansa's brand in social media globally. 42 Swedes legally changed their name to Klaus-Heidi. The winner Klaus-Heidi Andersson got an official welcome from Berlin's Mayor, who coincidently, is named Klaus.
Launched October 2013
