Greg Ketchum, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy New York on IBM “Data Anthem”:
In the next phase of IBM's Smarter Planet campaign, we're focusing our messaging on how organizations around the world are going about the business of actually building it. One of the pillars of building a smarter planet is the emergence of data and the ability to harness it for answers to our biggest problems. We wanted to educate business leaders on the importance of data, provide some context for its proliferation, and suggest the enormous opportunities that lie within it. We also wanted to convey to people that we now have the computational power and advanced analytics to see data in new ways so we can make sense of it. Hence, our interest in finding the most compelling, arresting ways possible of visualizing actual data. On a smarter planet, data matters.
Info from Zoo Films director James Frost on IBM “Data Anthem”:
When Ogilvy New York approached me with the concept for the spot, I was immediately interested as it was an opportunity to take everything I'd learned from the Radiohead House of Cards video I made and explore the different techniques possible with 3D scanning. The Radiohead project was showing data in its purest form - it had a distinctive look and feel and was very much exactly how I saw it for the song, where as with IBM we wanted build a world which was created from data and within this world show how data exists.
The script called for very distinctive imagery so I wanted to explore doing something on a grander scale. Initially the idea was to scan the entire island of Manhattan, but for security reasons and ultimately creative reasons, the decision was made not to. We did however scan the entire downtown area of Houston, Texas. This had never been done before and we spent four days in the air scanning from a helicopter. In post production, we then worked very closely with Jeff Stevens and the team at The Mill, New York to add dimension and space within the environment. Ogilvy really wanted to convey the idea that our world is alive with data; so it became very important that we find a way to show this data in a colorful, vibrant and optimistic manner that would stay true to the voice of IBM.
Client: IBM
Spot: Data Anthem :30
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather NY
Executive Producer: Lee Weiss
Associate Producer: Rich Fiset
Sr. Partner/Worldwide ECD: Susan Westre
Sr. Partner/ECD: Tom Godici
Sr. Partner/ECD: Greg Ketchum
Creative Director: Rob Jamieson
Creative Director: Chris Van Oosterhout
Art Director: TJ Walthall
Executive Music Producer: Karl Westman
Music Track: Viktor Karlsson, “Soul Captain”
Production Company: Zoo Films, Los Angeles
Director: James Frost
Executive Producer: Gower Frost
Line Producer: Dawn Fanning Moore
Editorial: Union Editorial, Los Angeles
Editor: Nicholas Wayman-Harris
Post/FX: The Mill NY
Producer: Boo Wong
Creative Director: Jeff Stevens
Design: Joshua Harvey, Kris Mercado
CG Artists: Rob Petrie, Ruben Vandebroek, James Studdard, Vincent Baertsoen, Joshua Merck, Mike Dunkley, Jeffrey Dates, Jeffrey Lopez, Graham Clark, Marco Iozzi
Flame: Dan Wiliams, Corey Brown, Claudia D’Enjoy
Compositing: Andrew Ortiz, Bashir Hamid
Aerial LIDAR: Aerotec USA
Director- Operations & Program Management: Scott Dow
Helicopter Pilot: Jamie Campbell
Airborne LIDAR Operator: Danny Gay
LIDAR Specialist: William Wallace
Chief Executive Officer: Jim Dow
Coign Asset Metrics & Technologies
Business Sector Manager/Sr. Technical Lead: Travis Reinke
Sr. Laser Scanning Technician: Chance Alford
Sr. Laser Scanning Technician: Phil Barker
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