Interactive Annual 17:
advertising
Big Boston Warm-up: Lands End
“Excellent data visualization and touching music for a very valuable cause.”
—Véronique Brossier
“Wonderful animation combined with compelling statistics makes it hard not to look through all of its content.” —Adrian Belina
The Big Boston Warm-up sponsorship was an initiative to collect a coat for every homeless person in Boston (7,681 according to the previous year’s census), and this online hub corresponded with an installation assembled in Boston. On the site, users could raise social awareness about poverty in the city, track donations and inspire friends to donate. Completely unified content and navigation created an online environment that revealed the magnitude of the physical exhibit and broadcasted people’s interaction with the campaign through dynamic visuals.
- • Meetings began at the end of July and the project launched October 1 in plenty of time to collect coats for the holiday season.
- • Whenever a coat was donated, a unique code could track the donation on the site. Coat submissions were entered each day and instantly reflected on the site in an interactive timeline (with the current number of donated coats) and a map with a detailed breakdown of donations by area.
- • A public art installation of 768 figures (each figure stood for 10 people) was used to show progress toward the goal of collecting coats and donors.
Comments by Aaron Pollick
“Creating a site that addresses homelessness was a new kind of project; the challenge was crafting a motivating story
that everyone could relate to, from research that consisted of numbers and statistics. Essentially, our challenge was to make census data interesting.”
“The great thing about working on the Big Boston Warm-up was creating a site that extended a real-world initiative into the digital space. It really showed how we can blend online and offline experiences into a single cohesive story. The original installation was going to be one statue representing one home-less person; it quickly became apparent to the client that this wouldn’t be possible. We were able to accomplish it online and use the visual of the sculpture to tell a much deeper story. It was a rare opportunity to use advertising to spread awareness for a good cause.”
“The response was amazing, and exceeded our goal we received over 7,800 coats in Boston. Part way through development, Lands’ End was so excited by the concept that they decided to go national with it. Over 33,000 coats were donated nationwide.”
Credits
Tony Yoo, junior designer
Patrick O’Boyle, Lands’ End/Laura O’Brien, Lands’ End, writers
Michael Kuzmich/Brett Swanson, 3-D designers
Aaron Pollick, associate creative director
Adam Smith, Lands’ End, creative director
Ken Bak/Phil Baudoin/Miller Medeiros, developers
Dofl Yun, technical lead
Francis Turmel, technology director
Brett Swanson, sound designer
Crystinue Cho, executive producer
T. Jay Maddox, Lands’ End/Richard Swaziek, Lands’ End, project managers
Firstborn, project design and development
Lands’ End (Dodgeville, WI), client
