Be Part of Something Famous with The Famous Grouse

The Famous Grouse yesterday unveiled an exciting collaborative project with innovation at its core: an interactive sculpture brought to life by thousands of thoughts and ideas on fame from people across the world.

This project is the first in a sequence of campaigns to demonstrate the brand positioning of ‘Be Part of Something Famous’ by giving people across 20 countries the chance to collaborate. 

From Africa to Asia, Europe to North America, consumers were asked to submit answers to the question: “What would you like to be famous for?”  Thousands of responses were then collated in an online gallery, cataloguing the ambitions and aspirations of people from across the globe. 1,542 of the most interesting and engaging answers were then selected to form part of the sculpture. Responses included: discovering life on another planet, becoming the first one to savour whisky on the moon and getting equal rights for all people. From secret dreams, lifelong ambitions to those that just want to be known for being good to mankind, the answers show the truly diverse realities of people’s views of fame globally.

A collaboration comprising of over 34 engineers and selected artistic and technology teams transformed these global responses into a magnificent and innovative sculpture. The sculpture is just over 5m high and just under 5m wide at the widest point, weighs around 300 kilos and consists of more than 62 copper-plated strips forming a giant spiral. Using specialist lighting and a robotic arm, which sits at the heart of the structure, the laser cut words are projected dramatically onto all the surrounding walls and surfaces. The vast sculpture is suspended from the ceiling allowing viewers to stand underneath and experience both the inside and outside reflections. The robotic arm, which sits at the centre, can also be controlled remotely by viewers when standing underneath the sculpture – bringing the sculpture truly to life.

 

Being a blended whisky, The Famous Grouse has always been about bringing things together. From the combination of natural elements and processes to the broad range of experts involved, it is a brand defined by collaboration.

This project comes about as a result of collaboration on many levels. Briefed and commissioned by The Famous Grouse, the project was conceptually initiated by AMV BBDO. It has been project-led by lighting installation artists Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) who also wrote the unique code to laser-cut participants' submissions on to strips of metal. Marshmallow Laser Feast has worked in collaboration with Studio Roso to design the sculpture's shape. MLF also commissioned the kinetic light engineer Ruairi Glynn who designed the bespoke interactive robotic light arm to sit inside the sculpture and bring to life the public's response to the question, what would you like to be famous for?

While we were collaborating with cutting edge artists and technologists, it was really the public that was at the heart of this campaign as it was their statements that have made up this unique sculpture.

 

Credits

Project:    Be Part of Something Famous
Client name & job title:    The Famous Grouse / ‘The Famous Collaboration’
Creative Agency:    AMV BBDO
Copywriter:    Richard McGrann, Michael Hughes
Art Director:    Andy Clough, Dalatando Almeida
Agency Planner:    Lucy Howard
Agency Account Man:    Sam LeCoeur, Anne Benveniste, Bogi Horvath, Oli Stogdale
TV Producer:    Rebecca Holt
Media Agency:    Zenith Optimedia
Media Planner:    Matt Skelding
Production Company:    Prettybird, Marshmallow Laser Feast
Production Co. Producer:    Margo Mars