High Five: Resolving Problems with Simple Solutions

This work really impressed me when I first saw it. It’s simple - speech therapy is boring, so how can we make it interesting? The actual implementation is technically complex, making it a perfect use case for emerging technologies. Through the creation of an advanced algorithm and massive data analysis, you now have an elegant solution to a 'simple' problem, despite the complexities happening under the hood.

This work may not have received much attention in North America, but I refer to it when talking about hacking for clients. Governments are notoriously bad spenders, so when I heard about a 48-hour hackathon successfully replacing a government contract that would have spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, I had to check it out. I think this work showcases the true power of the people.

The timing on this one was funny. I was speaking with an AR vendor who was sharing with me some of the latest and greatest AR advancements, one of them being that curved objects are now being better supported by AR technology (to keep it brief). I immediately wanted to come up with a beer bottle AR activation, and then I saw this piece of work! I think a lot of people are wishing that they came up with the idea for printing guitar chords on beer cans, and the AR extension just makes so much sense for this. Feels like a great use case of AR, and overall just a really cool campaign that made me smile when I first saw it, even if I was / am a little jealous.

The advertising industry has a tendency to sometimes treat emerging technologies as shiny objects. Something that sounds good in a case study. I found this piece of work to be a simple, elegant use case for AI - it’s not the first time AI has been used to age someone, but I like how it fits perfectly with the insight around jeans lasting a lifetime. It fits naturally in the story and doesn’t feel forced.

Someone once told me that our speciality at FCB is taking complex data and turning it into something emotional. I believe this work perfectly embodies that concept. Full transparency: I worked on this one! It was a great collaboration between our FCB Chicago and FCB/SIX office in Toronto. We explored a lot of novel use cases of AI, Natural Language Processing and more. All in the journey of delivering what we thought would be the best possible experience for children of incarcerated parents. I hope you enjoy the video.