| Title | Desperados Art Hack - Painting The Unpaintable City |
| Agency | Publicis Sapient |
| Campaign | Desperados Art Hack |
| Advertiser | Asia Pacific Breweries |
| Brand | Desperados |
| Date of First Broadcast/Publication | 2017 / 10 |
| Business Sector | Alcoholic |
| Philosophy (original language) | Singapore is notorious for its hardline stance on graffiti. In this city-state, it's not considered an art form, but vandalism. Offenders routinely receive community service orders, and sometimes corporal punishment. With a brand positioning of BREAK NORMAL, Desperados beer has a rich heritage of supporting freedom of creative expression the world over. So what happened when we launched in Singapore – the pristine city-state where Graffiti is illegal? Instead of breaking the law, we chose to break normal. We needed paint that would be as stealthy as our artists, leaving no trace. And we’d use the power of social media to get the visibility we wanted. The Art Hack utilized existing technology to turn any surface into a blank canvas for graffiti. Born of a collaboration between a tight crew of Singaporean artists and technologists, the project sprayed light instead of paint across iconic buildings of the unpaintable city. First, we decapitated spray cans to put an infra-red LED in the nozzle, and a battery pack in the body. Two wii remotes were positioned at 45 degrees to any surface we wanted to paint on. Using custom-built software, the wiimotes track the XY position of the LED. Using more custom software and a projector, the wall becomes a digital canvas, complete with paint palette and a variety of brushes. After numerous explorations, paint drips, dead ends, and broken video games consoles, we pushed things one step further. Our software mapped beautiful particle animations to each brushstroke that really brought the canvas to life. We had a classic Asian bike built to spec, threw all our gear in the back and hit the Singapore streets in the dead of night. First, The National Gallery, where we operated in super-stealth mode to avoid attracting the attention of the F1 guards. Then we headed to the National Stadium and the iconic, heritage protected, People’s Park Complex to create our trio of artworks. We wrapped things up in the early hours and hit the edit suite, cutting together a documentary of the evening’s activities that could show the nation that it really was possible to paint the unpaintable city. |
| Result (original language) | Social media exploded with debate. Was it real or fake? Comments like ‘Arrest and Hang!’. It’s exactly the kind of thing we wanted. Truly expressing the Break Normal nature of the brand and provoking passionate debate around conformity and art in Singapore. The project brought Singapore’s best street artists together with state’s most iconic buildings, reaching over 22% of all Singaporeans via social media. The campaign increased brand awareness in our target audience by a hefty 25%. But this is just the beginning. In the name of creative freedom, we’ve made the art hack software available free so anyone in the community can express their creativity. |
| Media Type | Case Study |
| Length | |
| Creative Lead | Rob Peart |
| Copy and Social Strategy | Alice Farebrother |
| Content | Aqila Abu |
| Design | Judith Lee |
| Creative Support | Vivien Ong |
| Account Service | Andy Male |
| Project Manager | Joseph Torrijos |
| Technologist | Shi Ping Lim |
| Technologist | Ramkumar Annamalai |