| Title | DON'T LOOK AWAY |
| Brand | USHER |
| Product/Service | CHAINS |
| Category |
D02. Interactive Video |
|
Entrant
|
AKQA London, UNITED KINGDOM
|
|
Idea Creation
|
AKQA São Paulo, BRAZIL
|
|
Idea Creation 2
|
AKQA London, UNITED KINGDOM
|
Credits
| Diego Machado |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Creative Director |
| Hugo Veiga |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Creative Director |
| Renato Zandoná |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Associate Creative Director |
| Augusto Antunes |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Art Director |
| Raphael Valenti |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Copywriter |
| Ricardo Honnegger |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Account Lead |
| Daniele Wieczorek |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Project Manager |
| Leticia Hernandez |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Producer |
| Ana Julia Agostinho |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Digital Strategy Lead |
| Agnieszka Porada |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Digital Media Lead |
| Rafaella Pioto |
AKQA Sao Paulo |
Motion Designer |
| Andy Hood |
AKQA London |
Head of Emerging Technologies |
| Emile Swain |
AKQA London |
Creative Developer |
| Paddy Keane |
AKQA London |
Creative Developer |
| Kathryn Webb |
AKQA London |
Creative Developer |
| Andrew Smith |
AKQA London |
Director of Web Development |
| Mihnea Belcin |
AKQA London |
Site Development |
| Joanne Alden |
AKQA London |
Senior User Experience Architect |
| Ruth Baughan |
AKQA London |
Associate User Experience Architect |
| Daniel Mitchell |
AKQA London |
Senior DevOps Engineer |
| Zeeshan Naseer |
AKQA London |
Senior Quality Assurance Analyst |
| Terry Nweze |
AKQA London |
Quality Assurance Manager |
| Joe Holland |
AKQA London |
Associate Programme Director |
The Campaign
Stories of racial profiling and violence against unarmed civilians make headlines with regularity. And while these cases are hot topics for a news cycle, the media and the public quickly move on to the next sensational story without truly acknowledging the lives lost, or making any real progress towards change.
The truth is: While racial injustice keeps killing, society keeps looking away.
To make everyone look back, we created the first music video to demand your attention.
Visitors to Chains.tidal.com are compelled to look into victims of brutality and confront the shocking facts of each person’s story. Facial recognition software, activated through a webcam, stops the music if the viewer looks away.
Creative Execution
Users could interact with the experience by physically facing the screen, symbolizing the notion of “facing up” to racial injustice. We made this possible by accessing the user’s webcam and processing what we could see using web-based face and eye tracking technologies, CLM Trackr & JS Feat.
Originally we developed our own eye gaze algorithms which were very accurate under ‘lab conditions’. However, this didn’t translate well to the real world as regular webcams, different lighting conditions and skin tones prevented the accuracy we needed to calculate eye gaze direction.
To respect the sensitive subject matter, we moved to another solution, picking a library called “clmtrackr”. We then based the solution on head orientation which gave us a good compromise, producing a more fluid experience for a wider audience.
The experience took two months to develop and went live on October 15th, launching exclusively and globally on chains.tidal.com.
Facing the facts was the first step towards people and media engagement. In only four days, the video received 500k views, an average dwell time of 2’33”per viewer and featured on CBS, NBC, Fast Company, The Guardian, Forbes and other news outlets from more than 100 countries, contributing to more than 500 million earned impressions and positive headlines:
Billboard - “No words could do the video justice.”
The Huffington Post - “Confronts racial injustice like you’ve never seen”
SPIN - “Powerful”
Rolling Stone - “Devastating”
World acclaimed influencers from the sports, movie and music industries spontaneously took it to social media and helped make this serious issue part of the world’s pop culture conversation.
Our microsite was promoted by names like Jay Z, Coldplay, Pharrell Williams, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Moore and Kevin Durant.
Don’t Look Away is still on-line and continues to be seen and mentioned in several news outlets.
Chains was launched exclusively at Chains.tidal.com, meaning that for four days, everyone had to look in the eyes and story of victims in order to hear the song.
This microsite became the digital spotlight to promote concerts (like the TIDAL x 1020 Amplified by HTC concert, with proceeds benefitting groups that promote social impact and change); demonstrations, social and art events (like Art for Social Justice at Urban Zen and Miami’s Art Basel). An educational hub, talks at universities and conferences (like 92Y) fueled the social media debate for change.
All digital activations helped reveal and break the chains of social injustice.