Title	OCEAN WINDS
Brand	OW
Product/Service	WIND ENERGY
Category	A04. Data Storytelling
Entrant	PARTNERS Lisbon, PORTUGAL
Idea Creation	PARTNERS Lisbon, PORTUGAL
Production	JACK THE MAKER Lisbon, PORTUGAL

Name	Company	Position
Tomás Froes	Partners	CEO
Ivo Purvis	Partners	Executive Creative Director
Gil Correia	Partners	Digital Creative Director
Vasco Thomaz	Partners	Creative Director
André Sentieiro	Partners	Creative Director
João Pereira	Partners	Strategy
Tânia Carmo	Partners	Account Manager

Why is this work relevant for Creative Data?

Nowadays marketing departments and creative agencies lean on pre-existing data to drive decisions. Terabytes of data is daily collected from consumer behavior, in a search to find new consumer insights. Listening to clients and their needs has become a dogma in processes like branding. We are used to listen to the people. What about nature? This is a case about a revolutionary pioneer data collection system. A new machine was built to listen to what the wind had to say, reinterpreting the sound waves into letters. The result was a naming 100% blown by the wind.

Background

In an international competition (Saffron, Totem and Superunion and Partners) it was requested to create an identity for the launch of a joint venture between EDP Renováveis and ENGIE, an innovative company specialized in offshore wind energy with the vision of being a global leader. One of the requirements, was that the new brand and visual identity should reflect the vision and positioning of this new company, as well as the innovative nature of this joint venture and the offshore market itself.

Describe the Creative idea / data solution (20% of vote)

The idea was to reach the brand's name in a different and surprising way. There is this famous song from Bob Dylan that goes "The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.", we took it literally. We gathered a team of sound engineers and scientists and went offshore to the company's platform in the middle of the ocean to find out what that answer was. A machine was built from scratch to interpret the wind's sound waves and translate them into human letters. A microphone captured the voice of the wind and the data was analyzed by a neural network and transformed into written language. The process of data ( sound waves) collection and data interpretation was a world's first.

Describe the data driven strategy (30% of vote)

The strategy was to create a brand that more than evoke its offshore wind relation, was born from it. The first brand name spelled by the wind. The strategy was to find out if there was a pattern that repeated itself. This would be considered the winds intention and saved as the brand's name. There were thousands of sounds registered by the wind, but 2 letters clearly stood out from the wind crowd. This enabled us to position a new brand as the real deal when it comes to offshore wind energy production. A more than obvious know-how of how the wind works, operates and speaks.

Describe the creative use of data, or how the data enhanced the creative output (30% of vote)

We decided that better than us and any creative, the wind would lead the creative way. For that we created a software to interpret the wind, translate it and convert it into a syllable. Then we went out to the sea to hear what he had to say. For 24 hours we heard his whispers. The most frequently detected response was the letter string “OW”. This was the higlighted sounds that later converted into the name “Ocean Winds”, the first brand in the world created using the sound of the sea wind.

List the data driven results (20% of vote)

This was not a case that aspired to focus on quantitative results. The idea was to shake things up in a rather traditionally boring b2b environment. A new brand that more than provide a technical service, would be part of what it sells. The result was the first brand in the world created using the sound of the wind. A brand that is made from the source from which it will produce its product - energy. A brand that opens doors for new creative ways to think a brand and its name and architecture.