Landmrk: Connecting Technology with the Environment (2017)

The company ‘Landmrk’ set the challenge:

"How might we explore the value exchange between a user and a brand on mobile devices. How can that exchange be built into an experience that will incentivise users to move to a new location and interact with the physical environment?"

The approach we took to solving this was looking at the way that individuals already interact with brands, which were both familiar and novel to them, as well as looking at the way they interacted with their phones. We conducted interviews with the general public and found that individuals were more likely to go somewhere new or try a novel brand with other people, whereas they would happily go somewhere or use a brand that they were familiar with on their own. We used this insight to guide the rest of our creative process.

Figure 1: Feedback from a survey question, as expressed above.

Our final idea was ‘seasonal train plays’. Our Winter train play was set around ‘The Grinch who Stole Christmas’, which is being remade and will be out in cinemas in November/December 2018. This involved a member of a family (or someone outside of this target audience) using Landmrk’s website to unlock discounted train tickets. Once they were at the train station they would then be greeted by characters from ‘The Grinch’ and ushered onto a specific carriage of the train (from Bristol Temple Meads to Bath Central). On this train ride the characters would perform an extract of ‘The Grinch’, which essentially acted as a trailer for the movie. At the destination, the Grinch runs off the train exclaiming he will steal Christmas. From here the families use their phones to find hotspots over Bath Christmas market and unlock them in order to win back the Grinch’s Christmas spirit. At the end they get an online certificate saying that they helped save Christmas and gave the Grinch the Christmas spirit. On top of this they would possibly be entered into a raffle to win tickets to go and see the movie. Our final idea satisfied the brief that Landmrk proposed for us with a compelling narrative that involved a fun family trip out to celebrate the Christmas season.

Figure 2: This is a basic storyboard we mocked up to showcase our idea in a visual way.

The role I played in this process was largely people-centred due to my core discipline being rooted in Psychology. I extensively researched Landmrk and other similar experiential campaigns, such as that of immersive theatre. I conducted interviews and found significant insights, such as that individuals are more likely to do novel things with other people rather than on their own. I think I helped our team communicate with each other well when we developed friction over certain aspects of the process by getting them all talk openly about their ideas without criticising other team members’ ideas. Finally, I aided our prototype, which was a video trailer for ‘The Grinch who Stole Christmas’- Train Play Experience. I did this by acting out the possible experience that the families may have once at the Christmas markets.

Figure 3: This is a decision matrix we made of all of our ideas against the criteria that they had given us to achieve. We took average scores from the whole group's decision and used it to determine which idea to take forward.