Desperados: Desperados Art Hack — Painting The Unpaintable City

Credits & Description:

Title: Desperados Art Hack — Painting The Unpaintable City
Agency: Sapientrazorfish
Brand: Asia Pacific Brewery
Country: Singapore
Entrant Company: Sapientrazorfish, Singapore
Advertising Agency: Sapientrazorfish, Singapore
Media Agency: Starcom, Singapore
Production Company: Black Sheep Live Bbh, Singapore
Executive Creative Director: Claire Waring (Sapientrazorfish)
Creative Lead: Rob Peart (Sapientrazorfish)
Copy & Social Strategy: Alice Farebrother (Sapientrazorfish)
Content: Aquila Abu (Sapientrazorfish)
Design: Judith Lee (Sapientrazorfish)
Creative Support: Vivien Ong (Sapientrazorfish)
Client Service: Andy Male (Sapientrazorfish)
Project Management: Joseph Torrijos (Sapientrazorfish)
Technologist: Shi Ping Lim (Sapientrazorfish)
Technologist: Ramkumar Annamalai (Sapientrazorfish)
Strategy:
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.Not only did we need to create buzz for the brand, we wanted to contribute to the ongoing freedom of creative expression. We sought to pave the way for ALL Singaporean street artists in using technology to turn any surface into a blank canvas for graffiti.
Synopsis:
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 were briefed to launch the brand in Singapore – the pristine city-state where Graffiti is illegal?
Campaign Description:
Instead of breaking the law, we chose to break normal. The Art Hack. A collaboration between our creative team, technologists, and local street artists to spray light, instead of paint, across iconic buildings of Singapore.
Outcome:
Social media exploded with a 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.
Execution:
Anyone can project light. We wanted our artists to be able to spray light.A traditional spray can was fitted with an infrared LED triggered by pressure on the nozzle. Wii remotes continuously tracked the coordinates of the can to turn any surface into a blank digital canvas. A custom-built software allowed colors and brushes to be selected via an integrated UI and mapped paint particle animation to each brushstroke, turning street art into performance art. We hit Singapore in the dead of night. First, the National Gallery. Next, the National Stadium. Then, the iconic and heritage protected People’s Park Complex. This completed a trio of #Breaknormal street art. With the street-art community and key influencers as our witnesses, in the early hours, we cut and released a documentary of the evening’s activities to show the nation that it really was possible to paint the unpaintable city.