The JFK Presidential Library And Museum: Clouds Over Cuba [video]

Credits & Description:

Advertiser: THE JFK PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY & MUSEUM
Agency: THE MARTIN AGENCY, TOOL
Category: Best Use of Digital Media
Advertising campaign: CLOUDS OVER CUBA
Director: Ben Tricklebank (Tool)
Executive Producer: Brian Latt (Tool)
Art Director: Brian Williams (The Martin Agency)
Creative Director: Joe Alexander (The Martin Agency)
Director: Erich Joiner (Tool)
Executive Producer: Olivier Fuselier (Tool)
Head Of Digital Production: Joy Kuraitis (Tool)
Executive Producer: Steve Humble (The Martin Agency)
Executive Producer: Dustin Callif (Tool)
Design Director: Matt Gase (Tool)
Copywriter: Wade Alger (The Martin Agency)
Technical Director: Bartek Drozdz (Tool)
Interactive Producer: Kristen Koeller (Tool)
Agency Producer: Kristen Little (The Martin Agency)
Agency Producer: Nicole Hollis-Vitale (The Martin Agency)
Effectiveness
Within one week we had visitors from 129 countries spend an average of 12 minutes on the site per visit. Comments on Twitter came from a surprisingly wide variety of quarters—military historians, cold war historians, alternate history buffs, documentary film schools and filmmakers, interactive media specialists, digital storytellers—the story and execution were powerful in different ways for different audiences. And the discussions continue today. Since launch we've received visits from 182 countries, and the interactive film will take up a permanent place within the JFK Presidential Library in Boston.
Execution
On October 16, 2012, exactly 50 years after Soviet missiles were discovered in Cuba, Clouds Over Cuba went live. In addition to the documentary proper, a variety of networked and synced media were used to enrich the experience. Smartphone users could sync their phones to the documentary playback so all our archival documents, photos and videos would be added to their mobile dossiers as the film played, for review later at any time. JFK secretly recorded the meetings of the ExComm as they debated what to do over 13 tense days, and users could add these meetings to their iCal or Google calendars so they could “attend” these meetings live, 50 years later, hearing all 43 hours of meeting audio and experiencing the tension from an utterly unique insider perspective. And all the events of the Crisis were live tweeted, linking to documents, audio and video, accessible through the site.
Strategy
Our most important media objective was to make our content accessible without being overwhelming. 40 minutes of expert interviews, 200 archival photos, videos, audio and document files, and 43 hours of JFK’s secretly recorded ExComm meetings all had to be at the ready. Since we were retelling an historical event, associating all these elements with their moment in time was the best solution. Enabling the user to access these assets via desktop, tablet or mobile and parceling out the media on demand allowed the documentary to be experienced as either a straightforward linear story or as a rich, multimedia experience, or anything in between.