Sponsorship and Return on Innovation
Posted: 1/30/2012 11:35:30 AM by
Lesa Ukman | with 0 comments
Speakers at IEG’s 2012 Sponsorship Conference are bringing unprecedented levels of innovation to the sponsorship space.
Take Intel: With a marketing budget of more than $6.3 billion and with will.i.am as its “director of creative innovation,” the company’s vice president of sales and marketing/director, partner marketing group Johan Jervoe says status quo is simply not enough.
Brands now must become worthy of conversation, to make something so culturally charismatic that people want to talk about it, Jervoe says. Indeed, the classic benefit structures of brands are extending to broader issues and richer containers of meaning beyond features and functions.
For example, Intel’s multi-year, multi-million-dollar partnership with Vice Media for The Creators Project—a vast collection of artists, designers, musicians and filmmakers who are using technology to push the bounds of creative expression—has Intel acting more as curator than sponsor.
As the first-ever “creative partner” for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last summer, Intel brought The Creators Project to Indio, California to “re-imagine the festival experience for the next generation.”
Intel, “Official Sponsor of Innovation” at Coachella
London-based United Visual Artists (UVA) worked with headliners to transform their sets into technologically advanced multimedia experiences. UVA also redesigned Coachella’s main stage to make it a more dynamic canvas, creating a gargantuan audiovisual structure that came alive with other-worldly energy. As a deep, droning rumble engulfed the audience, pillars of light flashed and danced across a massive grid towering 12 stories above the crowd. Parts of the installation actually moved and there were doors that opened so the crowd could see inside the stage. In between bands, the doors shut and ran short sequences. With experimental music by Mira Calix, the Coachella stage-cum-art-installation was a more dynamic canvas for live performances. The appetite for innovation is massive, Jervoe said.
A few months later, UVA did another Creators Project event, this time in Brooklyn, where crowds lined up to step inside a glowing totemic audiovisual installation named “Origin.” The 40-feet-by-40-feet grid comprised of LED-laced stackable cubes, directional speakers and algorithms meant to simulate a machine that had a mind of its own. At one of the last performances, DJ Justice played a set just feet from the cube, which throbbed to the music and responded to the changes in tempo and rhythm. At first, people would stand inside the cube and snap a photo or two. By the end of the night, during the DJ set, entire crowds lay down on the floor, staring up at the swirling light patterns.
United Visual Artists’ “Origin” for The Creators’ Project
“Origin,” whose name references the beginning point of a grid, as well as that of the beginning of things, was powered by Intel’s Sandy Bridge chips. The chips are now on the market in the newest Macs and PCs, but UVA was given access to the chips, as well as the expertise of an Intel engineer, for about six months before the technology came to market.
Intel had three of its top engineers on site during the installations of The Creators Project art pieces—asking artists about any issues they ran into—with an eye toward future collaborations. The Creators Project works on many levels—conversation, photo and story sharing, influencer activation and more, which Jervoe will discuss at IEG.
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Filed under: arts, events, festivals, IEG conference, non-traditional categories, activation