THE UNFILTERED HISTORY TOUR

Silver Spike

Case Film

Presentation Image

TitleTHE UNFILTERED HISTORY TOUR
BrandVICE WORLD NEWS
Product / ServiceVICE WORLD NEWS
CategoryC03. Exhibitions / Installations
EntrantDENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Bengaluru, INDIA
Idea Creation DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Bengaluru, INDIA
Idea Creation 2 DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Mumbai, INDIA
Idea Creation 3 DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Gurgaon, INDIA
Media Placement DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Mumbai, INDIA
PR DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Mumbai, INDIA
Production DENTSU WEBCHUTNEY Mumbai, INDIA
Production 2 PIXEL PARTY New Delhi, INDIA
Production 3 VICE MEDIA London, UNITED KINGDOM

Credits

Name Company Position
Gautam Reghunath Dentsu Creative Head of Business
Aditiya P.G. Dentsu Creative Head of Creative
Gurbaksh Singh Dentsu Creative Innovation Lead
Binaifer Dulani Dentsu Creative Creative Lead
Karishma Changroth Dentsu Creative Project Lead
Ashwin Palkar Dentsu Creative Creative Head - Art
Kushal Lalvani Dentsu Creative Copy Lead
Aabhaas Shreshtha Dentsu Creative Creative - Art
Anjali Thomas Dentsu Creative Account Manager
Geetika Sood Dentsu Creative Creative Producer
Niranjan Raghu Dentsu Creative Video Lead
Manish Joseph Dentsu Creative Motion Graphics Lead
Ishtaarth Dalmia Dentsu Creative Strategist
Ananya S Rao Dentsu Creative Strategist
Meghna Yesudas Dentsu Creative Social Lead
Shaleen Wadhwana Consultant Research Consultant
Shreya Vivek Arora Dentsu Creative Senior Art Director
Tanya Paul Dentsu Creative Senior Art Director
Vignesh Praveen Dentsu Creative Animation and Video Production
Manasi Sheth Dentsu Creative Art Director
Rakesh Bairwa Dentsu Creative Lead Web Developer
Rahul Sharma Dentsu Creative Web Developer
Gerson Pearson Dentsu Creative Video and Mixed Reality Producer
Priyanka Borah Dentsu Creative Business Lead
Stuti Sudha Dentsu Creative Copywriter
Amey Chodankar Dentsu Creative Creative - Art
Karthik Nambiar Dentsu Creative Creative - Art
Farishte Irani Dentsu Creative Microsite - Copy
Vaishakh Kolaprath Dentsu Creative Art Director
Ronak Chugh Rooted Films LLP Films
Sameer Rahat Consultant Music Composer
Jeremy Pinto Vivi5 Studios Motion Graphics
Manas Sharma Vivi5 Studios Motion Graphics
Mehul Mahicha Vivi5 Studios Motion Graphics
Prashant Bhikadia Consultant .
Ateesh Chattopadhyay Consultant .
Emi Eleode Consultant .
Shanel Moraes Consultant .
Sachin Ghanekar Consultant .

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

The Unfiltered History Tour uses Instagram Augmented Reality Filters to let visitors scan the British Museum’s disputed artefacts, teleporting them back to their homeland, as experts from these countries play tour guide in an immersive audio-visual experience. Worldwide, people enjoyed extended podcasts told by the same experts. Developed right under the Museum’s nose, the campaign was covered by VICE's competitors, establishing VICE as a thought-leader in postcolonialism, and built equity from its series, ‘Empires of Dirt’. The idea was to use the British Museum’s space and exhibit to talk about the one thing it had historically papered over - colonialism.

Background

Situation The British Museum is the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods with over 8 million objects - that’s a lot of potentially looted artefacts. But for centuries, we’ve only heard the imperialist version of how they got there. An equitable environment can only be created when silenced voices express the intergenerational trauma caused by colonial loot. Brief To place VICE World News at the forefront of conversations around colonialism and challenge dominant cultures by opening up dialogue to countries around the world to create a balance in the way history has been told. Objectives 1. Give a platform to underrepresented minority voices to share their accounts of artefacts that belong to their country. 2. Re-ignite the ongoing conversation on repatriation & postcolonialism, with VICE championing marginalised voices. 3. Educate young people about the untold side of history using a tool as accessible as Instagram filters to tell unfiltered stories.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

The Unfiltered History Tour is a guerrilla Tour of the British Museum carried out via Instagram filters where visitors can connect to the British Museum’s WiFi, scan disputed artefacts, and see them being teleported back in time to their home countries. Using Augmented Reality to showcase first-ever visual depictions of scenes of colonial crime, we created Filters that scanned 10 of the Museum’s disputed artefacts and narrated their true histories in the voices of expert natives. All accessed inside the British Museum, using the resources of the British Museum. Those who aren’t at the British Museum can also unfilter history from wherever they are in the world, with immersive audio-video experiences and extended podcasts detailing the stories of colonial crime, hosted on the Unfiltered History Tour website.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Through an exhaustive selection process in consultation with an art historian, disputed artefacts with an imperialist narrative were chosen, with equal representation across continents and cultures - Jamaica, Easter Island, Egypt, Greece, Nigeria, Ghana, Iraq, India, China and Australia. Authenticity was at the forefront of the project, in collaboration with native experts from 10 countries who presented a side of history never seen or read in textbooks or by the Museum. This approach went against the mainstream narrative around colonial artefacts pushed by major publications and the Museum itself. We went social-first and spoke to young people on platforms they were most likely to take notice of - Instagram, Tik Tok, Spotify, Apple Music among others. Visitors to the British Museum were invited to experience another side of history by taking the Unfiltered History Tour. And people across the globe could unfilter history through an immersive audio and video experience.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

The Unfiltered History Tour was developed remotely over 18 months, with a local team in London gathering data on measurements and placements. During development, our biggest ally was ironically, the Museum’s layout on Google Earth. To account for changing lighting conditions in the Museum and ensure a seamless user experience, AR technicians employed LiDAR (Light Detection Ranging) data integration, developing a first-of-its-kind dynamic auto adapting Instagram Filter that blends satellite data with Augmented Reality. At any given point, only 1% of the British Museum's collection is on display. Through our extended podcast series, users could continue to discover the unfiltered history of artefacts not on display. The Instagram filters faced multiple rounds of rejection by the Spark AR team for being ‘shocking, sensational, excessively violent. However it was reviewed out of context, without the overlay of native representation. After nearly 20 design iterations, they were approved and deployed.

List the results (30% of vote)

The campaign launched in December, 2021 and in its first month has seen Earned media worth $631K 32 million social impressions 40% rise in TikTok followers and 49% increase in total Instagram impressions 21,583 podcast downloads and 5,200 filter uses (in 30 days) Change in behaviour According to a 2014 survey, 59% of Britons were proud of the British Empire. In a poll conducted weeks after the Tour was launched, 59% of Britons said they believed the Parthenon Marbles (part of the Tour) belonged in Greece, a sharp turn in the opposite direction. The podcast series let us go a lot deeper with the project and give audiences something heavily educational, not found in British history textbooks. What some users had to say after taking the tour: “Clever and a brilliant way of teaching historical reality” “Confronts and challenges colonial origins.” “Hearing the past told by multiple perspectives gives depth.”

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