Title | THE UNFILTERED HISTORY TOUR |
Brand | VICE WORLD NEWS |
Product / Service | VICE WORLD NEWS |
Category | B06. Innovative Use of Influencers |
Entrant | DENTSU 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 |
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 | Junior 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 | Auxiliary Art Support |
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 |
Ateesh Chattopadhyay | Consultant | . |
Prashant Bhikadia | Consultant | . |
Sachin Ghanekar | Consultant | . |
Emi Eleode | Consultant | . |
Shanel Moraes | Consultant | . |
The Unfiltered History Tour is a guerrilla tour of the British Museum’s disputed artefacts using Augmented Reality through Instagram filters. From Egyptologists, to the seventh descendant of the Gweagal Shield - 10 experts and underrepresented colonial voices, play tour guide in narrating the true histories of artefacts from their homelands. Within its first month, personalities like Shashi Tharoor, Marc Fennell championed the campaign. On TikTok, users created videos of the tour generating 1.3 million earned views. The campaign was covered by major competitors, including The Guardian, BBC and Hyperallergic.
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 and 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.
The Unfiltered History Tour is an unauthorised, interactive tour of the British Museum where visitors can 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 Instagram Filters that scan 10 heavily disputed artefacts currently on display at the museum. From the seventh descendant of the Gweagal Shield, to the Governor of Rapa Nui - 10 experts play tour guide in narrating the true histories of artefacts from their homelands. Worldwide, people enjoyed extended podcasts and immersive experiences in the voices of the same experts. Marginalised voices, and their experiences became the narrative of the campaign, overshadowing the Museum’s Imperial narrative. The Tour was developed to reach out to young Britons and ignite conversation on platforms that they know best.
The British Museum’s one-sided, imperialist narrative could only be tackled with authenticity. So, expert voices from 10 countries - Jamaica, Easter Island, Egypt, Greece, Nigeria, Ghana, Iraq, India, China and Australia - were brought on to fill the gaps in the lopsided mainstream narrative. This would enable us to gather traction across a global youth audience, including the 10 home countries these artefacts belonged to. Our objective was to orchestrate PR in a way that starts the fire around the campaign as a fusion of art, technology, and audacity to rewrite history. A project clearly greater than the sum of its parts. Publications that catered to a wide field - ranging from tech, political history, art history, design and culture were shortlisted to amplify the key message - unfilter a side of history never taught before in textbooks or anywhere else.
The Unfiltered History Tour was developed by a 100-person strong team working remotely for 18 months across 10 timezones. We got expert voices from the countries these artefacts belonged to - Ghana’s Ernest Domfe and Haki Shakur, Nigeria’s Victor Ehikhamenor, Egypt’s Heba Abd el Gawad, Iraq’s Max Joseph, Jamaica’s Sharifa Balfour, Greece’s Petros Apostolakis, Australia’s Claire G Coleman and Rodney Kelly, China’s Fu Yiwen and Rapa Nui’s Tarita Alarcón Rapu and Sergio Rapu. Their accounts of the intergenerational trauma and suffering of their ancestors, along with the looting of their cultural treasures formed the bedrock for the extended 10-part podcast series and Instagram Augmented Reality filters that launched in December, 2021. To account for changing lighting conditions in the Museum LiDAR (Light Detection Ranging) was employed to create a first of its kind dynamic auto adapting Instagram Filter that blends satellite data with Augmented Reality.
In its first month, the campaign was endorsed by former UN Under-Secretary General Shashi Tharoor, award-winning journalist Marc Fennel, the British Committee, amongst others. The campaign has got coverage in each of the home countries of the artefacts and by publications in the UK helping it reach the British public. We saw earned media worth $631K with coverage from competitor publications like the Guardian, BBC, The Drum, Hyperallergic, Financial Express among many others. “touching and exceptionally interesting. makes an excellent case. There is much non-romantic true love for them all, and it’s hard to argue that these works should not be returned to where they resonate the most.” - The Guardian “No longer will visitors remember Instagram filters as the tech that added dog ears/cat whiskers to their face. They’d remember it as the tech that taught them about colonialism.” - Hyperallergic “the stories behind 10 of these objects, told by people from the countries they were removed from” - Spotify Podcasts 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. 32 million social impressions 40% rise in TikTok followers owing to Tik Tokers sharing their Tour experience videos. 49% increase in total Instagram impressions 21,583 podcast downloads and 5,200 filter uses (in 30 days)