Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Clear Channel Outdoor, New York, is launching a social media campaign June 16 at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, that is designed to ignite conversation and debate about realizing creative potential.
The campaign will lead to the live creation of what is believed to be the world’s first hand-painted micrography billboard on the Promenade de la Croisette in Cannes, with the mural generated entirely from tweets. (Micrography is the technique of using text to form an image when viewed at a distance, creating an interplay between the text and image),
#canvas for creativity is a Twitter-based marketing program designed by Clear Channel Outdoor that seeks to spark debate and share the best in creative thought leadership against the backdrop of a global, real-time and increasingly digitally-connected world. Clear Channel Outdoor will be hosting and contributing to the conversation, offering its perspective on each topical discussion as one of the globe’s leading outdoor media owners.
In addition, every day throughout the Cannes Lions festival, CCO is inviting two key industry influencers to lead a debate about a creative topic using their own Twitter feeds, marking the tweet with #canvas. One of the influencers signed up to the program is Mark Cridge, founder of digital and creative agency Glue.
The best tweets from each day’s #canvas debate will be collated and used to create a live, hand painted mural, located in the grounds of Le Grand Hotel in Cannes at 45 Boulevard de la Croisette in Cannes.
Using the artistic form of micrography, three world class artists will spend up to eight hours a day hand-painting the best comments, perspectives, observations and quotes on to the giant 16m x 4m canvas, with the final mural image emerging throughout the festival week.
The five creative topics for debate will be:
- June16:: Who owns the creative agenda?
- June: 17: Is creativity an art or science?
- June 18: Is technology redefining creativity?
- June 19: Has globalization diluted creativity?
- June20 : Should creativity be a bigger force for social good?
Social media visualizations of the #canvas Twitter content will be streamed on CCO’s website, digital screens at the festival, and a high-resolution projection on to a separate 18m x 5m canvas located on the roof of the Le Grand Hotel, Cannes. The projection canvas has been built specifically for the festival and sits at the highest spot on the Croisette, a spot never before used for advertising or media at Cannes Lions.
After the giant artwork is completed, a searchable gigapixel photo of the final image will be featured on CCO’s website, allowing ultra-close up visual inspection, and the ability to find tweets using individual Twitter handles.
Paul Evans, marketing and planning director for Clear Channel International, says, “By engaging key influencers and some of the most innovative minds in the global creative and advertising community and beyond, our program will not only inspire and rally extraordinary thought leadership, but we will go on to create a one-of-a-kind social media-fuelled piece of art. There cannot be a better real-world demonstration of how outdoor and social media are perfect partners.”
Clear Channel Outdoor’s international in-house marketing team created the program concept, working with a roster of agency partners, including Buzz Radar (data visualization), CURB Media (outdoor mural, gigapixel image, high-resolution projection), Fishburn Hedges (PR), Proud Creative (design) and We Are Social (social media management).
The artists are Patrick McGregor, an artist trained and working in hand-painted billboard ads and fine arts since 1993, and Tait Roelofs, a Los Angeles based artist working in various media, mainly painting, sculpture, and video. They are part of CURB’s team.
Follow DailyDOOH