Joss Davidge, Business Director of brand experience agency BEcause, continues his weekly search for innovative ideas and guerrilla campaigns that get people talking. This week he looks at a brilliantly creative project that connects New Yorkers with their past.
At the moment in Manhattan you can pick up a handset in one of 5,000 phone boxes and be transported back to 1993. Payphones across the city have been transformed into geo-location time capsules, where you can dial a number and listen to someone recounting stories and memories of that area 20 years ago.
'Recalling 1993' is an extension of an exhibition at The New Museum, and is a brilliantly conceived oral history project designed to engage New Yorkers with their not too distant, but in many ways very different, past.
The experiential delivery mechanism is fantastic. It embodies the spirit of the age and encourages listeners to stand on the street, with a phone to their ear and experience a one-to-one moment with the past. I also think there is also sense of gaming about it, inviting people to step back in time; augmented reality without the need for an app.
As it required no build, a few stickers and some basic publicity I also suspect it was amazingly cheap to deliver - especially vs. the very high level of WOM amplification it is receiving. It is a powerful, relevant and superbly executed campaign. Hats off to New York agency Droga5 and The New Museum for brilliantly engaging experiential thinking.
Read more from Joss Davidge in our Clubhouse.