People for Smarter Cities
IBM2013
People for Smarter Cities is a 2013 outdoor campaign (functional posters) for IBM, created by Ogilvy & Mather France, Paris.
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Why it works
Posters that do a job. For IBM's People for Smarter Cities initiative, Ogilvy & Mather France bent ordinary poster panels into small pieces of street furniture: one peels away from the wall at the bottom to make a seat, one curves over at the top into a rain shelter, and one folds down over a flight of steps as a ramp for bikes and suitcases. Each uses simple, bold-coloured graphics to show its function and invites passers-by to join the conversation online. Launched in London and Paris, the trio made IBM's abstract smarter-cities message tangible at pavement level. It is studied as the template for useful outdoor, where the medium delivers the brand promise instead of describing it. It won the Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2013, with jury president Tony Granger calling it classic outdoor that could only live in that medium, and later collected D&AD pencils.
Techniques
- Purpose and cause Poster panels bend into a seat, a rain shelter and a ramp, doing small useful jobs for passers-by instead of just advertising.
- Demonstration Showing smarter-city thinking in action at pavement level makes an abstract corporate idea tangible rather than merely describing it.
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