The Weather Gallery - Cannes Lion
Catalytic moments in history, re-imagined through weather.
Originally published by GPJ UK.
Combine the most accurate data using IBM’s expertise in AI with hybrid cloud technology and you get The Weather Company, helping businesses anticipate and respond to consumer behaviors based on the proven impacts of weather.
GPJ partnered with The Weather Company to bring their existing campaign, ‘Weather, The Original Influencer’ to life in the heart of Cannes Lions 2023, communicating the value of their sophisticated ability to predict consumer behavior based on weather, and its influence and ability to transform business.
The Challenge:
We had three distinct challenges to overcome:
1. Inspire attendees with a new understanding of the catalytic moments of human behavior being influenced by weather, and the transformative value of weather strategy with The Weather Company as a partner.
2. With their recent re-brand and increasing pressure from competitive newly-launched weather products from Apple and Microsoft, The Weather Company wanted to build brand familiarity using their existing campaign, ‘Weather, The Original Influencer’. They needed to target senior clients and prospects, but also appeal to a broader audience of consumers by demonstrating how weather affects/influences consumer behavior and business.
3. To stand out at Cannes Lions, one of the biggest, busiest and most popular B2B creative communications festivals in the world, with a truly unique and curated experience that incorporated insights and layers of information, in unexpected and captivating ways across a multi-floor venue.
Our objective was to design something distinctive, memorable, and shareable. Leaving attendees feeling inspired and having gained a fresh understanding of the transformative value of a weather strategy and the significance of partnering with The Weather Company.
The Solution/Experience:
It began with a simple yet profound idea: harness the beauty and unpredictability of weather patterns to create an unforgettable experience that also informed and offered the opportunity for discussion. .
With this in mind, we transformed the 3-level space into a multi-sensory journey through the past, present, and future, showing the weather as the consistent driver of behaviors and outcomes. The objective of the experience was to educate and inspire senior leadership executives, the press, and agency leaders to better understand how the weather impacts every person and every business, every day, across the world, in different ways.
Visitors were prompted to reflect on how the delicate balance of weather elements had often been the silent orchestrator of destiny with a self-guided experience powered by AI, that combined technological innovation with creativity.
Stepping through a giant raindrop into the first floor, visitors were met with ‘the past’, “Catalytic Weather Moments in Human History”, a gallery of AI artwork that explored the weather’s influence by combining modern tech, with historical intrigue.
Supporting IBM’s deep-rooted experience in AI, GPJ collaborated with international AI artists and in-house talent to create ‘The Weather Gallery’.
We expanded the lens of catalytic moments in human behavior to a bigger one of exploring iconic moments in history and the unexpected cause and effect of weather’s influence, changing the outcome of The Battle of Waterloo, or allowing the current domestication of dinosaurs, or creating an environment for alternative methods of transport. We imagined, like the more commonly known influencers, its influence on consumer behavior.
For the most diversity for our gallery of curated artwork, AI ‘prompt masters’ were sourced globally, including being hand-picked from our GPJ agency talent pool. They were chosen for their rich storytelling and unique creative thinking. Their brief was to consider a historical moment in time, and prompted to imagine if the weather had influenced a different outcome to create an artwork that depicted this previously unconsidered alternate historical trajectory. The artworks inspired a new way of thinking about the uncontrollable effects of the weather.
But visual stimulation was not enough, and as the artworks transitioned, real weather elements sprung to life to fully immerse guests in the meteorological effects of the moment. Combining sound and lighting design with heat, wind or snow machines. Visitors were completely absorbed in the effects of the weather.
With guests now armed with a deeper understanding of the weather’s influence, they moved up to the second floor, ‘the present’. Here, visitors saw The Weather Company’s impact in action with Brand Visionaries” A Modern AI art sculpture garden. Designed to leverage their experience into an enhanced awareness of The Weather Company’s products and benefits to business, we used key client case studies such as UberGreen and e.l.f cosmetics and accompanied each one with an AI prompted 3D sculpture. This presented an interesting take on case studies to show how intelligent brands are leveraging weather to connect more impactfully with their audiences, optimized in the moments that matter most.
The sculptures were designed to create visual enhancements of the brands continuing with the weather theme and added a compelling element that highlighted the unexpected correlations between weather and data, showcasing the relevance to our partners’ products.
With a clear understanding of the benefits of implementing a weather strategy, the third floor, ‘the future’ “How You Can Harness Weather’s Influence” created a calm meeting and executive hospitality space where a weather strategy could be discussed.
It invited visitors into a branded hospitality and media area that provided an opportunity for The Weather Company representatives to engage in deeper conversations with prospective clients who had journeyed through the gallery, gained knowledge through the case studies and were now able to better align the products to their own business needs.
Throughout the full week of the festival, in prime locations across Cannes Lions, the concept was supported by an OOH billboard campaign showing gallery teasers, dynamic weather content and client features, seen by the 20,000 global festival attendees.
To deliver this fully-immersive experience GPJ employed our unique expertise in strategy, design and creative, fabrication, digital, event production and logistics.
The Results
At the festival, on social media and in the media the artworks created a strong talking point. The Weather Company saw significant growth in interest marked by speaking opportunities, meeting touch points and new partner opportunities.
