HBO | Imagine | 2010
What if you saw the same scene from four different angles? / HBO "Imagine" Cube Film
A mystery about a teddy bear plays out on a giant cube-shaped screen on a street corner, showing four different angles at once. One truth starts to look like entirely different stories, just depending on where you're standing.
The problem
HBO was known for bolder, more ambitious storytelling than other networks, and it needed outdoor advertising that could capture that uniqueness. Building on the response to its earlier campaign "Voyeur," BBDO and HBO planned this work as its follow-up.
The insight
Rather than simply telling people in words that HBO is a storyteller, the idea was to build a multi-sided story directly into the ad itself. The aim was to let people physically experience how the same event can look completely different, with a different ending, depending on the angle you view it from.
The idea
On a large outdoor cube-shaped screen called "The Cube," footage of the same scene shot from four different angles played simultaneously, so that the impression of the characters and the interpretation of the story changed depending on where you stood. Two films, "Art Heist" and "The Affair," played on the Cube, and as a teaser, teddy bears with invitations attached were mailed to people in the industry. A dedicated website scattered over 40 pieces of video, audio, articles, and images, creating an online experience where visitors pieced together the mystery on their own.
What happened
Large crowds turned out in the cities where the Cube was installed, the website drew a large number of unique visitors, and seven out of ten of them reportedly recommended it to friends. The share of people who saw HBO as innovative rose significantly among both subscribers and non-subscribers, and the New York Times praised it for setting a new standard in interactive fiction. The campaign won Gold at Cannes.
Afterthought
Just by changing the angle you look from, the same moment turns into a completely different story. I'm floored by the sheer scale of doing this not as a TV commercial but as a cube standing on a street corner. It turns the very act of "watching" into the material of the ad itself, and that it ends up becoming the brand identity of a company that sells stories feels almost unfairly perfect.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2010
