#LetsJoinHands

A stunning, spontaneous collaborative drawing experience streaming live between Los Angeles and New York City.

Client

Toyota

Partners

  • Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles
  • back end development
  • design
  • ux
  • ui
  • touchscreen app
  • twitter api
  • animation

Project Overview

The Brief

The Río Olympic games had the entire world buzzing. Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi LA took it as an opportunity to bring us all a little closer together with the #LetsJoinHands campaign, touching broadcast, social and experiential.

In partnership with Twitter, a custom hashtag emoji was developed, and Toyota planned donate $20 for each tweet using it -- up to $250,000 to the United Way. The cause is motivating, but a campaign to inspire us to join hands would not be right without a tangible way to do so beyond a TV spot and a tweet, and the "Stand Together” live experience was born.

Play

Our Approach

Working closely with the Saatchi team, we conceived a live video stream between Los Angeles and New York City, pulling passersby into spontaneous connections with strangers 3,000 miles away.

Users place their hand on the screen, pinging the other location and prompting them to do the same. Then, a collaborative drawing game takes over as the two users share the screen and join together to create playful scenes of city skylines, outer space and sunny days. Along the way, we captured the video feeds and drawings on each side, with a cloud-based renderer automatically editing each session into a 30-second highlight reel that was tweeted back to users from @ToyotaUSA.

Results

Live events are always a whirlwind, but also among the most rewarding projects. Often, we don't have the luxury of observing users interact with experiences first-hand. In the live space, we can truly see if our UX is intuitive, and the message resonates.

We were pleased to see smiles and joy across everyone's faces as they participated in this high-tech handshake. #LetsJoinHands is an important reminder that the products we create are intended to inspire and create emotional response. While the technical and creative challenges are fueling, happy, engaged people are even more so.

Not only did Toyota reach their goal of $250,000 in donations, but they left a lasting mark alongside the Olympics that will springboard them well beyond.

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