Projection Mapping Grand Opening
John Pistotti
Experience Architect ??? Business Development at BCD Meetings & Events, Production & Content ????????
Putting the Grand in Grand Opening
Marketing strategies for Grand Openings can vary from a flyer, to Super Bowl commercials, social media ads, printed outdoor billboards, and vinyl wrapped trolley cars. Projection Mapping can be used to Turn a Building into a Billboard. Sycuan Marketing took a multi-faceted approach to their Grand Opening including projection mapping their new Casino Resort.
Super Bowl to Super Building
When an organization has a strong theme and imagery that is applied to all their collateral such as the red orbs Sycuan used for their local Super Bowl Commercial, this gives a strong creative direction when developing multi-faceted marketing approach. This commercial was the basis for the storyboarding and creative content development Alliant did in partnership with Go2 Productions (www.go2productions.com). The building animations use the 3D projection mapping effect, while still focusing on the overarching strong branding theme.
Multiple Social Media Approach Strategies
Social media marketing is a lot more sophisticated than just taking selfies, such as data capture by opt-in communication photo booths that connect users to their social media or SMS text messaging. Picture Mosaics are a great example of a brand activation that drives engagement. Each photo becomes a collage of the overall image that is tied to their brand. The more social media photo opportunities the better. Guests and event attendees need compelling backdrops like the wall of roses or projection mapping the building with visuals of red orbs and fireworks explosion.
Projection mapping frames the arrival experience for the Grand Opening as guests arrive in their vehicles to fireworks and visual effects on the building from a CGI Hollywood film. Guest share photos and video of this experience online furthering the marketing reach. Below is Sycuan's Facebook post touchpoint marketing footage shot by an aerial drone.
From Dark Until Dawn
Projection mapping has a lot of challenges from the surface geometry, lens calculations for the distance and luminosity of the high lumen projectors, pixel space, projector blends; fun stuff. But one important limitation to any outside event is the natural sunlight. Every night as the ambient light decreased the technical team would realign and refocus the projectors before running the content. When full darkness was reached the rich colors of the laser projectors high contrast ratio and clarity would come into full display.
More Than $1 Million Worth of Lasers
This activation ran from 4/26 at 8PM-5AM every night until 4/30 at 5AM. Utilizing 2 JLG telehandlers with forklifts the crew positioned the truss with 12 Barco UDX32K 4K projectors to telescope the articulating arm 40 feet. When the sun finally came up on 4/30 at 5AM, it was time to lower the projectors down and pack up for the next show.