Overview
For our Visual Storytelling class at the Brandcenter in 2014, we were asked to create a transmedia campaign.
Around that time, The WuTang Clan had announced the release of a 20th anniversary album, called "A Better Tomorrow." Our team realized quickly that a lot of people knew of the WuTang Clan, but not many knew much about them.
We decided to center our transmedia campaign around teaching the children of today about the iconic rap group, and ultimately raising public awareness about their new album.
Project Name: WuTang is for the Children
Client: The WuTang Clan
Era: VCU Brandcenter, 2014
the challenge
In the spring of 2014, The WuTang Clan was gearing up to release their 20th anniversary album. But how do you promote one of the most iconic rap groups in history in a fun and interesting way? When we started our research, we began to realize that a lot of people knew of WuTang, but didn't really know much about them. At all.
the idea
We decided that rather than promote the actual album itself, which had been done a myriad of times before, it would be more impactful to set out to educate the youth of America about the WuTang Clan in a big way.
We crafted an elaborate transmedia campaign to raise awareness about the WuTang Clan's 20th anniversary album that highlighted each of the boroughs of the Clan's hometown: New York City.
To kick off the campaign, we would plant "preachers" all over the city preaching the gospel of the Wu and hand out ninja stars containing a link to download a scavenger hunt app.
Over the course of two weeks, popup food shops would appear in each of New York's boroughs representing each of WuTang's prior albums. The app would send notifications on the days of the popups giving the user hints as to where they were. As the user would get close to the location of the popup, the app would vibrate stronger the closer they got, and then mark off the location as "visited" when they reached it. Participants would have to get each location tagged on their app, and when they did, they were given a single use barcode to ride a special WuTang party ferry to Staten Island, past the Statue of Liberty taken over by a projection mapped video of a past unseen performance by Ol' Dirty Bastard, and then taken to a secret location in Staten Island for a private listening throwdown with the members of the Clan.
campaign
