Canada Goose ‣ The Art of Film AR Tour Berlin

Canada Goose has been a partner to the film industry for years. Its winter wear has kept crews warm in the harshest shoot environments. This relationship with the artisans of film is celebrated every year during the Berlin Film Festival. Together with its partner, Studio Babelsberg, Canada Goose creates initiatives that shine a light on the artisans behind the camera. This year however, no physical festival took place so the ask was to create a virtual experience that would allow people in Berlin and beyond to still discover the magic of film outside of the traditional festival.

The idea was to create an augmented reality tour, guiding users through five iconic Berlin film locations and providing them with behind-the-scenes content of the films that were crafted there. We designed and developed the "Canada Goose: The Art of Film web app" and launched it both in Berlin for residents and through social media for remote visitors.

With 'Live in the Open' as Canada Goose's tagline, we wanted to motivate people to go outside. The web app guides visitors through five locations, where behind-the-scenes content is triggered. Berlin residents could pick up a free postcard at the Canada Goose Berlin store and use it as an AR trigger to view the content at the exact location where the films were shot.

Not to exclude people outside of Berlin, we also created a VR environment in the app. At-home visitors across the world could take a similar tour in virtual reality, enjoying the same content without being present on location.

As an extra incentive we included a chance to win a behind-the-scenes tour at Babelsberg Film Studios in Berlin, for people who participated.

For the visual direction, we merged the worlds of craftsmanship and luxury. This was done by integrating handwritten notes (mimicking directors notes) as graphic elements, designing a paper-feel map for people to navigate Berlin, and commissioning hand-drawn illustrations from French artist Pascal Pillard to represent the different films in our AR/VR world.

The app revolved around three main content buckets: the 5 locations in Berlin, the films that were shot there and the interesting stories of the artisans that worked behind the scenes on these films.

At each location, visitors could experience a variety of behind-the-scenes content. Artisans that had worked on the different films shared audio recordings, fun facts, behind-the-scene images, videos and photo galleries that unveiled the magic that went into creating films on these locations.

Based on the testimonies and visual content provided by the artisans, we designed a variety of templates that appeared as clickable hotspots on the illustrations, in the AR/VR environment.

To amplify the tour through paid and organic social media, we produced a campaign video. The film takes the viewer on The Art of Film-tour and provides them with a sample of the experience. Curious viewers are encouraged to visit the Canada Goose store in Berlin, pick up an AR postcard and start the tour.

We also developed a key visual that could be deployed flexibly wherever a media opportunity arose. The visual became part of the PR toolkit, was printed large to create an in-store display and was used as a paid-media asset online.