The Address: Kiyan Prince continues to be an inspiration

I don’t remember the death of Kiyan Prince particularly well. Depressingly, his name was mentally just added to the rollcall of London stabbings that seems to grow every year.

I only recently found out that QPR’s Loftus Road stadium had been renamed The Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium in 2019 and then I did a bit of research and found out more about the terrible death of this exceptionally promising young man back in 2006. Kiyan, who played for QPR’s youth academy, was murdered after trying to intervene in a school fight.

But not everyone forgot Kiyan. His local community kept the flame alive (hence the renaming of the old Loftus Road), and his father Dr Mark Prince has done exceptional work (and gained official recognition) for tackling knife and gang crime through the Kiyan Prince Foundation. And Engine Creative didn’t forget either and last week unveiled a breath-taking piece of work that ensures that the memory of Kiyan is remembered and honoured wider still.

It’s not often that a piece of advertising makes you stop in your tracks, but this campaign - from Billy Faithfull, David Dearlove, Richard Nott and Orlando Warner - is extraordinary. In the unlikely event that you’re not familiar with it, to mark what would have been Kiyan’s thirtieth birthday he has been brought back in an anti-knife crime campaign that also celebrates his extraordinary life and remarkable achievements.

He has been recreated, with the help of Framestore, to appear as he would if he had been alive today and features on the world’s biggest video game EA SPORTS 21 as a member of the QPR squad that he would no doubt have joined if his life had not been robbed.

Framestore used aging-projection technology and synthetic data to train Deep Fake to create an authentic representation of Kiyan's face, which was then iteratively refined with additional facial texture.

The multi-media campaign also includes print and social advertising featuring Kiyan, designed to encourage vulnerable children to eschew knife crime in favour of pursuing their potential. All funds raised by the campaign, which includes brands' sponsorship of Kiyan, goes to further the work of his father in taking this message into schools nationwide.

Not only does this ‘Long Live the Prince’ campaign combine a powerful, inspirational (and unmawkish) message of positivity via a medium that is perfectly targeted, and celebrates a life lost early and a talent that was very real, but Engine Creative (and Framestore) did it for nothing.

Forget attending all those endless (money-making) panel sessions or reading any more self-promotional virtuous guff: Engine Creative has just provided the ultimate lesson in what advertising purpose really means. The Kiyan Prince Foundation, meanwhile, is real purpose.