TBWA\London Heads Into The Metaverse with electric Nissan Ariya

The campaign from TBWA\London delivers a visual and interactive ‘Electrified Art’ experience to support the launch of the all-electric Nissan ARIYA.

To activate the campaign, Nissan challenged five artists to draw images of the new all-electric ARIYA in five different locations around the UK; London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.

The artists – Retro Manni (Birmingham), Tishk Barzanji (London), Janice Leung (Leeds), Neil Keating (Liverpool), and Antidote (Manchester) were all briefed to use their own unique design style to showcase an electrified interpretation of how the Nissan ARIYA is a ‘ray of hope’ within each of their cities. Although influenced by the Japanese-inspired design embodied in the Nissan ARIYA, the artists included their own personal story, providing an authentic and expressive interpretation of the brief.

The artwork, showcased in digital and in large format outdoor sites, allows you to enter Nissan’s metaverse experience to explore the artwork by scanning the available QR code. Users will then be directed to the electrified art landing page where they can start to explore the room. The environment will automatically load and instructions given as how to connect two electric power leads together to open up the artwork portal and move around the electrified city, the Nissan ARIYA will descend onto a platform in the centre of the room, while users can explore each piece of art.

Nissan GB marketing director, Nic Thomas, said: “The Japanese timeless design and innovation of the ARIYA allows us to influence and explore new ways of communicating with our customers and I am very excited to be able to promote Nissan as one of the first car manufacturers to utilise the Metaverse in this immersive and inclusive manner. This is the start for us to continue to explore and test and learn new ways of bringing our electrified brand stories to life and showcase our own product innovations in an environment that fits with our innovative leadership brand values”.

John Kirkham and Heber Ramos, copywriter and art director at TBWA\London, said: “‘Electrified Art’ is a campaign all about innovation, design and electrification.

“We worked with digital artists across the UK, asking them to reimagine their home cities electrified in the future. We broke the format of conventional car ads with fresh, art gallery inspired OOH and online creative.”

Barry Christie, global creative lead at Meta Creative Shop, said: “With the Nissan Electric Lab, you can get really close to the new Nissan ARIYA and the campaign artists electrified artwork; in fact, you can literally step into it with a Meta Quest headset for a fully immersive experience or explore it in 3D on your mobile or computer.”

The metaverse is a continuum of experiences ranging from a 2D video, to AR, to entirely immersive 3D VR worlds, all stitched together to form the next iteration of the internet. Although the metaverse will be built over the next decade, Nissan is one of the first car brands to take an exploratory step into the metaverse utilising existing 2D and 3D VR building blocks to create an immersive art experience.

The advertising campaign is set to run for the next two months. Orders for the Nissan ARIYA are now being taken, with first deliveries expected in August.

CREDITS

Brand: Nissan

Client: Nic Thomas, Nissan GB marketing director

Managing director, Nissan United (TBWA): Phil Nunn

Media lead: Richard Fitzgerald

Planning lead: Mustafa Himdi

Business director: Nicola Star

Copywriter and art director: John Kirkham, Heber Ramos

Production: Bobby Rose, Neil Pennington

Planner: David Slade

Media account manager: Aminah Naeem

Account managers: Oliver Millard, Emily Sanders

Global creative lead @ Meta Creative Shop: Barry Christie