Taking over iconic landmarks one backpack at a time

Back to Campus is a huge moment for The North Face, so plai created an equally huge augmented reality experience to celebrate.

The North Face are already known for some incredible FOOH, with clips of Big Ben seemingly wearing a North Face puffer going viral over the Summer. plai took this playful, larger than life approach a step further by developing something that had the production values of these clips, whilst functioning as a real, usable augmented reality experience.

By using landmarker AR technology we took the iconic Borealis backpack and affixed it to the New York Public Library. This continued the story of The North Face taking over beloved landmarks, with an academia themed nod perfect for the Back to Campus season.

The AR lens ran via Snapchat and was available to any Snapchatters within the vicinity of the New York Public Library. Time of day and location dependent real time lighting were used, with the sun’s position accurately mapped for exactly where the user was viewing for a hyper-real effect. When sharing footage we had to caveat that all clips shown were generated via Snapchat on a regular iPhone and had not been CG’d in.

Further extending the campaign, we took the brand’s Jester backpack and created a hyper realistic model using gaussian splat technology. This then ran as a Snap Lens where users could drop, resize, swivel and reposition the backpack in any location. This led to some super fun content with Snapchatters dropping backpacks at iconic locations around the world. This was the first ever branded Snap Lens to utilise gaussian splat technology.

Augmented reality allows us to create a participatory experience between brand and audience, wherein fans of a brand can interact with brand iconography and assets in the environment around them. XR tech factoring in real time daytime and lighting conditions as well as emerging techniques such as gaussian splatting allow us to develop more realistic imagery than ever before.