Our key objective was to reinforce and to significantly build upon the perception of UBS as a successful patron and enabler of contemporary art. This was a challenge, as the art world is notoriously skeptical of financial institutions’ involvement in art. As a result, it was necessary to create an engaging campaign that advertised our commitment to art, without creating art ourselves.

We also ran into many production challenges, as all pieces were created manually, not digitally, with minimal retouching. To get our desired outcome, we spent many hours experimenting with weather tanks, thousands of pencils, air jets and fans.

We arrived at the final design by thinking about the ways in which artists, as well as other great thinkers, perceive the world. They form lateral connections – connections that most of us miss – by looking out into the world in a slightly different way. The artists’ materials represent the different ways in which artists choose to express themselves. We were also able to relate this notion back to UBS’s financial offerings, as they too use this type of lateral thinking in order to come up with the best solutions for their clients – by looking at the world differently.

To date, this campaign has supported the Guggenheim UBS Map Project in Hong Kong and Singapore, where after seeing the executions, 70% of respondents agreed that UBS is a knowledgeable thought leader on contemporary art.

The executions also ran to support Art Basel Miami Beach, where the airport out-of-home executions received 13k in estimated traffic.