Faced with the risk of complete shut down by government authorities, The Quebec Summer Festival had to cancel all live shows for the 2021 edition.

They instead staged a massive photo exhibit on prime real estate right next to Quebec's parliament recalling the best 50 shows and moments of the last 50 years of their existence.

Working with the title sponsor, a national telecom company, our goal was to find a way to add value to the exhibit using innovative mobile technologies.

The intent was to demonstrate to a wide audience that the future of 5G and mobile devices will be fun and have them experience that future.

We also wanted to hedge our bets and have an activation that could work in a hybrid/virtual event if everything was to be canceled.

The goal was to have attendees 6-60 be able to experience the activation and engage with the exhibit.

During the COVID19 Pandemic, the Quebec Summer Festival had to cancel all live shows for the 2021 edition. They instead staged a massive photo exhibit on prime real estate recalling the best 50 shows and moments of the last 50 years of their existence.

Working with the Telecom title sponsor, our goal was to find a way to add value to the exhibit using innovative mobile technologies.

The intent was to demonstrate to a wide audience that the future of 5G and mobile devices will be fun and have them experience it.

Our idea was to use the augmented reality medium to add a new dimension to each picture/artist/show in order to trigger an emotional journey of remembrance to those that were there or try to give a feeling of how it was to those that weren't.

We chose Appless AR to create a seamless experience anyone could access.

In order to make the AR experience as seamless as possible, we designed the space into 3 large nonlinear zones based on the three dominant music styles of the festival ; Chanson francophones, Rock, and Pop.

Attendees had to scan a QR code once before entering each zone and then could access 7-10 experiences seamlessly.

We worked with many creators to have multiple art styles and concepts, from singalongs for backstreet-boys to hand drawn animations for Felix Leclerc, to full 3d extravaganza for P!NK.

We created a branded tutorial zone at the entrance where attendees could try AR with their phones helped by brand ambassadors over two branded pictures of our Telecom client main stage with 3D effects.

Our client was not interested in data collection so we created branded preloader to maximize attribution and had 5G repeaters on site so that all the content loaded super fast for everyone.

The Exhibit was in a 30 000 square feet enclosed section of the Parc George V right next to Quebec's National assembly building. It was free for everyone and opened from July 1st to July 25th.

The exhibit was comprised of 50 Photos on giant hexagonal boards and half of them had an augmented reality experience attached to them.

In order to make the AR experience as seamless as possible, we designed the space into 3 large nonlinear zones based on the three dominant music styles of the festival ; Chanson francophones, Rock, and Pop.

We created a branded tutorial zone at the entrance where attendees could try AR with their phones helped by brand ambassadors over two branded pictures of our Telecom client main stage with 3D effects.

Attendees started in the branded entrance/tutorial zone, and then were free to walk anywhere toward one of the other 3 zones. Attendees were able to have a true seamless experience by scanning a QR code at the beginning of a zone and then they simply had to point their phone toward the photograph and the experience would launch at the press of a finger.

We built upon each individual photograph’s context and featured artist to make sure each AR experience felt singular and engaging.

We had AR experiences made for homegrown artists like Jean leloup or Celine Dion and for international Stars like Charles Aznavour, Lady Gaga, the Backstreet boys, P!NK, Metallica, and many more.

We created a branded preloader to maximize attribution and had 5G repeaters on site so that all the content loaded super fast for everyone.

This still is one of the largest AR Deployment with over 25 AR pieces available simultaneously.

The Quebec government changed sanitary rule a couple of days before opening which drastically limited capacity to the site. We were not able to get more than 75 people per hour into the site.

We still managed to get over 12 000 attendees that used the AR and over 50 000 scans . Average time spent in AR mode per user was 7 minutes.

20% of the AR users were over 55.

We also got excellent reviews from the major local and national newspapers and radio stations.

It was also one of the largest scale AR deployments with over 25 Pieces available at the same time.

In exit surveys, 92% of all attendees mentioned this was the first time they used augmented reality and about 60% said it changed their outlook positively toward 5G and mobile technology.

The future will be fun !