Our partners at Vital Voices work solely to amplify and actualize the efforts of women rights leaders all over the world. In 2020, they commissioned 100 portraits to create an exhibition to display at events across the US with influential world leaders and attendees, to bring awareness to these women’s stories. The gallery was made to honor these human rights advocates who have fought for change and defended rights for women and children everywhere.

To help create an immersive experience for the exhibit, we utilized Google Lens capabilities for mobile with custom video illustrations to celebrate the accomplishments of these women’s rights defenders who have paved the way for positive, global impact. Our challenge was to demonstrate how Google Lens enables a unique platform for storytelling that is accessible to everyone, and drive downloads and awareness of Google Lens all while amplifying the voices of these women leaders.

We partnered with Vital Voices to select five of the 100 women to highlight. Using these portraits, we created five Google Lensles with custom animations to tell the powerful stories of how they are fighting for a more equal and just world.

Each lenslet is unlocked by scanning the women's portraits with Google Lens, which then transforms the portrait into an animation narrated by each of the women themselves. At the end of the Lens experience, viewers were directed to a website to learn more details of these women's accomplishments and their initiatives.

Additionally, social posts, and physical postcards of the portraits were created to extend this experience beyond several in-person gallery events.

Gallery events were held in NYC and Washington DC with several more booked which were intended to take place in 2020. Each event was led by women and the portraits provided the conversation piece and inspiration for crowds to join in and take action for worthy causes.

The lenslet experiences inspired and helped spread these women’s stories in their own voice and travel to destinations they weren’t able to. Celebrities, politicians, policy influencers were all in attendance at these events.

This unique storytelling tool helped their causes reach global audiences in a memorable format that continues to this day. In addition to live events the videos were posted on social media and by these five women to further expand the reach of their causes.

Each of these women leaders had a unique, powerful story to tell. It was pertinent that our storytelling experience did them through captivating animations. Though we teamed up with a talented group of diverse illustrators and animators, the only way to maintain the spirit of each of the women's stories was by having them tell it themselves. We started by interviewing each person and hearing the experiences in their own words. Moved by their passion, we recorded each narration which we shared with our illustrators.

All of the animations began with a portrait and we transformed them into a stylized animation that matched the energy of each woman's story. The stylized portraits continued to transform and supported the VO, creating a storytelling experience that celebrated the impact these women have on communities around the world.

The Google Lens platform empowered anyone with a mobile device to connect with each woman's story. With Google Lens, the camera scanned the artwork and overlaid it with the animation, effectively bringing the portraits to life on your mobile device. We created 500 pre-stamped postcards, printed with the portraits so the experience could be mailed to loved ones around the world. At the events with higher foot traffic, we enlisted brand representatives to demo the mobile experience.

Concepting to completion required three weeks. The gallery debuted at Diane Von Furstenburg’s Headquarters and Vital Voices Mentoring Walk in New York on International Women's Day. The exhibition was intended to travel the world, including a gala event in Washington D.C., that was going to be attended by Hillary Clinton, Sally Fields and many more but due to the pandemic, it has been postponed. Even with the first few appearances of the exhibit, the stories were experienced by thousands, increasing Google Lens awareness and usage by 33%.

The exhibition has travelled all over the world; 500 portraits in the form of postcards were mailed to recipients internationally, which resulted in an increased awareness and usage of Google Lens by 33%. The gallery events that took place in DC and NYC created over 200,000 organic impressions without any paid media support.