Denon wanted to reach people on desktop, iOS and Android to promote their new line of headphones. Concept art consisted of the product being worn by music lovers who were abstracted to look like traditional audio spectral data. Each character expressed their musical mood paired with a new line of earbuds or over-ear headphones.

Though the artwork was flat, we quickly found ourselves interpreting the idea in 3D. We set a course to create an app that could turn any user’s face into a dynamic 3D audio visualizer and show off beautiful 3D models, all under the constraints of mobile hardware. To make it more difficult, the particle rendering of the kind we envisioned hadn’t been done yet, nor had recording point cloud data in "takes,” so we innovated to solve a creative problem.

For instance, the Kinect data was captured with a custom AIR app using the wonderful as3nui library (RGBDToolkit didn't exist yet). It allowed us to capture in one moment, and play and visualize after. It permitted us to create a suite of WYSIWYG software tools for advertising creatives to control the creative approach without the need for a developer (they could toggle, color, time, adjust frequency and volume for over 40 attributes). Additional variations of the app were created to accomplish secondary campaign goals, such as exporting very-high-resolution images for print and a large touchscreen kiosk version for live events, which sent its data to yet another variation of our app that showcased users prominently on stage. And this was all done when the print assets and the kiosks were last-minute requests.

This technology allowed us to do something new: record point cloud data in a shoot context.

The activation launch generated…

• Over 3,500 RSVPs for the first show, which featured the VisYOUalizer installation (nearly seven times the capped guest list)

• Brand awareness via press coverage and MySpace cross-promotional publicity

• Buzz and PR with 75+ media outlets in attendance

• Retail placements, as key dealers attended events in the elite VIP section

• Branded content captured at events showing fans engaged with DENON® headphones

• Borrowed equity via DJ relationships

• Shifts in brand perception, as demonstrated by onsite engagement (VisYOUalizer kiosk and merchandisers) and social media response

• Nearly 50,000 visits to the DENON website (70% were new visitors to the site)