Client: Disney
Beauty and the Beast is a timeless classic with so many iconic elements. When Disney approached us to work on the digital campaign, we knew that we had to draw upon the film’s nostalgia while also modernizing the property to make it contemporarily relevant.
After screening the film, we felt drawn to the famous ballroom scene with The Beast showing his softer side by twiliring Belle around and around in her trademark yellow dress. In addition to the scene’s sentimental pull, we were also drawn to its use of motion and the effortless, gliding feeling that we felt watching Belle and the Beast perform their dance.
At the time, Facebook 360 images were a relatively new offering and while brands were definitely using them for marketing purposes, we hadn’t yet seen an execution where they were being created dynamically and shared. We jumped on the chance to be first to market with this tech and drawing inspiration from the rotational motion in the ballroom scene, Confess Your Love 360 was born.
Our idea was to enable users to send and receive custom 360 messages with ones they love. To create their message, users would choose from a bank of poetic, endearing lines and between each line, spin a 3D model of the Beast and Belle dancing in silhouette to progress. The output would then be shared on the recipient’s Facebook wall and viewed in 360 space. The perfect means of confessing your feelings to that special someone!
The biggest challenge was definitely creating a high-quality 3D model of Belle and the Beast that would play nicely in Web-GL - specifically on mobile. The experience of creating the message was equally as important as the final output and with our user base largely participating on their phones, we had to make sure everything ran smoothly. Ultimately we were successful and went on to build a seamless, socially integrated experience that won both FWA Site of the Day and Awwwards Site of the Day.
Credits
Agency: Watson DG
Creative Director: Hleb Marholin
Art Director: Hleb Marholin
Developer: Florian Morel
Web-GL Developer: John Iacoviello
Copywriter: Arin Delaney
Editor + Motion Designer: Cheng Lei Wu
Producer: Greg Meltzer