Reinventing the Reel

By: Danielle SacksWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:24 AM

The phrase "interactive advertising" is everywhere. Bob Greenberg actually makes it.

Brut Force Bob Greenberg at his office in Hell's Kitchen. His collection of "art brut" is now worth millions.

Virtual Milestone R/GA's Web site creates an interactive world for runners using a sensor-equipped Nike+ sneaker and an iPod. More than 1,000 runners are signing on daily.

2007 Masters of Design

R/GA was bought by Interpublic in 2001 and is today housed in a sprawling white Bauhaus structure that appears to have been choppered in from L.A. and dropped in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. Some 550 employees work for Greenberg, dreaming up new campaigns, writing code, even building hardware. Most agencies outsource this kind of gritty labor, but Greenberg, 59, insists that the strongest design ideas flow from the technology itself. So he doesn't segregate geeks and creatives, preferring to percolate the programmers, information architects, and interactive designers together with the graphic designers, art directors, and copywriters.

The agency's early digital work included a campaign for Dodge that used a supercomputer to organize thousands of engineering files, creating a visual narrative of the car's redesign that unfolded on TV and online. In 2002, it transformed more than 5 million of IBM's Web pages, which had been scattered among numerous sites, into a unified, user-centered destination. But recently, Greenberg and his crew have become exponentially more ingenious. Earlier this year, Verizon asked R/GA for help in repositioning its brand, from phone company to broadband company. The result was "Action Hero," a do-it-yourself film campaign that melded the gaming dynamics of Grand Theft Auto with the visual edge of a Matrix-style action flick. Would-be cineastes could upload photos of themselves and convert them--thanks to groundbreaking software developed by R/GA's 3-D department--into digitized heroes. Then, using Hollywood-studio animation tools and a library of more than a thousand action-adventure sequences as a narrative palette, they could direct, star in, and score their own films, and circulate them online.

For Nike, R/GA's client of seven years, the agency has likewise redefined what technology can mean for the consumer. Last year, looking to reverse its falling market share in the running category, Nike teamed up with Apple to create Nike+, a sneaker with a built-in sensor that collects runners' personal data--distance, time, pace, calories burned. R/GA wrote the software that lets runners sync up their data from an iPod Nano to nikeplus.com with a single click. Greenberg's team also masterminded the breathtaking Nike+ Web site, a Running 2.0 universe that brings together every service an adrenaline junkie could imagine, from user-generated mapping routes to a social network where members can challenge other runners around the globe. It's too early to gauge the campaign's effect on Nike's market share, but together Nike and R/GA have won 26 awards for the site. More than 1,000 runners from 160 countries are joining daily, with more than a billion calories and 24 million miles logged to date.

Technology, of course, can do more harm than good to a brand. "If something's off by just one frame, the entire illusion pops like a bubble, and you lose your audience," says John Mayo-Smith, R/GA's chief technology officer. So when Mayo-Smith's team created the software and interface for the 23-story LED sign that snakes up the Reuters building in Times Square, they had to ensure that all 60 frames per second would be meticulously synchronized. Judging by the stir created by their subsequent campaign for NikeiD, they did pretty well: Their software allowed customers walking through Times Square to design their own sneakers on their cell phones, then display them in real time on the Godzilla-size Reuters screen. "Bob has taken something pretty boring, e-commerce, and created one of the best journeys a consumer can go through," says Kevin Swanepoel, president of the One Club, the international organization that recognizes advertising design. "He's ahead of his time, still."

Now Greenberg is teaming up with architects to overhaul the entire retail environment. He wants to integrate things like Bluetooth, motion-detecting sensors, and mobile applications that can boost customer service. In a retail setting, however, the technology has to fade into the background. "When it's a really cool technology, that's when you have to be most careful," says Mayo-Smith. "It can seduce an entire room without actually enhancing the customer experience." Over the past decade, R/GA has worked with retail clients such as Levi's and Discovery Channel Stores; most recently, it was behind Verizon's Experience stores in Texas and Virginia and NikeiD's New York location.