T-Mobile

Multi-location campaign and Times Square Takeover for T-Mobile

End-to-end Geospatial campaigns drive sweepstake giveaway for customers and employees

Services:

Delivery: Geospatial campaign

Tech: Geospatial, photogrammetry, WebAR, Adobe Aero

Industry: Telecommunications

Key contributors:

Preston Platt

Basak Akman

Alexandre Branitsky

Pat Johnson

Anna Kite

Chris Merchant

About the project

Telecommunications giant T-Mobile is well known for its innovative initiatives and commitment to exceptional service. When it wanted to deploy a series of immersive campaigns to give back to its customers and employees around the Holiday period, it came to RPR for help.

Powered by Google Geospatial and Adobe Aero, the AR campaigns would bring its community together across a series of locations including Times Square New York, Kansas City and Washington, and would also offer at-home activations across the country. Depending on location, employees and customers could enjoy a festive scavenger hunt or explore a winter diorama, each boasting sweepstakes with incredible prizes.

The challenge

The challenge was to create three experiences, each designed with distinctive environments, objectives or audiences in mind. All would feature custom-made avatars of T-Mobile’s Senior Leadership Team members, who were driving the initiative. The objective was to make the experiences accessible for everyone, with huge prizes like Samsung, Apple and Google devices up for grabs.

The first campaign would be a stunning AR takeover in Times Square, overlaying the famous advertising billboards and skyscrapers with digital displays and directing users to collect 3D ornaments as part of an exciting scavenger hunt. The second, a short game deployed for employees at offices in Kansas City Missouri and Bellevue Washington, featuring the avatars standing on top of the buildings. The third, a winter wonderland diorama for users at home.

The Solution

For the New York and on-site locations, Adobe Aero was key. Our development team used Geospatial technology to accurately world-anchor the experiences to the Times Square T-Mobile storefront and employee offices. In New York, the anchoring was so accurate that our specially designed UI covered real-world billboards and skyscrapers with branded visuals, to secure users’ attention and instruct them where to go to complete the game.

For the campaigns, the Design team created a range of highly detailed 3D UI elements. These included gingerbread houses, glistening snow globes, rustic wood cabins and other decorations. As users explored the magical dioramas or Times Square, they could search for these interactive objects and collect them all for a chance at the sweepstake.

Fostering connection and enabling customers and employees to feel valued was integral to the initiatives, and also to the wider mission of T-Mobile as a brand. For this reason, extra care was taken when designing avatars for the Senior Leadership Team, which delivered personalized messages within the experiences. After creating the initial models in Ready Player Me, our Design team used Maya and Substance Painter to further customize them and make every detail, from mannerisms to individual style, more representative of the real leaders. They even made branded Christmas sweaters for them to wear.

THE RESULTS

We successfully deployed a series of end-to-end 3D AR campaigns, including sweepstake fulfillment. Offering dozens of prizes such as the iPhone 15, Samsung Galaxy S23 and Google Pixel 8, T-Mobile achieved its objective to celebrate its community and reward customers and employees in a fun and exciting way. Thanks to AR and Geospatial technology, an impressive digital takeover of the world-famous Times Square advertising spaces was made possible, and at far greater cost efficiency than using the physical billboards.

The projects also demonstrated the versatility of Google Geospatial technology as a tool for conducting multi-location, multi-objective campaigns. While the New York storefront activation was designed to engage shoppers and take them on a journey, the home and office options made the experience inclusive for everyone, bringing authentic branded wonderlands to audiences where they stood.

Integral to the campaigns’ success was T-Mobile’s commitment to their promotion with paid media across Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and RPR’s end-to-end management. By creating a portfolio of 3D assets, fulfilling prizes and even advising on appropriate influencer partnerships for promotion, T-Mobile was able to drive interest and communicate its message in an impactful way.