Amplify has launched a dedicated innovation practice focused on helping brands embrace and navigate creative technology, entertainment and IP. Called FUTURES, the new practice is part of Amplify’s mission to help brands build worlds and break formats with a dedicated offering using the power of emerging technologies to create memorable brand stories and experience.
FUTURES is already being woven into the DNA of the agency, influencing and shifting the direction in Amplify’s brand work for clients including Activision, Converse, EPIC Games, Google, Nike, PlayStation and Samsung.
FUTURES will be led by innovation creative director, Ed Hallam, and head of special projects, Izzy Kertland, pulling together expertise across Amplify’s global offices in London, Sydney, LA, New York, and Paris – including Australian ECD, Tim Baggott; creative, Lisa Aoyama, and group business director, Kate Maidment.
Ed Hallam brings to the new venture his proven track record for combining innovation and technology with brand storytelling, building meaningful user experiences. Hallam’s background includes working as an extension to brand-side innovation teams at Google, Warner Media and Nike, the latter on patents resulting in Nike’s Cryptokicks and dot.SWOOSH.
Izzy Kertland adds over a decade of experience pioneering brand experiences, campaigns, content, digital interactives and exhibitions for brands and cultural institutions, using new and emerging technologies. Kertland ‘s work for ASICS has been recognised by Cannes Lions and D&AD.
FUTURES also runs an experiment series, a program designed to build and test new ideas at speed, creating prototypes to drive the future of experience and campaign storytelling. In the last 18 months, Amplify has collaborated with creative technologists from across a variety of disciplines – Eoghan O’Keaffe, an AI specialist; Sean Malikides who creates electronic, mechanical and sonic artworks with his design practice Kai Labs; and, Tigris Li, an artist and creative technologist whose collaborative work with FUTURES will be displayed in Summer 2024. Most importantly, FUTURES will be inviting brands and audiences to be a part of this work, making it possible to download a code and access research through a series of prototypes drops.
Ed Hallam commented, “Amplify continues to be known for innovation, pioneering non-traditional forms of marketing and technology. Each project moves the dial forward, infusing technology demonstrating the art of possible. Whether that is for Nike harnessing the power of music and energy from a party to transform a 15-metre sneaker installation into a generative art piece through to helping Converse create a platform for emerging creative technologists to make their craft centre stage”.
Tim Baggott added, “While innovation has always been a central part of Amplify’s global creative culture, the insights and collaborator relationships forged with FUTURES have opened doors to new possibilities for the work we create with our brand partners. In Australia these include Samsung: Chorus of Light, which integrated AI sentiment analysis to deliver an interactive installation at VIVID that responded to the meaning of spoken messages and Sonos Frisson Trigger, which saw us bring neuroscience research to spatial audio hardware to engineer a ground-breaking track that gives every listener goosebumps.”
Cover image l-r: FUTURES team – Izzy Kertland, Lisa Aoyama, Ed Hallam, Tim Baggott, Kate Maidment
