An Invitation to the Future
Background
Dubai has many iconic landmarks and on 22 February 2022 another iconic landmark was added to the long list - The Museum of the Future. The most futurist landmark to date, and also called the most beautiful building in the world. The UAE government wanted to make sure that as many people in the world would know about it. The main objective – was to make it famous worldwide before its inauguration.
Idea
We decided to bring the Future to the people. We created an activation that looked like something that seemed straight out of a Sci-Fi movie. We had the real-life ‘Iron Man’, jet-suit inventor, Richard Browning flying across Dubai in his jet suit, from dawn to dusk, personally delivering invites to the museum, to the astonishment of the mesmerized Dubai crowds.
Strategy
Due to its impressive architecture, the museum had already had quite some media coverage. So, how could we make them, and the whole world, take notice again and have an even bigger impact? We analyzed the items featured in the museum’s permanent collection and found that one of the items was Mr. Browning's jet suit. What better than to have one of the items from ‘the future’ used to invite people with, and trigger their curiosity to visit the museum? Word of a flying jet-man in Dubai delivering a special invite spread, and social media picked up on it quickly. Within hours, the videos had taken the internet by storm. Some days after when the buzz built up, we released some more footage that showed off some of the flights of our ‘Iron Man’ and the people’s reactions, which got organically shared until the world media followed.
Execution
In the early hours of 17 February 2022, we had our real-life Iron Man, Mr. Browning, taking off from the Museum of the Future in Dubai, to personally deliver the special invites to people across the city. We documented his flight with a special 360 GoPro camera attached to him, and used an additional 4 cameras, and 5 hidden-phone cameras, to capture his flight and the natural reactions of the people that he encountered. We created an unforgettable experience for the people of Dubai who were lucky enough to experience his flight live, and also for anyone else in the world experiencing it secondhand online or through the Media.
Case Study
Outcome
The results were very impressive; they exceeded our expectations and helped us reach our objectives of making the museum world-famous. ‘The Real-life Iron Man’ was trending on social media and the activation reached more than 2.7 billion people, which is the equivalent to more than 270 times the entire population of the UAE(!) we achieved over USD 4.6 million in earned media with a single stunt executed in 1 day across Dubai, and more than 440 broadcast networks in over 50 countries covered the story, with over 8H of airtime. And not least - within 24hrs we sold out the tickets for the first 3 months.