Financial Times Graphical World

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Yesterday I went to Grand Central Station to see a Financial Times ad campaign. In other words something I would not normally do. This campaign was special though. It’s called “Graphical World” and only goes on for three days. And it was definitely a cool campaign.

It’s been developed by David McCandless from Information is Beautiful, and DDB UK. It was centered around 3 videos that were projected in a 3D visualization on one of the walls of the beautiful building. David McCandless explains:

If you’re not lucky enough to live near Grand Central, the three videos are also to be found out here on the interwebs.

The Global Economy – What’s the dollar in your wallet really worth?

Money Talks – How cell phones are transforming economies

Recession and Recovery – An upside to the downturn

My conclusion

The videos are very well produced and very cool. The projection on the Central Station wall is a cool way to show them. The stories and the journalistic narrative are well structured, but surely not to my taste. But most importantly, as a way to conduct a campaign, the data driven stories are very strong. And on top of that, there was a great element of interactivity built into it as well. I tried to shoot a video with a couple of people walking around on the sensor board controlling which countries were shown in the graphic on the wall. Unfortunately it was a very poor video that wasn’t even able to show the graphic change as they move around. Well well.