ServiceNow at the US Open
A question about AI, answered by human art
Role: ACD
ServiceNow wasn’t an official US Open sponsor this year, but we’re huge fans of the sport. So we bought media outside the venue, where the boards had to stand out against sponsor branding and speak to business leaders who tune out the usual “future of AI” pitch.
The Challenge
The brief’s insight was that everyone sees the ace, and nobody sees everything that has to work behind it. We knew we had two boards to work with, so we came up with a two-board call-and-response OOH right at the entrance. The first board asks: What does AI without ServiceNow feel like? The second answers, Kinda like this.
The answer came from a reference I found early on: a composite by artist Pelle Cass, whose photographs layer an entire tennis session into one frame of collisions, crossed paths, and balls everywhere. It shaped the whole concept. We discussed recreating the look with AI, but chose to contact Pelle and license his actual work instead, and he was more than happy to be part of it. For an AI company, featuring real human art was a statement in itself. The conversation continued through banners on Apple Music.
The Strategy
Futures Tennis from Baseline, Friday 2019.
Reworked for ServiceNow
