Profero agency wins at IAC Awards 2016 for virtual reality project

Profero is the only agency from Romania awarded during this year’s edition of the international Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards. The Spiderkids VR project, developed in order to promote the Tesaturi periculoase (Dangerous Textiles) exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History Grigore Antipa, brought the agency the digital award for “the best mobile app in the education field”.

Because the public in Romania knows a lot of things about the eight-legged creatures’ world though phobias or famous movies, the Antipa Museum wanted that by the means of an exposition of spiders and live scorpions to raise awareness regarding the species at a large scale. The exposition was held between the February 26 and July 5. The exhibition was extended by September following the public’s request.

Profero joined this mission, assuming the role of attracting a special target audience – children – towards these apparently frightening creatures. Therefore, the agency created a virtual reality game through which the small visitors were encouraged to enter for some minutes in the exoskeletons of some spiders and scorpions and to see through the tiny eyes of those eight-legged creatures. The fear transformed into fascination in this virtual world the children having the chance to feel what is like to be 1000 times smaller, how you can walk on the walls and how a simple bedroom can appear like a huge world that waits to be explored.

“Profero helped us a lot in achieving that objective. Even they were forced to work on a very tight deadline, they understood very well our needs and expectations. The creative ideas proposed by them not only achieved high standards in terms of graphics, but also proved to be very efficient. In only three weeks since the launch the expo registered a record number of visitors,” said Dr. Luis Ovidiu Popa, general director of the Grigore Antipa Museum.

“I believe that the children’s fascination for spiders made us think and produce the game. The fear starts when you cannot rationally explain something. And we wanted to show the children how interesting the spiders are, how millions of years transformed them into fascinating creatures and we thought that, with wisdom will come the respect as well. In the end, we succeeded in creating a game just as we’ve wanted for us and our children,” also added Vasile Alboiu, chief creative officer at Lowe Group.

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Ana-Maria Ghiurca, client service director of MullenLowe Profero, said this campaign was built having in mind the perspective of the children.

The IAC Awards jury was impressed by the projects results: in only two days over 200 children interacted with the VR app developed by Profero. Moreover, the Tesaturi periculoase expo was visited by 43.000 de people.

The Profero team involved in the project comprised  Vasile Alboiu (chief creative officer, Lowe Group), Anca Masek (art director), Alin Marghidanu (copywriter) and Vlad Emandi (flash designer).

Romanita Oprea