Musicians Wanted
Better Half's collaboration with Vans encompassed various facets of the business, including music, product launches, and live events. The goal was to expand upon Vans' 'Off The Wall' ideology and engage their audience digitally through targeted campaigns and interactive events. This objective was achieved and actualized through the three different ongoing campaigns.
From 2020 to 2021, Better Half took the lead in bringing Vans' first fully digital Vans Musicians Wanted to life. We meticulously handled every aspect of production, including facilitating live capture, remote capture, building the graphics and motion graphics suites, creating all promotional materials, managing artist submissions, and editing the final production. This colossal project had a global reach, necessitating collaboration with Vans' international teams across Asia and the Americas.
Once our materials were edited and ready for judging, we collaborated with notable talent such as Anderson Paak and Yung Blood to judge the competition live, for the world to watch!
The impact was remarkable, showcasing a significant uptick in viewership and granting global appeal to an initiative that had previously been a smaller live event.
Sidestripe Sessions
For Vans' Side Stripe Sessions, we transformed their iconic shoebox into a multi-reality performance space. Every season, musicians and performers from across genres (and the world) took the stage. Each performance was accompanied by a suite of animations and motion graphics that interacted with our performers. These elements became a signature look and feel, utilized across marketing surfaces, as social media stickers, and in the actual performances themselves.
The only limit in Side Stripe Sessions was the stage's walls. Remi Wolf, Anderson.Paak, JID, and DIIV were just a few of the global acts who graced the shoebox. When remote capture became a necessity due to Covid-19, we took the performances on the road, shipping kits and gear directly to the artists themselves. As a team, we spent time on Zoom coaching them through equipment setup and capture to ensure we could still build out the series during shelter in place.
Ultimately, this addition to the Side Stripe Session legacy allowed us to bring the physical performances into the digital and social-first realms. We successfully brought a younger audience to the show and fostered a new sense of brand affinity among Gen Z consumers.
Warped Tour: 25 Years
In 2019, the Vans Warped Tour celebrated a monumental 25-year milestone, leaving an indelible mark on the cultural landscape of rock music, skateboarding, and self-expression. As the festival's final year approached, Vans envisioned a grand commemoration, seeking to honor the festival's iconic legacy.
At the heart of this commemoration was Better Half. With all hands on deck we orchestrated a comprehensive effort, taking on diverse roles, from production and direction to scripting, shooting, archival footage sourcing, motion graphics suite creation, rotoscoping, editing, and key art production.
This tapestry of creativity and collaboration culminated in 25 digital-first episodes, each a single brushstroke collectively painting a vivid picture of Vans Warped Tour's vibrant history and profound impact. These episodes now reside on the Instagram page for Warped Tour, providing a digital space for fans to pay their respects and perpetuate the festival's legacy.
