The Next Rembrandt
“Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know” — Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1659)
Rembrandt was a legendary Dutch artist/painter of the renaissance era, well known for his portraits and biblical scenes. His work with shadow and light made him one of the greatest artists that ever lived.
So what does a multinational bank, a technology behemoth and Rembrandt, the Dutch artist who inhabited the earth three centuries ago have in common. Very little at first! Dutch bank ING as part of its sponsorship of Dutch arts and culture teamed up with tech giant Microsoft Corp., a team of artists and historians, a creative agency JWT Amsterdam to create something quite unique.
ING wanted to showcase innovation at its best and at the same time remain true to Dutch arts and culture. What culminated over the next eighteen months was an ambitious and humongous effort of bringing back the master painter Rembrandt’s signature style back to life. The project was aptly named “The Next Rembrandt”. The idea was simple. If Rembrandt were to create one more painting, what would it look like? The execution was something that begged an enormous effort. The goal was to analyse all of the artist’s 346 works using 3-D scans and deep learning algorithms. The data was gathered on Rembrandt’s brush strokes, his use of light and shadow, facial features, proportionality and expressions of his subjects.
Analyzing more than 168,000 fragments of the master’s works a single persona was developed having the facial features which were characteristic and signature of Rembrandt. The next step was to use a height map to mimic the brush stokes of Rembrandt. The result was a 3-D generated painting where data was the paint and technology the brush. The painting was unveiled in April 2016 in Amsterdam amidst huge excitement and the story was covered in most major publications around the world. It also earned the Cyber Lions Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
From a digital marketer’s point of view, I could say this was a hugely successful campaign. It was able to achieve the goal it set out to scale. Ever since the unveiling the launch video of “The Next Rembrandt” has sparked conversations from all quarters about data and technology. The admirers love the idea of the marriage of technology and the arts. While critics may not be pleased about a computer generated Rembrandt, people are excited about how this project has opened up avenues for new types of innovation in the field. Till now data had been used mainly to drive business decisions. What makes it special is that it touches arts and culture which is a core fabric of human existence. The team modestly admits “Only Rembrandt could have created a Rembrandt”. There are already talks about how this method could be used to restore some of the famous painters’ works that have been destroyed/deteriorated to some extent.
ING is one of the most innovative banks in the world and with this campaign they were able to further cement their position as being one of the best in innovation in the minds of people. According to a case study on YouTube, there were more than 1400 articles written about it with 1.8 billion media impressions. The total earned media value was 12.5 million euros. Campaigns with such creativity do not just create value for the brands they represent but are able to make an impact in the consumer’s minds for a long time.
More on the journey and how it unfolded can be seen here : https://www.nextrembrandt.com/
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All images by ING that are used here are covered under the Creative Commons 2.0 license.
