Behind the Landcruiser Emergency Network by James Theophane
I’m often asked “where do the ideas for my work come from”. Although I’ve had fun hacking ye’ old oil paintings, made a ginormous, manic, carol-playing chandelier from old mobile phones, and been gifted the opportunity to create weird and wonderful pieces for TED Talks and Skittles, the question has never been so oft asked since picking up the Innovation Lion at this year’s Cannes Festival.
I’ve always held a firm belief that technology in marketing should be invisible, useful and/or playful. And strive to begin my thinking there. But where the ideas come from? More often than not, they are the fruits of serendipity crossed with my obsession with Living Technology.
Let me give you an example:
Turning Landcruisers into an Emergency Mobile Network
A brief came across my desk back in 2014 when I was the Group Innovation and Creative Director for Saatchi & Saatchi. The client, Toyota, was looking for an activation of their Landcruiser customer base. Something digital. Something their dealers could use to incentivise purchase.
The idea knocking around the agency was a promo encouraging Landcruiser owners to drive into the outback to get as far out of mobile phone range as possible. The driver who clocked the most k’s won some prize or the other.
Being a lover of Living Technology I thought there was a far bigger opportunity.
The insight was really interesting; something like 5 million square kilometres of Australia (about 65 percent) receives no mobile signal. That’s one ridiculously large and dangerous mobile phone black-spot.
Remember when I spoke of serendipity? Well here’s the first example. At the time of the brief this powerful image from the 2014 Hong Kong riots was making the rounds on Reddit and a few other news sources.
The Chinese government had just switched off the local cell towers to prevent protestors organising themselves using their mobile phones. But the people were prepared. Hearing the rumours many protestors pre-downloaded Firechat to their phones.
For those who haven’t heard of it, Firechat is a peer-to-peer mobile phone networking service. It negates the need for a network connection on your phone, with means it will work anywhere. Using it meant the protestors could stay in touch, mobilise, and remain one step ahead.
So this got me thinking: what if we could take the same principle, scale it, and apply it to the half a million or so Landcruisers of the outback?
The agency jumped on the idea. The client jumped on the idea. We were off.
So how does a big traditional agency like Saatchi & Saatchi go about making something like Firecat for cars? It doesn’t. Enter serendipity part two. Guy Hobbs, one of the creatives working on the project with me from its inception started sniffing around. It turned out one of the foremost authorities in Computer Science and Rural Communication, Dr Paul Stephen-Gardener was based a hop, skip and short flight away in Adelaide, South Australia.
Dr Paul founded the Serval project and their research in highly secure mesh networking, voice calls, text messaging and file sharing between mobile phones using Wi-Fi, without the need for a SIM or any other infrastructure like mobile cell towers was already incredibly advanced.
Suffice to say I hopped straight on a plane, met with Dr Paul and we thrashed out a sketch of this roaming network of Landcruisers there and then. Getting the network up was nowhere near as simple.
The production was fraught with obstacle after obstacle (as you can imagine from a technology that was being designed to handle emergency calls). But we did it. Almost a year later, in collaboration with the Toyota Mission for Technologies and the Flinders University department of Computer Science and Rural Communications we quietly launched the Landcruiser Emergency Network (LEN).
The idea is hugely transformative for Toyota. The benefits to the community are clear, but what may not be immediately is what this allows the innovation allows the Toyota marketing department to achieve.
[Here’s it’s probably worth noting that I left Saatchi and Saatchi after delivering this project in January this year (2016), and so where the project can go and what the team do with it is pure speculation on my behalf.]
The Landcruiser Emergency Network creates a flexible and fertile platform to engage customers at all stages of the product purchase lifecycle. It rewards customer loyalty, reinforces the brand’s position as the vehicle for the Outback, and gives the brand permission to partake in ongoing conversations about safety in the outback.
LEN gives Toyota permission to have one-to-one, one-to-cluster and one-to-all conversations across many different customer segments and internal audiences.
They can engage and mobilise owners clubs during times of emergency. New owners can immediately feel integrated into the longstanding Landcruiser community. The brand can partake in 1:1, one-to-cluster and one-to-many conversations about safety in the outback. And most importantly, in a crowded 4x4 marketplace, it gives the dealers a genuine USP.
Now the Landcruiser Emergency Network has seen success winning gold for Innovation at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Spikes Asia and various other awards, I urge Toyota not to stop there. To continue developing the program for Australia and beyond, and hopefully live up to my dream of seeing the technology built in vehicles rolling off the production Line.
Little titbit
The Landcruiser Emergency Network uses a technology called Delay Tolerent Networking which NASA have subsequently installed on the International Space Station to allow the implementation of a Solar System-wide Internet in the near future.
The LEN product design was created in homage to relay-system baton design used to carry vital messaging across vast distances by the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Chinese civilizations. The design requires no technical knowledge to install, plugging and playing in three easy steps:
Links of interest:
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/ingenious-plan-turn-land-cruisers-outback-wireless-network/
http://developer.servalproject.org
http://www.flinders.edu.au/science_engineering/csem/
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/05/landcruisers-are-being-fitted-with-their-own-mobile-networks/
https://www.engadget.com/2016/05/12/toyota-landcruisers-communication-network-outback/
James Theophane (or Theo) is the creative partner and co-founder of Theo+Theo.
His work has been ranked in the top 7 most awarded campaigns in the world (Big Won Report), singled out for a President’s in-show Top Pick at the D&AD’s, featured in WARC100’s “The 100 smartest marketing campaigns in the world”, picked up the coveted Gold Cannes Lion for Innovation and he has won 5 Gold Effies. He is noted for his “forward thinking, intelligent ideas that have a stake firmly in the real world”.
James also enjoys creating installations for art festivals. His work has featured at global events such as Paris Exit Festival (Contemporary Art Museum of Créteil), New York Imagine Science Film Festival, New York Annual Vimeo Film Festival, TED Talks and Art & About.
The Landcruiser Emergency Network was created by Saatchi & Saatchi, and Flinders University for Toyota Australia.
Special shout out to the wonderful team I had the pleasure of going on this journey with: Paul Gardner-Stephen and his team at Flinders University School of Computer Sc, Engineering & Mathematics. Saatchi & Saatchi creative teams Wassim Kanaan, Guy Hobbs, Pierre-Antoine Gilles — without who’s ingenuity, creativity and insight the project would not exist. The persistence of Sam Jones, Anna Warren, Mike Spirkovski and Gary Clark. The craft of Tod Duke-Yonge. The cinematography of Eddie Bell and the 8 crew. And a special thanks to Marg & Doug Sprigg and co. of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, and the friendly citizens of the Flinders Ranges, SA.
