The Pitch

Build an interactive playground to present the latest star product of Estée Lauder: ANR

When the covid pandemic broke out, Estée Lauder had to forget about the interactive popup space they wanted to build. They came to us to build a 80-90’s inspired games built in a city of lights.

I was initially hired on this project to provide creative ideas of interactive brand territories for the launch of the product. The brand wanted to captivate the users for around 10 minutes on the website, while taking them on a journey through the history of the product and a special universe made of space and lights. After a few days of ideation, I was kindly asked by Make Me Pulse studio to officially join the team as the creative lead for the full duration of the project! (thanks guys, you're the best.)

Check out the Experience Here

Role

Creative Lead

 Client

MakeMePulse

Brand

Estée Lauder

Awarded

FWA . SOTD

AWWWARDS . SOTD

The Fifth Generation

An Introduction to the History of ANR

Estée Lauder wanted to start up this experience to the latest of their star product, the Advanced Night Repair or "ANR", by going through the "Decades of firsts". We made an interactive slideshow to go through the history of the 4 previous generations of the product.

Mobile first interactions

Starting with the easiest action to get the user hooked up

Swiping through ANR history

Leveraging the first swipe action to ask the users to navigate with a simple swipe right.

The city of lights

Creating a custom world for ANR:
A golden city of lights

It was important for Estée Lauder to create a new space for their star product to shine. Since they couldn’t launch it in a popup store as they initially wanted, we offered to create from the ground up an immersive space. Estée Lauder chose to have it as a wavy dome in a shiny golden city. 



We then set out to design mood boards and story boards, from which we were lucky enough to partner with Territory Studio on designing the city and making it come together to deliver a modern and inspiring shining city.

The Arcade Game Center

An interactive Dome and 4 incredible looking 3D mini-games in a web browser

Estée Lauder wanted to offer an entertaining moment to their users. Since they couldn’t have people gathered in a popup store as they initially wanted before the pandemic broke out, we offered to create from the ground up an immersive gaming space in which users could switch between multiple games. Estée Lauder chose a 80’s vibe, and we made it happen. With neons, pixels and all.

The 4 mini-games

Following the wishes and tasts of Estée Lauder, we created 4 simple mini games inspired by simple arcade games. All of them with a disctinct look, and the color palette of the ANR's branding.

Game 1:
Speed Racer

Starting with the easiest action to get the user hooked up

Game 2:
Smooth it out!

A "wack-a-mole" kind of gameplay, where you need to flatten with the proper timing all the product arriving on tree conveyor belts, each with its own speed.

Game 3:
Shoot'em all!

Starting from the heart of the city, and climbing into space, you'll need to make your way through the 5 elements that attack your skin day and night.

Game 4:
Beauty Bounce

Synchronise your jumps with the timer to make your way up the stairs... well, not actually stairs, but rather the top part of Estée Lauder's ANR Bottle.
PS : activate the sound on this vidéo to get a glimpse of the sound design

Sound Design

An epic score to match an epic travel through space and time

It was incredible to work with Loïc Bénart at PressPlayOnTape. Loïc is incredibly versatile : after creating the main theme as it is done for adventure and Sci-Fi movies, he adapted this main theme in 4 different styles to match the visual identity of each game.

We also had fun thinking about all the sound effects to add on both the CGI film made by Territory, and the interactive games made by the amazing team of developpers at MakeMePulse.

Making of

A glimpse on a few work in progress steps

Apart from pitching ideas to Make Me pulse and directing the team of creatives, I also got time to dig into the nitty gritty and make stillframes of some of the games ideas we presented.

I made those stillframes with Cinema 4D and Octane Render, while we were still discussing the games' mechanics.
Later on, Anthony Meric, a talented 3D driven motion designer hopped onto the project and reworked the mockups to match the latest gameplay.

The Team

CCO

Nicolas Rajabaly

CD

Alexis Demachy

CD

Louis Ansa

AD

Manon Jouet

AD

Guillaume Mitch

MOTION + 3D DESIGN

Anthony Meric

LEAD DEV

Pierre Lepers

WEBGL DEV

Bruno Simon

3D INTRO FEATURED MOVIE

Territory Studio

STORYBOARD

Richard Ngo

SOUND DESIGN

Loïc Bénart - PressPlayOnTape