“The demands and turnarounds we face in our business today have never been greater. Our clients feel it, we feel it, and I am proud that we continue to face these head-on in partnership with our clients to deliver breakthrough work that works. We do this all while continuing to grow our offering with new capabilities, new global offices, new people and of course new clients and brands.” ~McGarryBowen creative chief Gordon Bowen in a statement to Ad Age

mcgarrybowen is a global, full-service, integrated marketing communications agency network headquartered in New York, with offices in Chicago, London, Düsseldorf and Shanghai. The Agency was founded in 2002 on a simple request to clients: “give us your biggest challenge.” Over the decade since, mcgarrybowen has grown to become one of the most successful agency start-ups ever, earning “Agency of the Year” honors from Advertising Age in 2009 and again from both Ad Age and Adweek in 2011. Famous for big, organizing ideas and “work that works,” mcgarrybowen counts some of the world’s most iconic companies as its clients, including Disney, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Verizon, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Kraft, Mondelez International, Marriott, Pizza Hut, Chevron, Crayola, Procter & Gamble, Sears and United Airlines.

CHALLENGE

As a leading digital, mobile and social agency, mcgarrybowen needed a social newsroom command center where they could collaborate with clients on real-time marketing efforts for live events from the Oscars to the Olympics. The system needed to accommodate for the Agency’s tenacious, adaptable style through a collaborative but unified approach to project management and creative production. The system was to be built in an unfinished, industrial loft space within mcgarrybowen’s open-floor offices located in the iconic Starrett-Lehigh Building.

OUR SOLUTION

PPI combined a clean, industrial aesthetic and an impressive array of flat panel displays with a customized video solution to create mcgarrybowen’s Social Media Command Center. The unique design used floor to ceiling poles to suspend 50” and 90” displays in the unfinished space, making for a high-profile but not overwhelming audiovisual installation. Two major aspects of the project design were:

Sleek Pole-Mounted Display Solution

The industrial-style mounting solution is the centerpiece of the new space. Arranged with six 50”displays, one centered 90” display, and careful cable management, the installation lends itself to the unfinished aesthetic of the room. In order to make the displays apear to be “floating” off the walls, PPI mounted them on floor-to-ceiling steel poles and left visual space behind them for event-specific wall coverings and artwork.

“Any to Any” Control Flexibility

The backbone of the system is a 16×16 Crestron Digital Media Matrix Switcher, which allows the user to route any source to any combination of displays. A multiviewer video processor gives mcgarrybowen’s content team a flexible set of tools to design captivating visual canvases on the 90” display with any source connected to the matrix switch. The system is controlled from a 10” touchpanel with a custom programmed GUI that allows for full control of the Command Center when tailoring it for different events.

“The key to success for this project was making the user interface intuitive and simple. Our programmers spend a lot of time on a design that invites and encourages users to take control of the system, rather than intimidating them with complexity. Training was short and virtually unnecessary.”
-Zach Baxter, CTS | Corporate Account Manager at Presentation Products, Inc.

RESULTS

Building an AV system in an industrial space presented a lot of visual challenges. PPI’s unique design and custom technology integration made for a solution that is more than the sum of its parts. Shortly after completion,
mcgarrybowen used the system to manage a live response social media Super Bowl campaign for a high profile client. The system provides a new way for mcgarrybowen to exhibit the dedication they bring to their work in front of new clients.

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