SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Amplify, the global creative agency that joins the dots between people, brands, and culture, has launched FUTURES, a dedicated innovation practice focused on helping brands embrace and navigate creative technology, entertainment, and IP. FUTURES will utilize the power of technology to immerse audiences, capture imaginations, and co-create worlds.
FUTURES is part of Amplify’s continued mission to help brands build worlds and break formats with a dedicated offering harnessing the power of emerging technologies to create memorable brand stories and experiences. As an offer FUTURES is already being woven into the DNA of the agency, influencing and shifting the direction in Amplify’s brand work for clients including Activision, Converse, EPIC Games, Google, Nike, PlayStation, and Samsung.
FUTURES will be led by Ed Hallam, Innovation Creative Director, and Izzy Kertland, Head of Special Projects, pulling together the passions, expertise, and experience across Amplify’s global offices in London, Sydney, LA, New York, and Paris — including Australian-based ECD Tim Baggott, Creative Lisa Aoyama, and Group Business Director Kate Maidment.
Ed Hallam brings a passion and proven track record for combining innovation and technology with brand storytelling, building meaningful user experiences. Ed’s background includes working as an extension to brand-side innovation teams including Google, Warner Media, and Nike, the latter on patents resulting in Nike’s seminal Cryptokicks and dot.SWOOSH.
Izzy Kertland has over a decade of experience pioneering brand experiences, campaigns, content, digital interactives, and exhibitions for brands and cultural institutions. As a specialist in innovation production focusing on new and emerging technologies, Izzy’s work for ASICS has been recognized by the Cannes Lions and D&AD.
FUTURES runs an experiment series — a program designed to build and test new ideas at speed, creating prototypes to drive the future of experience and campaign storytelling. In the last 18 months, Amplify has collaborated with Creative Technologists from across a variety of disciplines — Eoghan O’Keaffe, an AI specialist; Sean Malikides who creates electronic, mechanical, and sonic artworks with his design practice Kai Labs; and Tigris Li, an artist, and creative technologist whose collaborative work with FUTURES will be showcased in Summer 2024. Most importantly, FUTURES believes in the power of community, so it will invite brands and audiences to participate in this work, making it possible to download a code and access research through a series of prototype drops.
Ed Hallam, Innovation Creative Director, said: “Amplify continues to be known for innovation, pioneering non-traditional forms of marketing and technology. Each project moves the dial forward, infusing technology and demonstrating the art of possibility. Whether that is for Nike harnessing the power of music and energy from a party to transform a 15-meter sneaker installation into a generative art piece through to helping Converse create a platform for emerging creative technologists to make their craft center stage”.
Tim Baggott, Executive Creative Director, Amplify Australia, added, “Whilst innovation has always been a central part of Amplify’s global creative culture, the insights and collaborator relationships forged with FUTURES have opened doors to new possibilities for the work we create with our brand partners. In Australia, these include Samsung: Chorus of Light, which integrated AI sentiment analysis to deliver an interactive installation at VIVID that responded to the meaning of spoken messages, and Sonos Frisson Trigger, which saw us bring neuroscience research to spatial audio hardware to engineer a ground-breaking track that gives every listener goosebumps.”
