Projector's Koichiro Tanaka explains the UNIQLOCK

Last year, we spoke with Koichiro Tanaka, creative director at four-year-old production boutique Projector, about his shop's Uniqlo work. On the event of the staggering UNIQLOCK site winning Grand Prix at the Tokyo Interactive Festival (and the odds that this exciting piece of work will do very well in other shows this year) here's Tanaka's explanation of the site and the thinking behind it.Uniqlo really seems like a fantastic client to work with. Did you have much space to do what you wanted, or did you stick to the brief? What was the brief like? KT: No brief existed. They didn't want to reduce the possibility by one-way brief. First, Uniqlo and I discussed everything to set ideals and right objectives without thinking feasibility. It was about Uniqlo's core competence, ambition, target insight, potential of user generated media/word of mouth, etc. The objective we set was delivering a fresh, portable, relevant experience that was able to be shared with audiences all over the world by the integrated use of UGM and Uniqlo's website. So, I began to plan the idea according to these objectives. The first project was MIXPLAY. I came up with the idea of dance/sound experience by the integrated use of YouTube and Uniqlo's website (dance/sound mixer). I knew 'dance' and 'music' were most popular tags on YouTube, and I felt this motif could be suitable for expressing Uniqlo's clothes as body parts. So, we searched for the dancer who was able to realize this idea. When we found Woomin (a robot dance team), we shared the convictions with them. According to this idea and cast, we developed the campaign script: To upload the breathtaking robot dances with Uniqlo's basics that perfectly synchronized with sound on YouTube. That would let people want to share or search more. The title, UNIQLO MIXPLAY, was the only clue. On the website, people can mix (experience) dance and sound as body messages to send them to others. This total experience would make Uniqlo fresh and unique to online audiences.What part was the most challenging? KT: The challenge was to design the perfect fusion of dance and sound. We discussed with Woomin and the sound artist (Tuzuki Takashi) and decided to develop both choreography and sound simultaneously. Then, we tried to adjust both performances live. Tuzuki brought a sound mixer to the shooting studio, and we directed the best balance of dance and sound. After shooting, Tuzuki composed and adjusted details of the sound based on the completed choreography.

Projector's Koichiro Tanaka explains the UNIQLOCK

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