Mayda blends immersive tech, design and storytelling, with striking results

AT&T and agency Translation approached The Mayda Creative Co. a few years back, looking to collaborate on a next-generation football helmet for deaf and hard-of-hearing players. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List winners here Two years later, Mayda’s creation was a reality—a 5G-connected helmet that allows coaches to send instructions to players via an AR lens in the visor. The helmet was featured in a national ad and worn in a competitive game in October by players at Gallaudet University, a school for the audibly impaired. (Gallaudet won 34-20 over Hilbert College.) The helmet went through a lengthy creation process, from discovery and research to detailed product development and rigorous safety testing, to precision engineering involving many custom-designed components. Ben Smith and Alex Horton led development on the Mayda side. To the company, it was the perfect project, melding design thinking, immersive tech and storytelling in a compelling way—and demonstrating how many clients need more than just traditional production techniques today. Mayda was also at the forefront of another tech innovation last year. It created some of the first advertising and branded content for the exterior of the Las Vegas Sphere—including campaigns for video games Mortal Kombat and Call of Duty and a live-action commercial for A$AP Rocky’s F1 Puma collection drop. View this post on Instagram A post shared by HIGHSNOBIETY (@highsnobiety) Founded in 2021, Mayda doubled in size in 2023. The 25-person collective, with offices in Brooklyn and London, includes nine directors. Two—Adrian Yu and Pandayoghurt—joined last year. The others are Alex Horton, Carl Addy, Ben Smith, Lesly Lynch, Anton Shavkero, Titmouse and Hvy Mnthl. Ad Age A-List and Creativity Gala Buy your ticket to the in-person event Click here Other notable Mayda projects in 2023 included Nissan and Google’s “Ariya,” a four-hour lo-fi music video directed by Titmouse; Shavkero’s “More Than a Game” spot for the WNBA, which used full-body CG scanning to create photo-real avatars of WNBA athletes; and Addy’s “Play Closer” launch film for EA Sports FC 24, blending hyper-real CG, live action, design and enhanced in-game cinematics. Mayda also regaled visitors to London’s Outernet Now Building with a two-minute, immersive, on-site animation of otherworldly environments on behalf of beauty products brand Lush. “The Intergalactic Universe” was created especially for the Outernet’s huge floor-to-ceiling 26K digital screens. The company also used AI and neural radiance field (NeRF) technology to develop a visual language for Karim Amir’s Ukraine-focused documentary “Defiant.” And it went beyond visuals entirely in producing a six-part podcast series with Wieden+Kennedy and Heinz celebrating Black innovators in American cuisine. Mayda was named after an island in the Atlantic Ocean that appeared on early maps but was never found. The word became synonymous with a sense of adventure and exploration, which Mayda has used as its own North Star in its early years as a company. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List winners here

Mayda blends immersive tech, design and storytelling, with striking results

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