Oh the weather outside is… well, rainy in Toronto at the moment. But that hasn’t stopped FCB’s downtown office from bringing a winter wonderland indoors.
Right now you can visit MakeItSnow.ca on your desktop or mobile device to see a live feed of an FCB Toronto office covered in “snow.” Better yet, if you pay a visit on your phone or tablet and give it a shake, you can make even more “snow” fall from the ceiling.
Since launching mid-day Tuesday, the effort has already drawn over 42,000 shakes from curious online visitors. The more shakes it gets, the more it snows, and the more FCB plans on donating to Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank.
FCB decided to create their “human snow globe” in lieu of sending gifts to clients this year.
“This is our holiday card,” said Tyler Turnbull, president of FCB Toronto. The agency invited Marketing in for an interview inside the snow globe itself – which normally serves as the actual office space for Turnbull and FCB’s chief creative officer Jon Flannery.
Turnbull and Flannery’s office floor is currently covered in snow blankets — swaths of cotton that are normally used on film sets or in stage productions. The “snow” falling from the ceiling is actually generated by a film set-grade foam machine, which creates soft, soapy clumps of bubbles that evaporate as soon as they land.
FCB VP and creative group head of digital, Curtis Edwards, was responsible for sourcing the “snow” materials from a production company in Toronto. The team then had to figure out how to get the snow machine to communicate with its website in real-time, so the snow would fall as soon as a shake was received. Despite the complexities, Edwards and his team managed to get the snow globe launched in about a week.
FCB plans to rotate various team members through the snow globe until the end of the week, and will even continue to conduct meetings in the room as the snow falls.
“We wanted to pair creative with tech,” said Turnbull, “[To] do something fun for our staff and our clients, and do something good around the holidays.”
“My wife loves it,” quipped Flannery. “She can keep an eye on me.”
Visit MakeItSnow.ca on your mobile device to give the FCB Human Snow Globe a shake. You can share the snow globe on social media with the hashtag #MakeItSnow.
