Smart - The dancing red man

DANCE, RED MAN, DANCE! Smart are on a crusade to transform the way we use cities and urban areas. An anomaly they’d identified was the number of accidents caused by people not waiting for the red man to change to green, at pedestrian crossings. How could they stop people jay-walking and putting lives at risk? Enter BBDO Berlin, enter Minivegas and enter the Dancing Red Traffic Light Man! We were charged with coming up with a way of breathing life into the famous red man through the medium of dance. This presented many more challenges than you may think, not least the logistics of tampering with actual traffic lights in a major European city. In the end, we developed a series of LED panels that would fit seamlessly into the existing traffic light casings in Lisbon – the agreed location for this experiment. By fitting the LED panels with a light sensor and installing them over the original lights, our panels would turn from red to green in perfect sync with the actual lights. “But how does a red traffic light man dance?” We hear you ask. Well, that’s up to you. We built a intriguing 4m x 4m Smart-branded cube some distance from the crossing and teased people to enter with a huge glowing red man on the outside. On entering the cube, punters chose a piece of music to dance to and then, when the count down to the red light hit Zero it was their moment to bust some captivating moves. Kinect sensors inside the cube captured their movement and transferred it into the movements of the red LED man. At that same moment, people waiting to cross would hear the music piped through hidden speakers on the road side, and notice the normally static red man in the traffic light suddenly begin to boogie down – with the very same moves the person in the cube was making. As an added bonus, inside the cube, dancers could see via video stream, the reactions their bopping were among the waiting pedestrians. It was a fun-filled day. Music echoed around Lisbon’s Rossio square and locals and tourists alike had smiles on their faces and an extra spring in their step. The dancing red man certainly made people stop and stare – apparently 81% more pedestrians waited at the red light than normal, and a film of the event proved a hit on YouTube, accruing over 10,000 000 views.