In September 2016, Accenture Strategy launched in France. They were looking for a “Splashy Viral Event” (definitely their words) to announce their arrival.

So after concepting long and hard we came up with the very first symphony written by AI performed by humans.

We gathered a collection of business articles that expressed French sentiment on technology, the state of the markets, and how technology will impact business in the future. We then collaborated with a data technologist named Hannah Davis who built an algorithm that turns text into musical notes, and a French composer to turn those notes into a symphonic performance.

We then added in Robert Hodgin to create a real-time data-driven visual display for the live performance at the Louvré in Paris the night of September 20th.

It was the perfect demonstration of humans and AI working together to make something memorable.

Why not skip that? I do it 100 times a day. How about making content consumers want? That they seek out and laugh/cry at? Something helpful, maybe? Otherwise, the skipping will continue.

We brought in innovators from Oculus, Facebook, and VRVE; and content creators like Dan Harmon, Morgan Spurlock, Michael Hurwitz, LA Reid, Timbaland, and Ira Glass to shed light on new ways of telling a brand story.

During the event, we were in a basement studio on-site with an improv team from UCB, making real-time content meant for social channels based on briefs received via text messages from the 200 CMOs in attendance. We had 10 minutes to concept, shoot, and edit each “brief”. In 3 hours, we filmed 14 shorts for a variety of clients.

The next day we launched a SquareSpace site to house the content for client approval:

http://www.digitaslbi.space
pw:newfronts2016