Mumbai: A wholly independent Indian content and experience company and one of the key partners behind the ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ campaign Pixel Party has created history at the Cannes Lions: The International Festival of Creativity. This is the first time an India based firm has won the highest number of Lions, including a Titanium Lion, three Grand Prix, one Gold Lion, four Silver Lions and three Bronze Lions. This stellar campaign was created by Dentsu Webchutney and Pixel Party, thus creating an unparalleled interactive tour of the British Museum using augmented reality technology.

Being the most awarded campaign at Cannes Lions 2022, ‘the Unfiltered History Tour’ captures the story of the British Museum's stolen artefacts. For this award-winning campaign, Pixel Party developed the filters for the British museum tour by using the first of its kind technology - LiDAR (light detection ranging), which was employed to create a dynamic auto adapting Instagram filter that blends satellite data with augmented reality, to account for changing lighting conditions in the Museum.

Using Instagram augmented reality filters, visitors can scan the museum's disputed artefacts and see them being teleported back in time to their countries of origin. It also relays violent moments in history with the help of ten experts from those countries. The visuals were inspired by Akira Kurosawa's black and white films and were designed to match the emotional stories told by the experts.

Pixel Party founder and director Kalpit Dwivedi said, “This has been one of the most exciting and rewarding journeys for us. The entire process of creating an immersive experience was fascinating and challenging. It forced us to think out of the box and tackle unique situations, and we are very proud of the results. Working with a hardcore creative advertising technologist like Gurbaksh Singh (chief innovation officer of Dentsu Creative) was very thrilling and inspiring. Technology enables more powerful, impactful storytelling. So, we decided to try this using a social platform that can build a rich experience for every user – which is how Instagram’s augmented reality filters became part of this project.”

Pixel Party director Sumit Grover said, “Executing this entire campaign took almost 18 months and the entire journey was exhilarating. It feels truly incredible to be recognized on the biggest international stage. From the entire team that poured their heart into crafting this campaign, this is our commitment to further discourse that will make room for underrepresented voices in the industry. Well, it’s been a long journey and now it’s getting the rewards that it truly deserves”