Emakina reaches for the stars for Jaeger-LeCoultre at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie 2015

The SIHH trade fair, the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie in Geneva celebrated in January 2015 its 25th edition. For this year’s event, the esteemed Maison of Jaeger-LeCoultre invited Emakina to imagine and create a first-class digital experience on its stand, appropriate to the prestige of this annual event.

The eminent watchmaker wished to reinforce the astral theme associated with a range of its top watches, while showcasing its products in an adapted high-end fashion. It also wanted to highlight the relationship between astral phenomena on a macroscopic scale and the highly complex mechanics at a microscopic level, as they are at work in the Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber.

Emakina responded to the challenge by developing a captivating digital experience, harmonising the two opposites:

* The infinitely grand, with the discovery of the astral theme, as seen through a telescope;

* The encounter between astronomy and the infinitely small, as lived by the watchmaker, by means of a cleverly crafted video presentation.

The agency developed an application creating a 3D depth experience, to be discovered by looking through a telescope. This highly original stand animation allowed visitors to view the watchmaker’s products and information in an unexpected yet very well suited immersive optical experience.

Using a cleverly integrated smartphone and converging lenses in the telescope viewer, the application created the effect of displayed objects floating in the universe. The spectator has the impression to be transported from Geneva’s elite watchmakers fair right into the heart of a planetarium.

The 3D experience is strengthened by a video animation on a 95-inch screen, explaining the origin of time measurement. Emakina created the film and added a real ‘sound shower’.

The result is a spectacular learning voyage, illustrating the relationship between macroscopic mechanisms in the sky, as observed by man, and the watchmaker’s trade, mastering the infinitely small. Both worlds are one.

As the measurement of time processes the division of years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds, it mirrors the mastering of light-year distances, recorded in astronomical phenomena.

With this project, Emakina had a field day in playing its part as a trusted full service communication team. The agency brought together creative and technological expertise, to imagine and build this innovative live experience. It created the original application and the motion design video in record time.

The result is a fine example of the understanding and support of the client’s brand, as it grows through close operational collaboration, joining entities in Europe, the United States and Asia in the process.