Ed Sheeran Mural Campaign
- Location: Mumbai
- Year: 2023
Ed Sheeran is set to visit India once again for his Mathematics Tour and Book My Show was looking to make a big announcement in style.
Wicked Broz planned the Ed Sheeran mural as part of an art campaign that would combine the high visibility artwork with a custom made Augmented Reality filter.
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What is the ''Mathematics Tour'?
In 2011, Ed Sheeran released his first album ‘+’. One of the strangest album names ever and one that branding folks can take a lesson from.
“The thing with the albums is I, very early on in my career, decided I didn’t… I don’t mean to play it down, but I do have a face for the radio. And I was like, ‘I don’t really want to be a poster boy ever.’ - Ed Sheeran
Since then, his series of symbols has taken the music world by storm.
‘I’d love to get to a point that there’s a billboard of just red with an equals sign, or green with a multiply, or blue with a divide, or orange with a plus, and people go, ‘Oh, Ed’s got an album coming out.” – Ed Sheeran.
The +–=÷× Tour (pronounced The Mathematics Tour) is the ongoing fourth concert tour by Ed Sheeran. Comprising 105 shows across four legs, the tour commenced on 23 April 2022 in Dublin, Ireland, and is scheduled to conclude on 8 September 2024 in Larnaca, Cyprus. The tour is in support of his fifth studio album = (2021) and his sixth studio album − (2023).
His tour hits India on 16th March 2024 in Mumbai.
The story behind the Ed Sheeran mural
When Book My Show approached us for the mural, our first thought was to think of a sci-fi kind of look to it along with a pinch of graffiti. That was indeed also, the thought that the client team had.
Zain Siddiqui, our creative director decided to not fall into the trap of the obvious. Since, the mural was supposed to be architecturally inspired, he decided to rope in someone who could lend an Indian vibe to it and at the same time keep it modern.
Enter visionary artist Jisha Madai. She has been painting on canvas and on walls (and everything in between) for nearly 6 years. She had just featured in our Ladies First Street Art festival in Goa.
Her blend of revolutionary thoughts coupled with an understanding of architecturally inspired compositions was the perfect recipe to give a soul to our Ed Sheeran mural.
It took us a couple of weeks to go back and forth with the client team and present nearly 4 drafts before we could all agree to the composition and the colours.
The perspective drawing with shadows extending beyond the smudged boundaries of the mural brings a natural 3D mural look to it and gets everyone’s attention.
The permissions were procured by the Wicked Broz team in the first week of planning itself. A prominent wall on the Nargis Datt road near the Carter Road area in Bandra was selected to attract a posh crowd for this kind of mural.
The Wicked Broz community boasts of over 1000 artists pan India and so apart from our founders Omkar Dhareshwar and Zain Siddiqui who helped paint the mural, we had no problem assembling a killer team of Dexter (a magician with spray cans), Keval (a master of portraits) and Imran bhai.
In 7 days flat, from base paint to final touches, we were done painting the mural.
Our First Augmented Reality Mural
This is also our first Augmented Reality mural (AR mural). With the help of Vijay Gulani, we were able to link the mural back to an Instagram filter that activated an animated experience on top of the mural that was visible in the camera.
Long time friend and collaborator Prithvi Mallick did the 2D animation and within a week of the mural the augmented reality experience was LIVE for passerby’s to scan and view.
It had been a dream of ours since the last couple of years to pull off an innovative art campaign like this and it finally took a risk taking client like Book My Show to put their faith in us and allow us to offer something that very few in India have been able to achieve so far.
The reaction
When we published the pictures of this mural online, we had no idea what was coming.
Ed Sheeran fan pages in Europe and Taiwan started following us and praising the artwork.
News media publications and influencers from across the country picked it up and for nearly a week we were bombarded with hundreds of mentions online.
The best part was friends came back to us with messages like, “Look what I found online…”. That really put the smile on everyone’s face.
Ed Sheeran is coming to India on 16th March 2024 and the tickets are LIVE on Book My Show platform here.
See you there!
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