Esri City Takeover

Most people know cities face major challenges. Traffic and transportation, public safety, maintaining infrastructure, climate change, and affordability. What they don’t know is that 30,000 cities and local governments worldwide are already solving them with technology most people have never heard of.

GIS (Geographic Information Systems) powers smarter cities. It optimizes traffic, designs safer streets, and prepares for climate disasters. But despite its impact, GIS remains virtually unknown outside urban planning circles.

This city takeover, designed to launch in NYC and other major cities worldwide, is a brand awareness campaign for Esri that shows how GIS is already making people's commutes faster, neighborhoods safer, and infrastructure more resilient. The citywide OOH campaign uses bold, fact-driven headlines placed exactly where GIS is actively working: at intersections, bus stops, and construction sites.

As part of the campaign, we developed a co-branded experiential concept with Autodesk. A waterfront AR experience that showcases a real project where climate-ready infrastructure is designed with GIS and BIM and a connected online experience that maps real global projects.

The goal was to make GIS as recognizable as AI by connecting people to how it affects their daily lives.

While this campaign wasn't ultimately produced, it set a foundation of a comprehensive strategy for communicating GIS technology to mainstream audiences.