BCN Visuals is an award-winning innovation technology company and digital studio. Known for pioneering 3D anamorphic billboards and revolutionizing digital out-of-home, we collaborate with brands and agencies who want to leave an indelible mark. Pulse 2.0 interviewed BCN Visuals Chief Creative Officer and partner Davide Bianca to learn more about the company.
Davide Bianca’s Background
What is Bianca’s background? Bianca said:
“I’ve always been too much of an artist to go to art school, so I chose computer science and engineering, and over the past 20 years, I’ve been in one way or another involved with helping TV networks, film studios, gaming companies and brands, shape pop culture. I’ve been working in nearly every aspect of what Hollywood refers to as the production pipeline. About two and a half years ago, I joined BCN Visuals, genuinely believing in their mission of blurring the line between advertising and immersive content. BCN Visuals is redefining how people connect with advertising content through immersive entertainment.”
Formation Of BCN Visuals
How did the idea for the company come together? Bianca shared:
“BCN Visuals was born from a single idea: to thrive at the intersection of innovative technology and immersive entertainment. We aimed to dismantle the barrier between people and the story, creating an illusion of a physical space beyond the glass, where contents seem to spill out. The company emerged as a byproduct of the pandemic, driven by a need to reconnect emotionally. We pioneered the concept of full-motion anamorphic illusion, a technique dating back to Da Vinci and the Renaissance in paintings but never before explored in advertising. By applying this to forced perspective illusion on full-motion screens, we innovated billboard advertising, which hadn’t experienced much innovation in nearly 200 years, adding a layer of spatial narrative and connecting with people in a novel way.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Bianca reflected:
“There are so many. Our team always strives to make every campaign better than the previous one, and no two campaigns are the same. We raise the bar every time by telling a story in a slightly different way because even though the sandbox is somewhat defined, it is video content; it is a billboard. We reverse engineer what story will be talked about and what headlines they will be talking about. So, we always try to one-up ourselves as creatives. It’s our driving force. Every project is a little bit of my baby, and of course, there are some favorites.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Bianca explained:
“We pioneered the 3D anamorphic technique and are now expanding it narratively. For example, we orchestrate Times Square takeovers, synchronizing screens to transform outdoor spaces into giant venues. We have recently had the chance to execute some of the largest campaigns on the Las Vegas sphere. Our specialty lies in turning pure screen advertising into events and spectacles. Brands, studios, and TV networks seek our expertise for innovative, unprecedented storytelling methods to stand out, along with the strategy, logistic and technical execution know-how that comes attached with it. Essentially, we have mastered elevating digital out-of-home advertising to a level of spectacle, comparable to major events and similar phenomena.”
Challenges Faced
Has Bianca faced any challenges in his work sector? Bianca acknowledged:
“Challenges are exactly what we seek and thrive on. We have over 60 in-house VFX artists, and the company is built as a fully decentralized byproduct of the world we live in today. Because we are pioneers in this area, we have developed a level of efficiency and a super smooth pipeline that allows us to go from briefing to live on screen in as little as six weeks.”
“To give you a comparison, standard turnaround times for our competitors are about 14 to 16 weeks. Because of how we are set up, we understand what we need to do, and because we have a full in-house team and don’t outsource, we can move very fluidly and rapidly, and we love the collaborative aspect of working with both agencies and direct clients. We are usually brought on board as early as possible to be sounding boards to guide and explore different approaches. We act as consultants and strategists with our clients as well, and we help them shape the way that the media is bought and how the story is told. So it’s quite the opposite. We try to facilitate as much as possible.”
Evolution Of BCN Visuals’ Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Bianca noted:
“Our technology is designed to be market-leading, so with each new project, we contemplate the unexplored possibilities and the future evolution of our field. Whether it’s creating a tethered narrative, the largest anamorphic global multi-screen story, the largest automotive Times Square synchronized takeover to date for Cadillac, the first ever anamorphic execution on a spherical screen for XBOX, or our recent launch for Meta’s Quest 3 Headsets – the first meta-human powered, fully motion-captured anamorphic execution – we constantly innovate. This includes a multi-screen narrative that spanned Times Square and London. Currently, we’re developing a system that integrates AI data. Our focus remains on identifying and crafting the next significant story, and how to connect with our audience.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Bianca cited:
“The first was The Walking Dead launch for Disney+ Europe. That was the one campaign that put us on the map on a global scale. Last year Avatar: The Way of Water was the single largest anamorphic campaign ever done and included 13 global markets. This was the biggest campaign ever created for the biggest movie franchise of all time. The campaign got us a lot of attention, including an MSA with Disney as a preferred vendor. Then, recently, we launched the Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 global campaign and one-upped ourselves with 16 markets, the largest anamorphic campaign done to date. At last the launch of XBOX Power Your Dreams was the first anamorphic execution on the Las Vegas Sphere.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Bianca about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“The BMW XM is an excellent example of a customer success story and a good case study of how industries are adopting digital out-of-home in unique and unconventional ways. Historically, the automotive industry has always used the LA Auto Show or the Geneva Motor Show as a moment to reveal new concept cars, new vehicles, etc. BMW / GS&P San Francisco reached out to us for the launch of the brand new BMW XM, a new luxury SUV vehicle that combines the power of M with the luxury of the X series. BMW XM is the boldest vehicle to date, and BMW specifically wanted to launch and premiere the XM in Times Square. This was also the first time that the video capture of the Billboard was also run as a TV commercial – so it’s a video of a video running on TV. Generally, those two pillars don’t overlap – out-of-home and TV are separate things, and now they’re merging.”
“That same video repurposed on social channels, generated millions of views in the first 48 hours. And again, it’s become one of the go-to case studies for automotive success stories. If you think about it, we moved from how do we make consumers not click on the X of that banner to now people calling each other up, leaving their homes, and going to Times Square to watch an ad. It’s a significant shift in mindset and approach to how you communicate with consumers, how you build the brand identity, and, basically, how you create spectacles.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Bianca assessed:
“The market keeps on changing, and we keep on finding ways to tune and expand, and we really view what we do not as a single silo within the market, but rather as an ecosystem. You have to think in terms of the ecosystem and how people communicate online and offline to understand how real human beings behave in 2023 and 2024. If you see the digital out-of-home 3D billboard as the core, the center of the ecosystem, then it’s really a matter of how you add augmented reality, or how do you add microsites? How can a QR code work in tandem with an execution? How will the promo video support the event so that it becomes a global launch rather than a local market activation? So there’s a lot of different things that are done in a very unique way. We do it by thinking outside of the box. So, the total addressable market is not even quantifiable because the market keeps changing and shifting, evolving.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Bianca affirmed:
“At the end of the day, we are storytellers. We see ourselves as an innovation technology company, but we are focused on telling stories. We firmly believe that tech should never be for tech’s sake. It should always be in service of the story because when you do tech to be techie, it comes across as gimmicky, and that just becomes very shallow and non-meaningful. We are in the business of emotions. When the story and narrative take precedence, technology fades into the background, becoming invisible. In this state of invisibility, technology becomes indistinguishable from magic, which is precisely the realm and the exact area in which we love to operate.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Bianca pointed out:
“Our goals are the same ones we’ve had since day one: to continue to outdo ourselves by telling bigger and deeper stories and ultimately inspiring people. Again, we’re in the business of emotions, so we strive to make you feel something when you really look at it and completely forget that this is a piece of advertising. We want to capture your imagination and your attention right there. In a way, we’re reshaping how stories are told. Spatial narrative is a significant element in what we do. We have to reverse engineer the approach, knowing the space layout to make the most of how we execute and tell that story. We always have to take into account the people, the architectural elements, the layout of the land, etc, to tell a much bigger and more compelling story. Still, ultimately, it comes down to emotions and inspiration.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics to discuss? Bianca concluded:
“Something that we were looking into is what the equivalent of these out-of-home experiences translated to indoors. We may be working on a few things that are immersive media but designed for indoor spaces, but also, at the same time, it goes back to that notion of the ecosystem. How do all the pieces fit, and how do all these components communicate across the board to tell the bigger story and paint the bigger picture?”
