ultrasupernew red bull ad campaign

at the tokyo studio of creative agency ultrasupernew image © designboom

with the championships of the red bull BC one b-boying and breakdancing competitions just held in moscow, designboom takes a look at the work of ultrasupernew, the creative agency behind the company’s global video campaigns for the series. a longterm collaborator with red bull, ultrasupernew has created film, interventionist, and print work for events including the red bull box car race and art of motion running and parkour competition, in addition to the BC one campaign.

USN’s ‘road to red bull BC one’ feature on b-boyer lilou

print graphics designed by ultrasupernew for the ‘red bull BC one’ competition

onsite graphic work by ultrasupernew for the 2010 b-boying championship

larger-than-life paper pop-out at the 2010 ‘red bull BC one’ event

based in tokyo, ultrasupernew (USN) was founded by australia-born michael sheetal and holland-born marc wesseling, now joined by japan-born director tomo murakami. sheetal, the company’s creative director, himself comes from a background in interior and set design. after graduating he began to work for a digital projection studio and for a number of television companies, which brought him to japan in 2002. the combination of his interest and experience in staging and organizing, film and television, and the use of technology led him to co-found USN in 2007.

view of the studio, including the giraffe used in their ‘safari’ intervention project for mini cars, and red bull skateboards (right) image © designboom

image © designboom

the office at work image © designboom

ceiling view of how the team created the visual illusion of their logo image © designboom

the ‘red bull BC one’ publicity campaign is one of the studio’s most recent projects in a longstanding collaboration between the two companies. in advance of the 2011 competition, USN documented the story of 2009 champion lilou in his hometown of lyon, france, in a cross-platform web project. no stranger to extreme sports, the studio was also responsible for the 2011 ‘art of motion’ project, which melded footage of the world’s top free runner, ryan doyle, and digital animation effects.

‘art of motion’ project for red bull

in the past, ultrasupernew has designed campaigns ranging from website redesigns to guerrilla interventions. for example, to promote the call for entry for the red bull box cart race, the team purchased 70 secondhand bicycles, removed some of their parts, and placed them around tokyo with signs that read, ‘we have borrowed your wheel. we needed it to build our box cart for the red bull box cart race and will return it to you after the race.‘

an interventionist publicity project by the studio involved purchasing 70 bikes, removing their front tires, and scattering them around the city with a note: ‘we have borrowed your wheel. we needed it to build our box cart for the red bull box cart race and will return it to you after the race.‘

video footage from the red bull BC one b-boying competition