The Atlantic’s Creative Marketing Group and Porsche Transform Data Into Art

Washington, D.C. (October 16, 2014)—What does a thrill look like? In a groundbreaking advertising campaign, The Atlantic’s creative marketing group, Atlantic Re:think, has partnered with Porsche to capture the adrenaline of driving the new Porsche Macan. Using advanced wearable technology, Atlantic Re:think and Porsche measured and recorded drivers’ breathing and heart rates, down to the second—and turned the resulting data into art. The campaign, “Art of the Thrill,” is now live at TheAtlantic.com/artofthethrill.

“Art of the Thrill” marries two of today’s most prominent trends—wearable technology and personal data—with a more enduring human pastime, and obsession: driving a high-performance sports car. A group of 25 influencers were invited to a professional racetrack in Chicago. They were outfitted with Hexoskins—an advanced shirt that tracks heart and breathing rates, along with body movement. Then, each participant got behind the wheel of a Porsche Macan. TRAQS, a personalized analytics platform currently in private beta, recorded data from each person’s ride.

The result is a collection of digital art stills and videos showing the thrill of driving the new Macan: drivers transitioning from straightaways to curves, navigating sections of narrow bends, and experiencing fluctuating heart and respiration rates as they accelerate and turn sharply.

“This vision behind this campaign was one of our most ambitious and complex—from orchestrating the event on the race track to capturing the data to figuring out how to translate the adrenaline we captured into something visual,” says Hayley Romer, Vice President and Publisher of The Atlantic. “Porsche was willing to experiment and chart new territory, and the result is a captivating experience.”

As the art stills and video depict, what emerged, in the end, was a distinct “fingerprint” on each driver’s experience: that is to say, no two data sets looked alike.

“We are delighted by how this media integration has come together in working with The Atlantic,” says Scott Baker, Manager of Marketing Communications at Porsche Cars North America. “At Porsche, we believe that every car should be a sports car and every drive should be thrilling. We recently launched the Macan, the all new cross-over SUV, to our family of sports cars. This is the first car in this segment for Porsche and we hope to share the thrill of driving sports cars with a new audience.”

“Art of the Thrill” is one of The Atlantic’s first programs to be presented in a new responsive format for sponsor content. The design-first approach offers greater flexibility in both presentation and interactivity, allowing Atlantic Re:think and advertisers to produce more immersive, engaging, visually rich content experiences. For the “Art of the Thrill” campaign, Cramer-Krasselt was the creative agency and Omnicom Media Group was the media agency.