Over the years there have been numerous noteworthy 3D projection mapping events and installations. In this latest example, Samsung for the launch of its Galaxy Y Duos, a Dual SIM card smartphone has created a very unique projection mapping on a human face!
In brand experience work, the strongest anniversary executions do not look like commemorations. They look like a reason to step inside the brand world. Coca-Cola’s “Future Room” is a clean example of that approach.
For Coca-Cola’s 125th Anniversary, Istanbul’s creative agency Antilop created a “Future Room” concept, made specifically for the Turkish modern-art museum Santralistanbul. They transformed a section of the gallery into an impressive 90 square meter, 270-degree projection mapping installation.
The mechanism was spatial immersion. Instead of placing content on a single screen, the installation wrapped the audience in a 270-degree projection environment.
That choice changed the viewing behavior. People did not just watch a piece of content. They entered it, and the room itself became the interface.
In a museum context, attention is earned through presence, scale, and craft. Projection mapping fits because it turns a physical space into a living canvas.
By committing 90 square meters of gallery to one experience, the work signaled seriousness. It also made the activation feel like an exhibit, not an ad, which is exactly the psychological shift a heritage brand wants during an anniversary moment.
The intent was to elevate the partnership between brand and venue, and to position Coca-Cola as culturally fluent rather than purely commercial.
An anniversary is a credibility play. The exhibition format helped translate “125 years” into something contemporary, sensory, and shareable, without relying on nostalgia alone.
An immersive exhibition-style installation that used large-scale projection mapping to place visitors inside a branded future-facing environment.
Use a wraparound projection space so the room becomes the interface, changing viewing from “watching” to “being surrounded”.
It shifts from nostalgia to experience. It gives people a reason to attend now, not just to remember then.
When the space is the medium, design for presence and movement. Immersion creates attention without relying on exposition.
I have seen plenty of projection mapping in the last year or so, but this Nike execution for the Jordan Melo M8 takes a different route. Instead of treating a building as the canvas, it turns the Hudson River into the screen and uses a water curtain to make the visuals feel alive.
Trade coverage describes the launch as a live event at Pier 54, where a crowd gathered for performances and then got hit with a large-scale water projection moment featuring Carmelo Anthony and the Melo M8, layered with mapped effects that made the “explosive” theme feel physical.
The mechanic is simple and smart. Water gives you motion for free, so the visuals do not need to do all the work. Every splash, ripple, and mist edge amplifies the animation and makes the illusion feel bigger than it would on a flat wall.
It also creates a built-in contrast. The shoe is a hard, engineered object. The canvas is fluid and unpredictable. That tension is what makes people stare.
In global sportswear launches, the fastest way to earn attention is to make the product reveal feel like a public event, not a private ad.
The most important thing this stunt communicates is not “this is a new shoe”. It is “this is an event-level product”. The audience reads production scale as product importance, especially in a category where new drops appear constantly.
Using water also supports the narrative hook that appears in reporting around the event. Melo “walks on water” as a visual flex. Whether you call it projection, illusion, or theatre, the point is the same. The launch gives people a story they can retell without describing a single feature.
This is launch-week acceleration. Get a live crowd. Create a spectacle that looks unreal on camera. Seed the footage. Then let the audience do the distribution, because the clip is more shareable than a standard product film.
A water screen projection uses a thin curtain of mist or falling water as the surface. A projector throws imagery onto it, creating a floating effect that feels more dimensional than a wall projection.
Because the surface moves. Ripples and spray add natural variation, so the visuals feel integrated with the environment rather than pasted onto it.
It signals importance through scale, creates immediate talk value, and produces recap footage that performs better than a standard reveal because it looks like an event, not an ad.
Reliability. Water, wind, sightlines, and crowd control can all degrade the experience. If the image is not crisp and the moment does not land fast, the spectacle becomes confusion.
Earned pickup, social share rate of the hero clip, completion rate, and correct retelling of the mechanic. If people remember “Hudson water projection” and connect it to the shoe, the stunt did its job.
