EVERYBODY HAS A THING.
 
As title sponsor of the 2014 Rochester Fringe Festival, First Niagara wanted to create something that would genuinely engage the people attending the festival. Working with Jay Advertising, I developed the concept for MY THING around one simple thought: everybody has a thing.
 
A first home. A business idea that needs funding. College. A dream. A plan for the future. Whatever your thing is, at some point a bank may help you make it happen.
I turned that idea into a massive 36-foot-wide interactive art installation, built from eight-foot-high freestanding letters. Festival-goers dressed up, stepped in front of the camera and told us what their thing was. Their portraits and words were then incorporated directly into the sculpture.
 
Over the festival’s ten-day run, MY THING transformed day by day. It was never designed to be finished when the festival began. The audience finished it. Face by face and story by story, the installation became a living portrait of the community and a physical expression of First Niagara’s connection to the people it served.
 
The brand sponsored the experience. The people became the art.