Union Station Christmas Tree

Where: Union Station, Toronto

For: Tribal DDB

As Christmas approached in 2011, travellers and passers-by in Toronto’s Union Station experienced the holiday season’s magic come to life with the appearance of a giant tree in the middle of the train station. Engaged by the Tribal DDB agency on behalf of Canadian Tire, Moment Factory created a 30-foot interactive Christmas tree whose decorations lit up as more and more Christmas messages were shared online. When the Christmas spirit reached its peak, the tree would take on its brightest glow. Website visitors could also interact with the tree triggering a spiral of blue lights and watch the effect live via

webcam by visiting 

http://christmasspirittree.ca/.

First, the Web searched for messages, articles, blog posts and other content containing Christmas-related keywords. Then the information was collected and sent to the tree for visualization. Moment Factory used its X-Agora interactive software to convert Christmas messages into a dazzling display of coloured lights on the tree. Colourful garlands of lights were lit to reflect the relative number of messages exchanged in each medium and in real time: white for social media, red for blogs and forums, green for news media and blue for activity on http://christmasspirittree.ca/.