Apple Music's New Memoji Billboards Highlight Grammy Nominees Shawn Mendes, Ariana Grande, and Kacey Musgraves - MacRumors
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Apple Music's New Memoji Billboards Highlight Grammy Nominees Shawn Mendes, Ariana Grande, and Kacey Musgraves

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Apple Music has recently launched a new advertising campaign in Los Angeles, showcasing the Memoji versions of musicians including Shawn Mendes, Ariana Grande, and Kacey Musgraves. Apple put up the billboards ahead of the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, which take place on February 10 at the Los Angeles Staples Center.

animoji billboards

Apple has placed the billboards at the Hotel Figueroa in LA, which is down the street from the Staples Center. It appears there are multiple billboards in the city, however, including some that are dedicated specifically to each of the three artists and highlighting their Grammy nominations.

kacey musgraves memoji

Memojis are animated emoji characters that can take the form of each user's personal appearance, and using the TrueDepth camera system on iPhone X family devices, you can animate the Memojis with your facial movements. Apple has used Animoji in its ads a few times previously, including for last year's Grammy awards. Those commercials had the alien Animoji singing "Redbone" by Childish Gambino and the Animoji dog, fox, and poop singing "Stir Fry" from Migos.

As for the nominations, Shawn Mendes has two, one for song of the year ("In My Blood") and one for best pop vocal album (the self-titled "Shawn Mendes"). Ariana Grande was also nominated twice this year, for best pop solo performance ("God Is A Woman") and best pop vocal album ("Sweetener"). Lastly, Kacey Musgraves received four nominations, for album of the year ("Golden Hour"), best country solo performance ("Butterflies"), best country song ("Space Cowboy"), and best country album.

Top Rated Comments

94 months ago
I really like the Kacey Musgraves one. Absolutely love that album!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
diego Avatar
94 months ago
Disturbing, this looks a bit dystopian imo.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
SoN1NjA Avatar
94 months ago
These are pretty cute, I like them!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
code-m Avatar
94 months ago
I love it, creative advertising and playful!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
code-m Avatar
94 months ago
You can do something like that in a more basic version with the Xbox Kinect and your personal avatar. It'd be cool to see the technology advance to what you described. Interestingly, the co-creators of the technology behind Kinect were purchased by Apple and developed Face ID!
Once the TrueDepth system is affordable to be placed on the rear of the phone, things will take a creative turn. The “A” silicone will have to be enhanced for this real-time processing to occur. This would explain the larger storage capacity. Making an animated short or movie on a tablet and/or phone. Animation studio in your pocket.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
trellus Avatar
94 months ago
I love it, creative advertising and playful!
Yup! I know the dude who is the creative director for this ad and works for the ad agency who came up with this idea. His dad is a colleague of mine!
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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