Y&R celebrates 90th anniversary with social media installation in New York’s Times Square from 2pm – 3:30pm NY time – Thursday, May 23rd

Ninety years after John Orr Young and Raymond Rubicam opened up Y&R with a single client, the agency is celebrating its 90th year in business as one of the world’s largest, iconic and most dynamic advertising agencies.

To commemorate this milestone and an industry Y&R has continually helped transform, the agency is inviting people around the world to post what advertising means to them in a social conversation that will culminate on a interactive digital billboard in one of the world’s busiest crossroads, New York’s Times Square, from 2 to 3:30 PM on May 23rd (NYC Time).

On Thursday, from 2 to 3:30 PM, the event will be live streamed here on yr.com.

Says David Sable, global CEO of Y&R: “Our founder, Raymond Rubicam was fond of saying ‘Our job is to Resist the Usual.’  That’s a great mandate, because it seeded an agency culture that values change, that is driven by creative ways of thinking and working. Our capacity to reinvent  — for our clients and for ourselves — is one of the reasons we are among the very few agencies that have stood this test of time.”

To celebrate the anniversary, Y&R is partnering with one of the agency’s Spark Plug startups, Hyperactivate, which has proprietary technology that captures the avatars from Twitter and Facebook and algorithmically creates a mosaic as people Tweet and post. Users can find their posts and others, as well as uncover hidden content as they interact with the mosaic. On May 23rd, between the hours of 2 and 3:30 PM, the mosaic will populate on a major Clear Channel Spectacolor Billboard at NY’s Times Square. People tweeting on the street will see their posts live on the billboard and the mosaic’s image will be revealed.

Says Sable: “Everything in the world is digital, but digital is not everything. The idea of taking this social conversation onto an amazing digital billboard is emblematic of the digital exponential world we live in, where we continually are bridging the digital and physical worlds.  Where better to celebrate this convergence than in one of the world’s most iconic locations?”