Splunk .conf19 AR Filters — Approval to Live in 48 Hours

The Ask

Splunk wanted attendees at .conf19 to become the brand — not just watch it. The answer: a suite of three augmented-reality filters on Facebook's Spark AR platform, engineered to generate a flood of shareable, hashtagged #SplunkAR content the on-site social team could pull straight onto the event's digital signage.

I executive produced the program end to end — owning the team and the delivery — coordinating a specialized AR development studio, the client's brand and social teams, and Facebook's platform-approval pipeline.

The Concepts

Each filter turned a Splunk brand pillar into an interactive, gesture-driven experience.

Data Wizard

Raise a hand and a “Power Ball” of data snaps into your palm; open your mouth to feed it until it explodes into animated data — with easter eggs triggered by blinks.

Buttercup Me

A full-CGI head replacement that turns you into Splunk's mascot — mimicking expressions in real time with eyebrow, mouth and head-shake triggers.

The Fit the Fez filter in use — a CGI fez on the user's head over pink and orange diagonal stripes, with a “Fit the Fez” quote overlay

The Trust (Fit the Fez)

A poster generator outfitting you in a CGI fez and cape, with animated Splunk-branded backgrounds and rotating quote overlays.

Anchored on the show floor by a 12′W × 8′H AR wall — QR codes and instructions on the front, a geometric selfie backdrop on the back.

The constraint was the platform clock

Facebook AR filters don't just need client approval — they have to clear Facebook's own platform review before going live, and that review is a black box you can't rush. An already-tight creative timeline became a hard, externally governed deadline with zero slack.

Miss the Tuesday client approval by even a few hours, and the filters risk not clearing review before doors open — at which point the activation simply doesn't exist. There was no version of “we'll fix it on site.”

How It Got Made

Real-time CGI across a specialized studio

Buttercup required a full CGI head tracking expressions from every angle — sophisticated real-time 3D. I directed the studio's sprints against the approval deadline, keeping build, feedback and revision in parallel, not in sequence.

Feedback compressed into single, decisive passes

With a Tuesday lock there was no room for open-ended loops — each round went in as one batched, documented revision (Data Wizard's blink colour shifts, bright-pink eyes, sparkle particles), not a trickle of one-offs.

Managing a deadline I didn't control

The schedule was built backward from Facebook's review window, not the client's approval date — “client-approved” and “live for attendees” treated as two deadlines with the black-box review protected between them.

Promotion built into the delivery

The go-live playbook shipped with the filters: geo-targeted Spark AR “Try” posts boosted to the conference location, one per filter, Monday through Thursday — so the filters didn't just exist, they got discovered.

The Outcome

Approved, cleared, and live for doors.

All three filters cleared client and Facebook platform approval on schedule and went live for .conf19 — turning attendees into Data Wizards, Buttercups, and Trust members across Facebook and Instagram, and feeding a stream of #SplunkAR user-generated content onto the conference's digital signage.