• by June 24, 2013

Among the big winners in last week’s Cannes Cyberlions, was another stunning entry from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, whose  “We Choose the Moon” site experience was among the best-in-class Web destination favorites from 2010.  Last week, the library’s latest “Clouds Over Cuba” interactive documentary via the Martin Agency & Tool of North America proudly took home  Gold CyberLion honors for the U.S. 

What makes this interactive documentary one better is how it goes beyond an emotionally packed historical website rich with archival footage and timeline-based re-enactments, through its very premise: What if the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis had been different?

Taking a page out of game theory’s “alternative ending” brand of digital storytelling, “Clouds over Cuba” integrates the “real-life” stories of four fictional “survivors” of a missile crisis that ends in the manner every American feared it might during those tense weeks: an actual nuclear strike.

Eloquently lensed by the director team of Ben Tricklebank and Erich Joiner from Tool of North America, the docu-style fictitious characters are anything but your ordinary re-enactment talking head. They turn the site from purely historical to an active narrative that brings the impact of the what-if scenario to life in a way that’s completely plausible and very believable.

Add to that the Omnichannel integration and richness that is “Clouds over Cuba,” and this creative is left not only wishing he had done it, but wondering whether,  in this age of time-compressed, instantaneous decision-making via mobile devices and real-time fever,  America would make the same thoughtful, deliberate moves JFK did back in the '60s.