2018 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

We looked into the museum itself for inspiration. Louvre Abu Dhabi is not a museum, but a tool for empathy. While other universal museums segregate artworks by civilizations (Asian, Egyptian, etc.), Louvre Abu Dhabi is the first ever to break cultural boundaries. It displays artworks from different cultures next to each other under themes of humanity (love, death, motherhood etc.). This approach reveals how different civilizations, even those that never crossed paths, interpreted these themes in a similar way. Proving that despite our schisms in history, we’ve always been connected. Its architecture, a mix of UAE traditional style and French modernity, embodies the philosophy. Its dome allows the sunlight to infiltrate and create a futuristic ‘rain of light’ on its walls, accentuating the epiphanies that one could have in the museum. The creative idea was simple, yet powerful: Show Humanity In A New Light.

Creative Execution

We started with an anonymous ‘Why Are You You?’ asked through 3D installations across UAE, outdoors, digital and social media. On social media, global artists shared their answers and lead people to a microsite to submit theirs. A branded manifesto film revealed ‘because we are mirrors of each others’ and ended with ‘See Humanity In A New Light’. It played on YouTube, cinemas and radio, CNN and The Louvre pyramid. Brand statements like ‘We Don’t Need To Read From The Same Book To Be On The Same Page’ followed to convey the museum's philosophy. These featured on outdoors, digital and social, airports and global press. Once the brand philosophy delivered, we conveyed how visitors can experience it in the museum. Through digital and social posts, print and outdoors, we showed culturally-opposing artworks having a tolerant dialogue - Christian and Muslim artworks exchanging ‘We Live By The Same light' for example.

We triggered interest. ‘Why Are You You?’ lead 350K people to the microsite, where they left 4,000 answers. 735M unique viewers watched more than 40M times our online films. Search volume for Louvre Abu Dhabi online increased by 7 times. In the region, it was the 6th most-searched-for-term on Google in 2017. We engaged.1M visited the website, opened 17 pages (vs. category average 1.1) and spent 63sec. (vs. category average 21sec.). 300K interacted with the museum on social media, and 200K became fans. We shifted perception. World esteemed media – The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Financial Times to name a few, admired the positive mission of Louvre Abu Dhabi and highlighted its differentiation with Louvre Paris. We converted. 230K opening tickets were sold, more than double the estimate! Most importantly, the yearly target set for memberships was almost completely fulfilled by November only!

We had many challenges at hand, dictating a long-list of objectives. It was imperative to tackle the brief using a multitude of media, each tackling a certain objective with a specific message. The different touch points were orchestrated in a way to complement each other and paint a full picture, that eventually succeeded in reaching all the objectives. Outdoor triggered, social media led to the microsite, the microsite engaged and revealed the brand message, the film (TVC, Cinema and Radio) conveyed the brand philosophy, digital helped people experience this philosophy first hand, and press took the story to the world.

We were talking to two audiences: the regional and local audience indifferent to museums, and the global audience distrustful of Louvre Abu Dhabi reason to be - to start with. We feared that no matter how positive our message is, it would be perceived as either tedious coming from a museum by the first audience, or just a beautiful empty claim by the second. We knew intrigue and depth was our recipe for success, but still, how do we get over the barrier of ‘coming from a museum’ or ‘coming from Louvre Abu Dhabi’? Our solution was to take the audience by surprise with a shocking approach, one that provokes questioning, drives critical thinking, pushes deeper analysis and leads people to the museum’s message. In short, rather than spoon-feeding, our strategy was to let people discover the answer themselves by triggering their curiosity.