抱歉，本文中文版本正在制作中 In 2004, the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) sent 200 of its most renowned works to Berlin, giving Germany’s capital an exhibition that can only be described in superlatives. And presenting MetaDesign and our partners with an enormous challenge: the exhibition needed to attract at least 700,000 visitors to be financially viable.
The spark turned into a blazing fire. In just seven months, over 1.2 million visitors stormed the New National Gallery, even though Berlin itself is home to “only” around 200,000 art buffs. Long lines of people snaked around the building. Each day an average of 6,500 visitors came: 2,800 more than originally expected. 70 percent of the visitors came from outside Berlin. And the crowd could hardly have been more diverse: people of all ages and social backgrounds came. The experiment was a smashing success. And the exhibition had become a pop art event attracting visitors from near and far.
“The MoMA is the star.” That was the main concept behind the communication. Both MetaDesign and our partners from Johanssen + Kretschmer, a communication agency, soon realized that we had to focus on the star factor. A survey conducted before the exhibition showed that eight out of ten Berliners had no idea what the acronym “MoMA” stood for. So we chose to position “The MoMA in Berlin” as its own brand.
The main focus in Berlin was to make the exhibition attractive to the city’s residents. Nationwide media reporting and articles in European art journals created recognition far beyond the city borders. And quite a lot of it: more than 3.600 press reports brought in visitors from all over the world. For the Berliners, the exhibition turned into a major event, a special attraction even amidst the wide range of other art and leisure activities Berlin has to offer.
The job was big, but the budget wasn’t: only 750,000 euros had been set aside for communication – not much for an exhibition of this significance. That called for a perfectly tailored communication strategy and a step-by-step action plan. So we decided to use MoMA’s relatively low recognition to our advantage. For the campaign launch, we sparked people’s curiosity with a spectacularly designed poster with a simple but puzzling message: “The MoMA is the star!” Another teaser announced: “The star is coming!” We used posters intensely for communication throughout the entire campaign, their bold design concept creating a consistent look for the MoMA brand.
And suddenly the MoMA was everywhere. Huge billboards greeted passengers arriving at Berlin’s railway stations. Advertising on taxis, bike taxis and in underground trains spread the campaign’s presence to all corners of the city. In cinemas, newspapers, magazines and on posters, the striking design attracted everyone’s attention. And an armband with the lettering “MoMAnized” turned even more people into ambassadors of the exhibition. The art virus was spreading.
The MoMA in Berlin turned into one of the most successful exhibitions in the world. Communication and design had joined forces to form a strategic concept with an enormous impact. The MoMA campaign received a special prize from the German Award for Business Communication in the category “most effective public communication”. The message of the laudatory speech was: the courage to take such an extraordinary approach deserves special recognition.
MetaDesign, Johanssen + Kretschmer, the friends and supporters of the National Gallery and the National Museums in Berlin – our joint commitment paid off. And it left us with a valuable experience: art institutions that invest in the systematic development and implementation of solid communication strategies also invest in their own futures. That’s work that pays off.
