Participation as a strategic approach – for the festival of fine art Quadriennale Dusseldorf 2014, we have developed together with PR agency textpr+ an extraordinary campaign to reach new target groups. Direct mailings, posters, advertisements, a website, even event-related press and online communication were our tasks. Interventions in public space involved many local institutions.
Purple tape art installations shaped the city during the Quadriennale and were creatively transferred to all media. In particular, the main motif of the campaign came directly from an urban branding campaign and thus documented the active involvement of many actors at this festival and the opening into the city. The website quadriennale-duesseldorf.de acted as an axis of digital communication. Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube gave inspiration for active participation.
Program design and communication brought Quadriennale to the streets. A trailer that also ran in the cinema drew attention to the urban branding project. It has been viewed around 30,000 times. In expedition teams, participants aged between 20 and 80 started a discovery tour through Düsseldorf with futuristic bicycles. The film documentations were distributed via Blog, YouTube, and Facebook.
On a specially developed app the teams’ experiences inspired visitors to start their own tour. At the same budget, Quadriennale Dusseldorf scored in 2014 with 316,000 visitors (2010: 250,000) and a clearly rejuvenated audience.
Photos by Axel Naß