Summer Campaign 2019

Our work for the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) Summer Campaign 2019 was to develop an overarching campaign concept that would allow NGS to showcase the exhibitions from across the Galleries’ venues as a single connected organisation.

NGS asked Stand to focus the creative delivery at a new primary audience that they were keen to better engage. Defined as ‘culturally curious’ – this younger, previously dis-engaged audience was a key focus for the campaign, and the need for a step-change in creative delivery was recognised from the outset. 

In line with the research into this specific audience type, the campaign needed to reflect their behaviours in an engaging, participatory and collaborative way. We further defined this cultural audience as visual people who enjoy exploring contemporary ideas and developing their critical ability; they need to feel connected; they like co-creation and participation; they also enjoy original and alternative experiences. 

Expanding on Bridget Reilly’s ethos that ‘art is a collaboration between artist and the audience’ and ‘that it’s as much about how the audience experiences an artwork, as it is how the artist intended it to be perceived’, our concept centred around a suite of real-life reactions to the artwork, which we then used as headlines for the campaign. 

This gave us an opportunity of showcasing the artworks from each exhibition (promoting the artist and their work) while using the reactions to create a multi-faceted campaign, which communicated that art is for everyone and demonstrated that everyone has an opinion, with none being more or less valid than the other.