Refreshing the brand of a cultural communications champion
Communicating the Arts
Delegates enjoy an exclusive viewing of ‘Tilt’ at 360 Chicago as part of the international conference for cultural communicators.
Following its launch in 2000, Communicating the Museum established itself as the leading international conference for communications professionals working in museums and heritage.
We helped its organisers Agenda update the conference’s brand and positioning as they looked to broaden their audience and align it more closely with Culture Business, its sister event for fundraisers.
Our initial discovery process involved working very closely with Corinne Estrada, founder of Agenda, and her team to develop a deep understanding of their current offer, their business goals and what success looked like.
We explored other brands and events in the sector and looked at emerging best practice in conference marketing. We reviewed existing and conducted new audience research to help identify what made the conference appealing and distinctive for delegates, and how to grow the market amongst the performing arts and other forms of visitor attraction.
Speakers at Communicating the Arts Montreal, © Sébastien Roy.
Delegates at Communicating the Arts Copenhagen, © Lars Krogsgaard.
With ‘Communicating the Museum’ renamed ‘Communicating the Arts’, fresh brand and positioning language was created for both conferences. Then, working closely with our design partner Gaggeroworks, new complementary visual identities were generated.
The new look is bold and clean, with more imagery and colour. It also incorporates graphic elements – dots and forward slashes respectively – overlaid onto dramatic locations enabling the creation of visually consistent 'hero' images for successive conference destinations.
Brand guidelines were developed which included recommendations for a wide range of on- and offline communications. We also created a new promotional video for Communicating the Arts, and a range of presentation templates to aid recruitment of new institutional partners and corporate sponsors.
New visual identities for Communicating the Arts and its sister conference Culture Business, with examples of the ‘hero’ graphics applied to venue locations.
Webpage for the 25th anniversary conference in Amsterdam.
Promotional video for Communicating the Arts.
Since the refreshed brand and positioning, a string of successful conferences have been held in Montreal, Sydney, Lausanne, Paris and Singapore – and both its speakers and delegates are now drawn from a wider range of sectors. A 25th anniversary conference will be held in Amsterdam in April 2025.
Services provided:
– Brand strategy
– Visual identity (with Gaggeroworks)
– Promotional video (with Pinch London)
– Copywriting and content strategy
“Will is an expert in brand strategy. He really digs deep into what makes an organisation special to achieve great results. He also has a thorough understanding of digital and the cultural world. Everyone at Agenda enjoyed working with him so much.”
Corinne Estrada, Director of Agenda and founder of Communicating the Arts