CASE STUDY WRITING
As part of the submission for The HKMA/ViuTV & Now TV Awards in 2023, I was tasked with writing a 4000-word paper that ultimately helped the campaign win Gold, the highest accolade of the awards.
Democratising Kusama's Art
"I CREATE ART FOR THE HEALING OF ALL MANKIND" - YAYOI KUSAMA
M+ IS THE FIRST GLOBAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE IN ASIA. OPENED IN NOVEMBER 2021, M+ FEATURES PERMANENT COLLECTIONS ROOTED IN ASIA BUT DEFINED, DEVELOPED AND EXAMINED FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE.
The paper submitted had to convey the difficulties of reconciling economical profit with Kusama's ethos of "creating art for all mankind". In theory, these two objectives seemed contradictory — but M+ was able to make it work with strategic partnerships, unique outdoor campaigns and uplifting messaging.
CASE STUDY TONE OF VOICE
Inspirational / Moving / Genuine
Scroll on to read excerpts from the paper. The full paper can be viewed upon request.
STRATEGIC IMPACT AND ORIGINALITY OF THE CAMPAIGN
Alliance with partners who shared M+’s vision
The main thread that ties our strategies together is the aim of bringing Kusama’s art to the wider Hong Kong community. We wanted to democratise art and give everyone a chance to encounter her artwork. To do so, we collaborated with partners who shared this vision to drive refreshed storytelling and sustained marketing impact throughout the 6-month exhibition period.
Art x Transportation: M+ and MTR launched the first ever Kusama-themed train on the Tuen Ma Line to showcase the artist’s iconic Pumpkin (2022) motif to the public. The design included inspiring quotes from Kusama, accompanied by QR codes inside the train, which can be scanned to access audio guides of selected Kusama pieces delivered by M+ curators. M+ also invited artist Ivana Wong as guest speaker on the audio guide, who was inspired by Kusama in her creative journey as an artist, to share her views through “Polka Dots and Me: How Ivana Is Inspired by Yayoi Kusama” as bonus content. Passengers could also listen to the artist herself audibly reflecting on her creative philosophy and practices, participating in her ruminations on how her art seeks to connect and heal its viewers. An average of 750,000 passengers per day travelled along the Tuen Ma Line and their journeys were transformed by Kusama’s motifs between November to December 2022.
Art x Tech: CSL Mobile’s crossover with M+ manifested in Hong Kong's first cutting-edge augmented reality (AR) presentation of two large-scale sculptures of Pumpkin (2022) by Yayoi Kusama. Merging art and tech, the immersive project breaks through geographical limitations to bring a new virtual art experience to share Kusama’s philosophy of love and healing with the public at five locations across the city, including the M+ Roof Garden, West Kowloon Art Park, Statue Square, The Peak Tower and Hong Kong Zoological & Botanical Gardens. Leveraging Markerless AR, Floor Detection, and Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) technology to transport the artist’s two iconic large-scale sculptures Pumpkin (2022) on display in M+’s Main Hall, the artworks were brought to life in 3D form in real-time. This resulted in over 36 earned media coverage and 17,600 visits to the AR page, with the AR lens triggered over 1,800 times on mobile.
Art x Retail: As a renowned Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama’s vivid paintings are widely celebrated, featuring polka dot motifs and iconic use of vibrant colours. M+ collaborated with CASETify to enable visitors to bring home a piece of art, allowing them to interact with Kusama’s art in a more personal way and present it as a form of self-expression beyond just an accessory, aligning with CASETify’s mission. Carrying an M+ x Kusama merchandise became a bonus marketing effort to promote the brand and drive visits. Besides merchandise, the café outlet inside M+, CURATOR Creative Café, crossed over with Kusama’s Pumpkin (2022) to curate a series of special-themed drinks, cakes and light snacks, transforming art-viewing into an “art-tasting” experience.
All of these activations were executed at zero media cost to M+, culminating in a campaign that invoked the mission of democratising art and making art available to all.
MARKETING EXECUTION
Positioning
Yayoi Kusama’s artworks are well-loved by auction houses, often bid only by a very exclusive, small group of people who can afford to pay and own a piece. As a public museum, M+ brings one of the largest retrospective of Kusama in Asia outside of Japan, transforming its positioning from an auctioned label, back to embracing Kusama’s mission of creating art for all mankind. Featuring more than 200 works, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, and archival material, this exhibition surveys Kusama’s career from the earliest drawings she made as a teenager during World War II, to her most recent immersive art pieces. No exhibition of this scope and scale has ever been seen in Hong Kong. The fact that the exhibition opened in November 2022 gave M+ the perfect opportunity to bring a world-class exhibition and international art to the local community in Hong Kong at a time when international travel was restricted and exposure was limited. This was later opened to global travellers, spreading Kusama’s power to heal far and wide.
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EXCEPTIONAL MERITORIOUS ASPECTS
Impact on and benefits to the future development of the museum practices
The campaigns around the Kusama Special Exhibition gave M+ the chance to pioneer new practices for the museum business model. During this period, M+ became the first museum to use RED as a social media platform, and the fastest to accumulate over 10,000 followers within 6 months. M+ was also the first museum in Hong Kong to set up an art retail experience, and the first to execute a holistic and well-rounded campaign, with unconventional and original ideas that engaged MTR and CSL to democratise art. Each collaboration served a purpose beyond mere advertising (all of which were free), offering a platform through which the wider Hong Kong community can personally interact with Kusama’s art, furthering the artist’s vision and mission.
Learn to build a cohesive branding
The marketing campaigns for the Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now Special Exhibition at M+ revealed the possibilities around art creation from the museum’s perspective. For instance, our M+ first anniversary tote bag blended M+’s brand image with Kusama’s polka dot motifs and colours to create a cohesive brand — resulting in the tote bag being a piece of art in its own right. The fact that the Pumpkin (2022) artwork is always free for anyone to see shows that we are wholeheartedly embracing community sharing elements.
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Differentiating the M+ brand with a purpose-led business and marketing
The M+ museum’s purpose is to become a global hub for visual culture, aiming to inspire, delight, educate and engage the public to explore diversity. To convey that art is more than just a separate canvas to be looked at and admired, our marketing campaigns reaffirmed the purpose of art to be experienced and shared, a testament to the power of art to unite and move our audience to an extent where they feel compelled to share it and to experience it with others.
The Kusama Special Exhibition gave M+ the opportunity to rewrite the narrative surrounding art in Hong Kong. In following Kusama’s ethos about the role of art, M+ managed to pioneer new ways of using technology to democratise art and allow a wider audience to have access and participate in art. This set a precedence in the visual culture industry to accept audiences from all walks of life.