The Warehouse x Barbican Inside Out campaign has won the 2019 European Sponsorship Arts and Culture Award at the European Sponsorship Association Awards.
The winning campaign, Inside Out, was a strategic brand partnership developed by world-class conference, arts and learning centre the Barbican together with British fashion brand Warehouse. The campaign was launched in February 2018 as part of ‘Warehouse Curates the City’. The winning entry beat a number of other well-known venue and brand collaborations to secure this prestigious award.
According to the ESA judges, the campaign ‘felt really authentic and clearly worked incredibly well for both parties. It was without doubt the best example of a genuine, value-adding partnership in the category and a great, original idea that was the unanimous winner’.
With a mission to create an immersive, social and relevant campaign, whilst providing greater relevance to Warehouse’s City-based target market, the activity went beyond the traditional sponsorship mix to include licencing the Barbican’s iconic brand. Amongst other activity, the Barbican Centre itself was used as a location for photo shoots and events created to support the partnership.
The project involved a specially created collection for Spring 2018, inspired by the Barbican’s iconic Brutalist architecture, concrete textures and tropical glasshouse conservatory, which was modelled by Barbican staff and a Barbican Young Poet. Products were sold in Warehouse stores and in the Barbican Shop, which is accessible by event delegates and attendees.
Events created to support the partnership included a client launch and a Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning Creative Careers session for young people looking to get into the fashion industry led by the Warehouse team. Both events engaged diverse audiences, leading to wider support of the Barbican’s arts, cultural and events offering.
The project was a Barbican-wide initiative involving the Development, Retail, Marketing, Communications, Creative Learning, Business Events and Projects teams. Barbican’s Head of Business Events, Jackie Boughton, comments: ‘This is another great example of how the Barbican teams come together to deliver ideas that benefit all visitors to the venue, including event and conference clients. We are always looking for new ways to develop our offering, make use of our spaces and inspire others to create and deliver exciting projects. In particular, the judges were impressed with the way we integrated the project across multiple channels using both Barbican and Warehouse brands.’
Boughton concludes: ‘Ultimately, by working in true harmony, both brands gained exposure to new audiences, benefited from staff and customer engagement as well as achieving storytelling for multiple communication channels through the diverse mix of bespoke assets created.’
Author: Adam Parry
Adam is the co-founder and editor of www.eventindustrynews.com Adam, a technology evangelist also organises Event Tech Live, Europe’s only show dedicated to event technology and the Event Technology Awards. Both events take place in November, London.
