Luminato – It’s Art .?!...

Case Study 

THE CHALLENGE 

Although it was one of Toronto’s longest-standing art festivals, Luminato had low brand awareness and little distinction from other festivals. 

Arts & culture festivals are a cornerstone of healthy communities. Festivals offer a unique snapshot of a community’s identity, providing opportunities to both revitalize and preserve cultural practices1. They also provide social, emotional, socio-political, cognitive, and economic benefits. Without them, rates of alienation, poverty, crime, and cultural, ethnic, and class-based division can increase. 

1 Brigitte Vézina, World Intellectual Property Organization 

Over several years, a deprioritization of arts & culture was happening in Toronto. Political defunding of programs, an increased focus on hard sciences over humanities, lack of affordability, and governmental red-tape were making festivals more difficult to mount. And then COVID-19 hit: halting festivals altoghether for two years, damaging the lives and livelihoods of artists and depriving Torontonians of a source of local pride and connection. 

Luminato is a multi-disciplinary art festival, featuring painting, sculpture, performance, thought-provoking speeches, dance, and more. It features work in unusual spaces, using the streets of Toronto as its stage and takes place not only downtown, but across the Greater Toronto Area. Luminato helps to develop local talent, commissioning a lot of work and sharing resources in development and presentation. It’s a festival is where all art and artists are truly welcome, inclusive of genre, ethnicity, orientation, ability, and storytelling. It’s also a diverse and accessible festival, informed as much by the changing make up of the city as the artwork itself. It was ripe to be seen as a cornerstone of culture in Toronto. 

However, it had never had a cohesive visual identity nor a consistent main message or promise. It had no loyal fan base. To complicate matters further, Luminato did not want to position itself as superior to other festivals. They are partners and collaborators, not competitors. As Toronto and the world emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, there simply couldn’t have been a better time for Luminato to put a stake in the ground to establish its identity and get people talking. 

TARGET 

Culture Seekers: These are people who eat, sleep, and breathe culture. Tastemakers and trendsetters in their own right, this is the group that creates chatter around all things arts & culture. They love the rush of discovering something or someone new. Always searching for the best places to explore the arts, they look for experiences that are personally transformative and inspire them in the way that only art can. 

Toronto is the cultural pulse of Canada and an immense source of pride for many who live here. The city’s Culture Seekers have experienced the city getting cooler and more buzz-worthy events, particularly in the few years leading up to the pandemic. We’re starting to hold our own on the world culture stage. For Culture Seekers, this is not only worth sharing, but part of personal branding. Tapped in to the ever-changing culture landscape, this group was yearning to continue exploring Toronto's arts & culture scene after two years of deprivation. 

INSIGHT 

As ‘plugged in’ as Culture Seekers are on the scene, artistic creators are the ultimate harbingers of what’s hot. 

Culture Seekers wear their ‘everything arts Toronto’ knowledge like a badge and pride themselves on knowing what the coolest events are to attend. They love being the first to share that knowledge and can’t wait to get back out in the scene. But these tastemakers have to get their knowledge from somewhere. 

In the world of art, it’s the artists who are the true experts on what is cutting edge and what parts of the scene must be seen. Artists have also been stunted by the pandemic and have a pent-up desire for their work to be experienced. It was time for Culture Seekers and artists alike to unleash their desires at Luminato. 

STRATEGY 

We positioned Luminato as the art festival that sparks a reaction. 

Luminato is never afraid to push the boundaries and is constantly seeking new and interesting artistic expressions. Luminato is where art shines so artists want to be there. 

And where artists wants to be, Culture Seekers want to be. We moved Luminato from a ‘maybe’ to a ‘must-see’ by creating FOMO among Culture Seekers that it is a festival that simply can’t be missed. With a small budget, we focused on creating a groundswell with people who drive buzz. 

CREATIVE 

We created visual iconography that celebrates the incredible effects of the art in Luminato. 

Art is a visceral experience. Artists create it to spark reactions. We captured those reactions in the simplest, most impactful way possible: using the punctuation that reflects them. 

Art can surprise or shock. Art can spark a conversation. Art can make one question and think deeply. Art can live on in the mind. And art can be a statement. 

We used an exclamation mark, quotation marks, a question mark, an ellipsis, and a period as the visual identity for what artists create with their work and patrons experience at Luminato. For even greater impact, we put these symbols on visually-arresting luminous colours (a subtle nod to the festival’s name). The creative simply could not be ignored, like the festival itself, especially in huge takeovers like the focus Yonge-Dundas square in Toronto and on the festivals opening night the CN tower was lit up with campaign colours to celebrate this iconic festival coming back. 

RESULTS 

The Campaign brand identity left it’s mark on Toronto. The festival was a sell out success, drawing thousands of people to experience Art in all it’s forms all over the city. And festival go-ers were finally making the link back to the festival itself. Social media engagement rose by over 500% compared to the last festival. With click through rates performing 2000% stronger to the last festival campaign. And especially exciting, is during the campaign window, Luminatos social audience grew 245%, making this campaign this single most successful campaign in Luminatos history and giving the festival the fan base they were longing for, and reenergized for next years show.