What originated in the devastating earthquake disaster in Fukushima led to a hopeful joint project: Ark Nova, the world's first inflatable concert hall. Initiated by Lucerne Festival director Michael Haefliger, concert agent Masahide Kajimoto, star architect Arata Isozaki and artist Sir Anish Kapoor, the Ark Nova was an impressive artistic response in the context of the disaster: an ark as a place of security, warmth, confidence and new perspectives. Following its opening in Japan with stops in Matsushima, Sendai, Fukushima and Tokyo, the Ark Nova success story is now continuing in Switzerland in a unique form: as part of the Lucerne Festival, Ark Nova will be making a guest appearance on the Lido meadow on Lake Lucerne from September 4 to 14 under the motto "Open End". The Lucerne Festival deliberately invites a wide audience to enjoy musical arrangements ranging from classical to folk and pop. Ark Nova is one of the most successful international projects of the directorship of Michael Haefliger, who has developed Lucerne Festival into Switzerland's largest classical music festival with international appeal in 26 years as artistic and managing director and who is handing over the overall direction of the festival to Sebastian Nordmann at the turn of the year.

The specialist agency Bagels of Berkeley was responsible for the social media strategy and content. Prodigious handled the media execution, while MetaDesign managed the brand. Publicis Media ensured media distribution and visibility. The collaboration among the agencies enabled a powerful, coordinated communication campaign for an outstanding cultural experience on Lake Lucerne.

CEO Alexander Haldemann emphasizes the importance of the long-standing partnership with the Lucerne Festival: «As a group, we are proud to have been able to support the Lucerne Festival over all these years—this year with the exceptional artistic program Ark Nova. In doing so, the Lucerne Festival is making a mark of international significance on the cultural landscape.»

Responsible at Lucerne Festival: Michael Haefliger (Artistic Director). Responsible for concept and implementation at Publicis Groupe Switzerland: Publicis Zurich (communication concept and campaign), Bagels of Berkeley (social media concept & content), Prodigious (media realization), MetaDesign (brand management), Publicis Media (media implementation).

The Lucerne Festival Orchestra has played a special role in the success of this year's summer festival. The orchestra has played a major role in shaping the festival with symphony and chamber music concerts - and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The long-term success of the Lucerne Festival is an expression of excellent and innovative artistic direction as well as carefully selected international artists and musicians of the highest quality. At the same time, it is an example of consistent brand management - with the right, even courageous decisions at the right moment.

MetaDesign has been supporting the festival in all aspects of brand management since 2001 - from renaming it the Lucerne Festival to rebranding it during the pandemic and creating ongoing communication measures.

Michael Haefliger, artistic director of the Lucerne Festival, and André Stauffer, creative director at MetaDesign, answered questions about the festival.

Michael Haefliger, what prompted the change of name from Lucerne International Music Festival to Lucerne Festival in 2001?

Michael Haefliger: With the opening of the KKL Luzern by architect Jean Nouvel in 1998, a cultural setting in a new dimension had become reality. In this we recognized the opportunity to rebrand the International Music Festival, to give it the resonance it deserved and to build a global brand in the long term. The renaming to Lucerne Festival was the starting point. This step required a lot of courage from everyone involved - as so often in the last 20 years. Today we know without a doubt that it was the right step - and the prelude to something great.

What made you decide to focus so strongly on the brand for the Lucerne Festival cultural institution right from the start?

From the very beginning, we had the ambition to become one of the leading classical music festivals internationally. That's why we decided to invest all our communicative power in the brand and establish it internationally - a long-term strategy. The alternative would have been to intensify communication of individual offerings, but that was not an option for us at the time. Today, we reach visitors and musicians from all over the world and can call ourselves one of the most renowned international classical music festivals without false arrogance.

From the very beginning, the Lucerne Festival brand has also set special visual accents. What is the claim? What role do key visuals, colorfulness, the play with contrasts play?

André Stauffer: A very large role. The most striking thing is the colorfulness of the brand. It reflects the liveliness and topicality of classical music. It conveys festival character, the joy of music, youthfulness and freshness. We deliberately let these colors, as well as subjects, clash with each other. In this way, we bring together opposites that are real at the Lucerne Festival: People from metropolises visiting Central Switzerland, orchestras from all over the world amidst the picturesque backdrop of mountains and Lake Lucerne. A visuality that stimulates, provokes and inspires.

Once a year, the Lucerne Festival presents a topical and explosive theme for several weeks at the summer festival. At this year's edition from August 8 to September 10, MetaDesign's motifs show fruit in two contrasting states - half intact, half destroyed.

They make the theme of "paradise" as well as its ambivalence and topicality perceptible in several ways: First, the fruits refer to biblical tradition - paradise and the enjoyment of the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Naturally, the apple appears in first place, quoted and satirized by the pear, followed by the tomato - strictly speaking not a fruit, but known in Austrian as "Paradeiser". The destruction of the fruit symbolizes the loss of paradise with all its consequences.

But fruits as food also stand for the resources that keep us humans alive - and that we need every day to shape and develop our living environment. The destruction of fruits is a symbol for the ambivalence of our actions: We create things, waste resources, harm the environment - and in the end ourselves.

Old civil law books as sheet music

That the "Wedding March" now really applies to everyone is to be shown by the score that the conductor used for the piece: marriage passages for exclusively heterosexual couples from the Civil Code book were used in snippets as a basis to create new paper. Felix Mendessohn Bartholdy's composition was then printed on it. Michael Haefliger, artistic director of Lucerne Festival, who himself tore up the pages, said: "We are very pleased that we can make our motto 'Diversity' audible and also tangible on this important day."

The campaign thus heralds a comprehensive online sales and radio campaign for Lucerne Festival, whose summer festival will take place in Lucerne from August 8 to September 11, 2022. With the motto "Diversity", the festival is setting an example for equal opportunities regardless of skin color, gender, religion, social origin or sexual orientation.

Online, the campaign's messages aim to show the audience the experience of seeing a top classical music star live at an unbelievable price. Instead of artists' names, interesting facts about the musicians and pieces of music are advertised. Thus, it is not a ticket for the Vienna Philharmonic or the London Symphony Orchestra that is advertised, but an orchestra for which even the royals stand in line or a piece that was composed in Lucerne and then became famous worldwide. On the other hand, orchestral highlights are used on the radio and on Spotify that end abruptly just before the climax to make the target group want to keep listening.

Cognitive Biases

With this approach, the campaign mechanics rely on Bias-based Creativity, an approach developed by Jung von Matt and HSG (Werbewoche.ch reported). The potential confusion of the extensive program is deliberately countered by a reduction in the complexity of decision-making. At the same time, the reduced information available stimulates curiosity about the festival program.

The campaign is running now. It is being managed by the media experts at Jung von Matt Impact, who are relying on data-driven targeting to achieve the greatest possible relevance for the target group.

Responsible at Lucerne Festival: Michael Haefliger (Artistic Director Lucerne Festival), Bettina Jaggi (Head of Marketing and Digital Development), Danièle Gross (Commercial Director), Nina Steinhart (Head of Press and Public Relations), Christiane Weber (Head of Artistic Office), Jovana Bozic (Marketing and Digital Development Staff), Anna-Barbara Rothen (Marketing and Digital Development Staff), Katharina Schillen (Press and Public Relations Staff). Responsible at Jung von Matt Limmat: Dominique Magnusson (Creative Direction), Frederik Dreyer, Elif Soysal (Text), Nicole Vizcardo, Sebastian Danielsson (Art Direction), Mutasin Grabenhorst (Animation), Ayleen Friedrich (Graphic Design), Christian Omlin, Joséphine Ducret (Strategy), Michel Nellen (concept/implementation PR), Fabienne Weidmann (consulting), Vera Riemeier (executive project director, overall responsibility), Nathalie Eggen (executive empowerment director), Luitgard Hagl (executive creative director), Wolfgang Bark (executive creative director). Responsible at Jung von Matt Impact: Ladina Baumann, Jean-Paulo Chaveiro (Media Planning), Dominik Habermacher (Managing Director). External partners:inside: Film Tannery (film), Smartec (stage construction).

In 2001, MetaDesign assisted the then "International Music Festival" in its transformation into the "Lucerne Festival. Since then, the agency has supported the internationally renowned brand in a wide variety of communication-related issues.

Celebrating areas of tension

At Lucerne Festival, young talent meets established masters, tradition meets innovation, and Central Switzerland meets the wider world. This interplay of fields of tension is what makes Lucerne Festival special - and what drives it. This should now also manifest itself in the new brand.

Now the interplay of fields of tension can be rediscovered in a wide variety of brand elements. Basically, the new brand is intended to symbolize an inspiring clash of opposites that opens up new horizons and results in great things.

The result is an appearance that is intended to strengthen the Lucerne Festival's one-brand strategy. It supports the festival's great diversity - the fields of tension, the different offers, target groups and events - in a distinctive brand, to carry it to the outside world and at the same time to take a big step into the future.

"We don't want to passively wait and see, but actively shape"

Three questions for Michael Haefliger, artistic director of the Lucerne Festival.

Michael Haefliger, what motivated you to change the brand?

Michael Haefliger: We want to make the Lucerne Festival brand fit for the future. A "just keep it up" brand identity no longer reflects our vision. The market and needs are changing: if you want to continue to focus on entrepreneurial and cultural excellence, you have to recognize the signs early on and take action. We are doing this with our new one-brand strategy, with a new focus on three divisions: "Symphony," "Contemporary" and "Music For Future," and with new projects. The brand is a powerful instrument for making this strategy tangible. In this way, we are emphasizing that we want to continue to develop decisively as one of the leading international classical music festivals - and this requires a correspondingly bold step.

And why right now - in the middle of a pandemic?

Because we don't want to wait passively, but actively shape things. Today for tomorrow. We have been engaged in the discourse of change for some time now. And constantly thinking, developing and moving forward is part of our DNA. So this transformation was already on our minds before the pandemic - and will continue to be so afterwards. We saw the Corona crisis as an opportunity to drive the process forward. We used the time to sharpen our strategic profile for the future, to position ourselves optimally with new concepts and to show our colors with a new image.

What do you expect from this step?

We always have the future of music in mind and look forward to what is to come. We love and live classical music - and just as much the many possibilities to reinterpret it. We want to surprise, inspire and move. And that should reach "out there". We want it to be experienced and to move people. Of course, I hope that our charisma will continue to grow. Internationally as well as nationwide. We want to continue to convince our audience and at the same time give young people access to traditional classical as well as contemporary music - to reach them and inspire them. And I am convinced that with our new strategy and our new brand identity, we will achieve precisely these goals.

At the Lucerne Festival, important performers from all over the world come together year after year to celebrate a festival of music: famous orchestras, legendary conductors, virtuoso soloists. The Ruf Lanz agency is now also jointly responsible for promoting the festival. According to Theresa Hoepker, Commercial Director at Lucerne Festival, "Ruf Lanz convinced with a two-stage strategy and creative presentation." The first results will be on display in the fall.