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.’
About Barbican Business Events
The Barbican is one of the world’s leading conference and international arts venues. Located in the City of London, it is capable of holding meetings from 10-2,000 delegates in its fully equipped concert hall, theatres, conference suites and boardrooms. Barbican Business Events brings together the venue’s expertise in the arts and corporate meetings.
Built as part of London’s Barbican development and officially opened in March 1982 by HM Queen Elizabeth, unlike many other venues, Barbican was specifically built with the dual purpose of holding conferences and arts events presenting a diverse range of art, music, theatre, dance, film and creative learning.
The Barbican’s Business Events team contributes to the venue’s future success. To make the most of the Barbican’s rich culture and heritage, Barbican Business Events was created to bring together their expertise in three very different areas – the arts, creative learning and corporate business.
This approach to corporate events is based on stronger, more in-depth partnerships with their artistic, creative learning and development teams in order to bring more creativity and rich content to events.
The Barbican provides a vibrant and inspiring venue for corporate events, conferences, meetings and entertainment.
The venue is capable of holding meetings from 10-2,000 delegates in spaces including a concert hall, theatres, a boardroom and conference suites that can accommodate 10-170 delegates and can be adjusted using sound proofed sliding.
As part of its wider investment strategy, the Barbican spent £2.2m on a significant refurbishment throughout the Centre in the summer of 2016 including its Frobisher rooms and Level 4.
The focus of the Frobisher refurbishment is designed to create an even stronger connection between the Centre’s main conference and meeting facilities and its arts spaces.
Source: Press Release
