Museumweek
When museums closed their doors, Museum Week moved online. And the audio had to carry an entirely virtual experience for 120,000 visitors.
- Client
- Nationale Museumweek 2020
- Sector
- Cultural sector
- Year
- 2020
- What we did
- Music production, post production and sound design
- What it achieved
- 120,000 unique visitors and 124% more traffic than 2019, with every museum physically closed. Effie Award winner
Museum Week without museums
When the pandemic closed Dutch museums, the Museumvereniging didn't cancel. They moved Museum Week online. That meant the sonic identity we'd built in earlier years suddenly had to carry a week nobody could actually visit. It had to sound familiar, and it had to work on a screen at home.
Same signature, different world
Because the identity was already there, it could bend a bit. This campaign was more about being together than about spectacle, so we adjusted the music for that. The warmth people knew from earlier years stayed. And since nobody could be in the same room, the music had to do a little more of the work.
Production built to move people at a distance
Musical production
The same Museum Week identity, rescored for the mood of 2020.
Post production
Audio post for the TV and radio spots. Two very different ways of listening, both at home.
Sound design
Atmospheric sound design that brought the feel of a real museum space into a digital campaign.
What changes when a campaign moves from the room to the screen?
The plan for Museumweek 2020 was already in place when the museums closed. Everything that leaned on a physical visit had to become something else within weeks.
For the audio, two things changed. The mood, first of all. Earlier editions were curious and light, and this one had to carry the fact that people couldn't get together. And the mix moved from the living room to headphones. If you're watching alone at home you can handle more detail and less volume than a TV spot that plays while people are chatting.
The sonic identity underneath stayed exactly the same. Only how we used it changed. Which is the whole point of building one. Daan wrote down what that edition taught him about sonic identity.
120,000 people who still showed up
Despite all museums being closed, Museum Week 2020 reached 120,000 unique online visitors, and the Effie jury named it the most effective route to the non-frequent visitor. The familiar sound from earlier years helped a fully online week feel like the real thing.
This project is one of seven Studio ZK made for the cultural sector. Audio identity for a national cultural campaign →