The brief

Art Fund

Create a campaign that can drive sales of the Student Art Pass amongst university students in autumn 2018. 

The brief 

Create a campaign that can drive sales of the Student Art Pass amongst university students in autumn 2018. 

Background

Art Fund is a UK charity, founded in 1903, that exists to help museums and galleries buy and display works of art for the nation to enjoy. Most of our funding comes from sales of the National Art Pass, which offers free entry into over 240 charging museums, galleries and historic houses in the UK, as well as 50% off major exhibitions. 

The price of a National Art Pass is normally £65, but Art Fund has now created a Student Art Pass for just £5, open to all university students. There are over 1 million university students in the UK, but only a limited number of passes will be available at this price between October and December.

Example discounts

Dulwich Picture Gallery
Standard entry price: £7
Free with a Student Art Pass

Kensington Palace
Standard entry price: £16
Free with a Student Art Pass

Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia at the British Museum
50% off entry with a Student Art Pass
(saving £6.50)

Creative Challenge

We need to convince students – not just art students – that visiting museums and galleries can help them step out of their daily lives and get a new perspective on the world. For some, it might be about inspiration for their studies. For others, museums and galleries can offer a chance to relax and reset. 

The annual pass offers them access to a huge variety of art throughout the UK, for just £5. The campaign will appear in university media and online, in autumn 2018. There is a relatively limited media budget, so we’re looking for a distinctive campaign that can stand out from the freshers’ week clutter. 

Forget Glastonbury; the Student Art Pass is now the biggest drop of the year.

The audience

Whilst the Student Art Pass might appear most relevant to art students, who will go to museums and galleries fairly regularly as part of their course or research, we believe it can be useful to all university students. Whether they’re studying maths or medicine, spending time in galleries and museums can have many benefits.

Most students will be aged between 18 and 22 years. At the time of year we’ll be talking to them (October), they will be either starting university or starting a new year. Getting used to a new environment, living somewhere new, meeting new people and getting to grips with their course requirements. They will also be hearing from lots of brands and companies, offering various products, student discounts and opportunities.

So we need to do something really distinctive to stand out.

Key insight

Students’ lives are increasingly dominated by technology.

Their smartphone is often the last thing they look at before going to sleep and the first thing they look at the next morning. The average student will scroll through over 300ft of content each day. That’s the height of the statue of liberty!

Any spare moment, whether on the train or the loo, is now invariably filled by a screen of some kind. And most of their student work and research involves a computer.

Yet most students feel slightly uncomfortable about the prevalence of technology in their lives. They wish they could ‘switch off’ more. Well, they can.

Museums and galleries are peaceful, physical spaces where you can take time to really take in your surroundings, think deeply about something, get inspired, or just relax for a couple of hours.

Key messages

There are two key messages that we want this campaign to communicate:

Primary: Student National Art Pass can help you switch off, relax and find inspiration.

Secondary: A whole year of art for just £5.

The channels

University media will allow us to be really targeted (posters, on-campus stunts, university intranets, digital screens in lecture halls, university magazines/papers etc.).

Social media also gives us the opportunity to target students effectively. This could be via paid-media formats (e.g. sponsored posts on Facebook), or you could consider the social accounts of universities, venues or influencers.

Finally, there could be partnership opportunities with relevant brands or organisations that resonate with university students. Who could Art Fund partner with to raise awareness of the offer on campuses?

Considerations 

• How can we make the release of the Student Art Pass offer in 2018 feel like an event, like Glastonbury ticket sales or Supreme clothing drops? • We can use works of art, but we don’t have to. • Think digital first.

• We should make clear the scale of the pass (national, hundreds of venues etc.). • We could use testimonials from students who’ve had the pass in previous years. For the purposes of this brief you can make them up!

• Production budget will be fairly limited, so we need an idea that is simple to execute and doesn’t rely on expensive photoshoots etc. We can, however, use works of art – often for free. And the Art Fund has relationships with hundreds of venues and artists that might prove useful.

Mandatories

There are very few mandatories for this campaign, but we would expect the campaign to feature the following elements:

• The name of the pass (Student Art Pass)

• Reference to the price (£5)

• A “call to action”. i.e. where can students find out more or buy a pass? For example, this could be the web address (https://www.artfund.org/student) or a search suggestion, like “search Student Art Pass”.

• Important: this campaign must treat the Student Art Pass as a stand-alone product, and should not draw any comparisons to the price of the National Art Pass.

You might also want to use a visual of the Student Art Pass (provided), but this is not essential.