The Royal Swedish Opera – campaign for Samson & Delilah

Time to show some actual planning at work. Here's a campaign for The Royal Swedish Opera from us at Jung von Matt that's just out. Whatcha think?

Background

Samson & Delilah is a new show at The Royal Swedish Opera. It is a classic biblical story but given a new twist. The director wants to provoke the audience by giving his version a twist. The twist is that the setting of the story is postwar Israel, from 1948 to present day.

Challenge

To sell tickets to the show, the obvious Middle-East conflict has to be dealt with in several ways in order to avoid certain dangers.

The director’s wish to be provocative meant the postwar Middle Easet conflict had to be a central part of the communications. Yet, The Royal Swedish Opera could not be seen as partisan in the ongoing conflict. Political neutrality had to be kept.

There was also a risk of focussing too much on the Middle-East conflict, because it would overshadow the actual opera and the story and consequently becoming irrelevant. Any solution had to be intuitive and crystal-clear.

Focussing too much on the show would and avoiding the conflict would, on the other hand be to trivialise it. The Royal Swedish Opera would be viewed as stupid if the complexity would be treated too lightly. The solution had to be exceptionally clever.

Solution

Concept

There was one parameter that would solve all the above problems: location. So, we let our concept take place in the Middle East, virtually as well as physically.

Being in the center of the conflict meant we could be neutral yet be relevant. It would also show respect to the conflict itself.

Execution

To execute the concept, we concluded it had to be shot on location to be credible. We sent our Art Director Jacob and photographer Sven to the Middle East. On location, they would spray a stencil design on walls representing the Samson & Delilah opera, inspired by graffiti art.

The photos of the Middle East work became the actual advertising, here shown as outdoor posters that are currently running in central Stockholm.

"Samson & Delilah – in the center of the conflict. See history repeating itself in today's Middle East. Based on the classic opera of Camille Saint-Saën. Opens on September 13th with Richard Decker and Anna Larsson as Samson and Delilah."

Five units were also spray-painted in the same way as they were done in the Middle East. Here on location at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm.

Filippa, Jeremy and Max spraypainting with permit.

To book tickets for the opera, go here. :)

Comments

[Peter]

I like it!

Curious how you got the client to pay for shooting on location, when the result doesn't show location at all. You could easily have set these evnironments up in Stockholm.

Good job Leon.

[Leon]

The on-location photoshooting was well within the production budget. Shooting it in Stockholm would have taken the edge of the campaign and would have changed the whole idea. The location of the photo isn't only about visual communications, it's also contextual – about minimising the political risk and content – we're telling a totally different story with this. This kind of commitment creates involvement for the target group, which ultimately is what we want.