Culture Clash
Client: Visit Norway & Peer Gynt AS
Deliverables: Social Strategy, Paid Media, Art Direction, Copywriting, Reporting & Analytics
Culture Clash was a good reminder that social can sharpen an idea, not just distribute it. The brief was to mark the 150th anniversary of Peer Gynt by bringing Edvard Grieg to a younger audience, which could very easily have become a worthy piece of heritage content with no real life online. The creative solution was much smarter than that: four young musicians from different genres reworked Grieg in their own way, creating a strong contrast between classical and contemporary from the outset.
That contrast became the engine of the social strategy too. My role was to help turn it into something that felt current and clickable rather than cultural homework.
We built a series of ads designed to stop people mid-scroll, used the clash between old and new as the hook, and then segmented audiences across the US, UK and Germany by genre, interest and persona. Facebook, Instagram and YouTube each had a different role to play, but the overall thinking was the same: intrigue first, then drive people through to watch the fuller content and explore more.
Within a month, the campaign had reached more than 3.8 million unique users, driven over 100,000 clicks and delivered a 2.6% CTR against an industry average of 1.8%. Video views passed 1,081,235, amounting to nearly 5,000 hours of playtime, and the campaign performed well enough to prompt a second Culture Clash series.
I also got to stand in the freezing lake, in case you were wondering.