CLIENT - Lucca Comics and Games for the Presidence of the Italian Republic
WHY - To mark the centenary of the commemoration of the Unknown Soldier, the Italian government has set itself the problem of communicating its history and meaning to an audience of young and very young people who are culturally far removed from the subject, adopting a narrative slant, expressive languages and dissemination channels suited to the purpose. As a partner for the operation, the Government chose Lucca Comics and Games, the main Italian pop culture festival (and the second largest in the world), asking it to create and produce a project functional to the purpose.
WHEN - October, 29th - November, 2nd 2021 / WHERE - Lucca (LU), and 50 other cities
WHAT - In collaboration with the two organisations, after a long planning process, we decided to take advantage of a multidisciplinary approach to create an activation capable of speaking the different languages of the festival and its fans.
On the one hand, the production of a dedicated exhibition, with a phygital approach (physical and digital at the same time); on the other hand, we created a dedicated version of the very famous board game Ticket To Ride, which would take up the theme of the train that crossed Italy from Aquileia for the first symbolic journey of the Militia, one hundred years earlier.
HOW - For the production of the exhibition, we involved 20+1 different artists, famous illustrators, cartoonists, and concept designers, asking each of them to create a work on the theme of the Unknown Soldier. Each work would then be animated - in agreement with the artists - in augmented reality, allowing exhibition participants to use their mobile phones to animate them and magnify their meaning. All this without the need to download any dedicated app: in fact, the system relied on Instagram, a widely used platform, and therefore allowed for an immediate social relaunch.
More specifically, the works were to be exhibited in Lucca, during Lucca Comics and Games, inside the church of San Cristoforo, the former war memorial, which was granted extraordinarily for the occasion. In addition, the same works would be available on a specially produced site, so that the experience could also be extended to those who were not present at the festival. To emotionally envelop participants in the Lucca exhibition, the immersive design of the exhibition redesigned the church of San Cristoforo, transforming it into a garden dotted with period street lamps, flanked by a reconstructed train car, itself enhanced by an additional immersive experience. As a final touch, all those present at the exhibition were given a paper flower containing seeds, which could be planted as a symbol of rebirth.
In parallel, it was possible to play the unique edition of Ticket to Ride created for the Commemoration in collaboration with Asmodee, publisher of the game, both in Lucca, inside a barracks on the city's Renaissance walls, as well as in 60 participating shops and clubs in 50 different cities - thus making the experience truly transversal and national. The numbers of the event confirmed the extraordinary success of the experience: 12,000 visitors to the exhibition in 4 days, 62,000 activations of the augmented reality of the works, 40,000 visits to the dedicated website, and an Advertising Value Equivalent calculated on qualified press releases of over 422,000 euros.
