In January 1998 the Tate Gallery will launch a new advertising campaign which aims to widen the appeal of the Gallery and attract new visitors. The advertisements created by award-winning agency BDDP GGT will run during 1998 as a series of 16-sheet cross track posters on the London Underground.
The new campaign consists of three different treatments, each of which suggests how a visit to the Tate can literally change a person’s view of the world. Each advertisement features an everyday object which at a second glance takes on a new meaning and interpretation. The first in the series shows a conker which at the same time also looks like an eye. It is captioned ‘A conker, noticed after a visit to the Tate Gallery’. The second shows a rock and the third an apple, each of which encourages a new way of looking. The campaign was written by BDDP GGT’s Nigel Roberts and art directed by Paul Belford.
The Tate is in the process of creating two new galleries in London for the Millennium with the Tate Gallery of Modern Art at Bankside opening in Spring 2000 and the Tate Gallery of British Art relaunching at Millbank in Autumn 2001. The Gallery needs to double the number of visitors by 2000 and has appointed top advertising agency BDDP GGT - famous for its eye-catching campaigns for French Connection, Waterstones and John Smith’s bitter - to devise the campaign. The Tate currently attracts 2.3 million visitors each year.
Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate Gallery said:
‘The aim of the new advertising campaign is to appeal to new and wider audiences and to present the Tate as exciting, intriguing and above all accessible.’
John Allen, Deputy Chairman of BDDP GGT said:
‘The campaign is a simple and yet charming way to illustrate the benefits of visiting the Tate for anyone, regardless of their knowledge of art’.