Drive traffic to Tate Modern’s website to find out more about the Warhol exhibition taking place in London between February and March 2002.Create an interactive Warhol experience to breathe life and contemporary relevance into the campaign, thus emphasising Tate Modern’s position as a modern, forward-thinking, audience-focused art brand.Capture data to use in forthcoming Tate communications activity. Naked came up with the idea for an interactive Warhol microsite which would be housed on the main Tate website.Taking the Day-Glo visual style of some of Warhol’s most iconic works such as the ‘Marilyn diptych’, we decided to offer microsite visitors the opportunity to ‘Warholise’ themselves and earn their own 15 minutes of fame.Visitors to the site were invited to upload a digital image of themselves and the best would be “Warholised” into a multi-coloured work of art and “hung” in the online gallery. Every fifteen minutes, one Warholised image took pride of place on the home page, which automatically updated to the next when the allotted quarter hour was up. From the moment a visitor sent in their photo, they would constantly return to the gallery to check to see if their image had been Warholised – a perfect example of how human curiosity can ensure repeat visits to a site.Every time an image was Warholised and hung in the gallery, an email was despatched to the sender with a direct link to their image. We played on people’s natural narcissist tendencies by offering them an easy way to forward their image link on to friends, work colleagues or family, thereby guaranteeing that the site would grow in popularity purely through (free) word of mouth.Obviously it was important to draw attention to the fact that the definitive Warhol Retrospective was currently being exhibited at Tate Modern, so opening times and ticket information was clearly displayed on the site and in the notification email. A second email was sent to the database a week before the exhibition ended encouraging them to take advantage of the extended opening hours during the final week. More than any other artist of his generation, Warhol showed us that the ubiquitous imagery of mass culture had come to reflect and shape contemporary life. His powerful subject matter, however, has often obscured his radical explorations into different media. He painted and drew with silkscreen, made moving film images appear still, stitched together identical photographs, and filled a room with silver balloons. His life's project was to explore the aesthetic and cultural associations of the term 'media', questioning structural boundaries in a way now heralded by some as 'post-medium'.Warhol’s embracement of such a variety of different media inspired Naked to develop a non-traditional mixed-media advertising campaign for Tate Modern’s retrospective of his work. We were also keen to exploit the potential of a medium that wasn’t around during his lifetime but one that we are sure he would have embraced in his own individual way, the internet. A year after the dotcom bubble burst it seemed strangely appropriate to use a medium that has recently revolutionised the commercial landscape to publicise the definitive exhibition of a man so closely associated with consumer culture. All we needed was an involving mechanic to draw people into Warhol’s world. If ‘everyone will be famous for 15 minutes’ then how can we make this happen using media? By embracing new technology we were able to involve the public with this ‘popular’ artist and allow Tate to reach out as a brand and embrace the public, something which Tate – and art establishments in general – have been accused of avoiding in the past.With many such competitors still communicating using traditional channels (underground posters, listings magazines etc.), the Warholiser was able to set Tate apart as a more accessible art brand, willing to use new ways of communicating and have fun with its offerings.As we had hoped, the Warholiser became a truly viral phenomenon. With no advertising or PR backing over 200,000 unique users accessed the microsite during the 49 days of the exhibition, with more than 10,000 photos uploaded. Word spread internationally and the site was featured and recommended in major newspapers and on well-known bulletin boards and radio stations around the world, from the US to Australia, from Scandinavia to Spain. All on a development budget of £4000! The exhibition itself was Tate Modern’s second biggest since opening, with visitor numbers reaching 218,000, 62% over the target figure.

More than any other artist of his generation, Warhol showed us that the ubiquitous imagery of mass culture had come to reflect and shape contemporary life. His powerful subject matter, however, has often obscured his radical explorations into different media. He painted and drew with silkscreen, made moving film images appear still, stitched together identical photographs, and filled a room with silver balloons. His life's project was to explore the aesthetic and cultural associations of the term 'media', questioning structural boundaries in a way now heralded by some as 'post-medium'.Warhol’s embracement of such a variety of different media inspired Naked to develop a non-traditional mixed-media advertising campaign for Tate Modern’s retrospective of his work. We were also keen to exploit the potential of a medium that wasn’t around during his lifetime but one that we are sure he would have embraced in his own individual way, the internet. A year after the dotcom bubble burst it seemed strangely appropriate to use a medium that has recently revolutionised the commercial landscape to publicise the definitive exhibition of a man so closely associated with consumer culture. All we needed was an involving mechanic to draw people into Warhol’s world.