The pandemic had a disastrous impact on the cultural sector, fueling the demand for digital cultural content. To help meet this growing need while keeping cultural content accessible and fun, Art Zoom season 2 was launched:

- Chaeyoung from TWICE’s exploration of nature, with “Mountains (Topography)” by Korean abstract painter Yoo Youngkuk

- J.Balvin’s pride for Medellin, his hometown bruised by Pablo Escobar, through Fernando Botero’s “ 20 de Julio”

- FKA twigs’ discussion of female empowerment through Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy”

- Grimes’ take on the fight between good and evil through Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “The Fall of the Rebel Angels”

- Matty Healy from the 1975’s search for utopia through Piet Mondrian’s “Large Composition A with Black, Red, Gray, Yellow, and Black”

- Ellie Goulding’s insights on love, peace, and calm through chaos with her favorite artists – Julie Mehretu, Yves Klein, and Cy Twombly

The idea of Art Zoom is to lend iconic voices from the music world to art masterpieces. Artists give their personal view of an artwork of their choice, catching details captured in ultra-resolution thanks to our Art Camera technology. The videos are immersive and ASMRy, creating a new level of closeness with the viewer and an innovative learning experience.

This season was created as an invitation to embark on a world tour across art history starting from the European Renaissance with Bruegel’s daunting vision of hell to Botero’s modern Colombia and Youngkuk’s Korean mountains. Most of the episodes were recorded in lockdown and artists were keen to use art as a material to celebrate nature, to unveil their favorite local treasure, to support major societal causes but also to explore concepts such as beauty, chaos, utopia and hope.

All episodes of Art Zoom season 2 were deployed on YouTube in one go. The project was then amplified and supported on social media by all major Google social channels (Google Arts & Culture, Google, YouTube, YouTube Music), cultural institutions (National Gallery, Museo Nacional de Colombia, Museo Guggenheim…) and all artists,. A Japanese adaptation was created upon request for the episode with K-pop star Chaeyoung from TWICE which was further amplified by Google Japan.

In addition to this global social media coverage, the series benefited from an important PR coverage from art, tech and music outlets with +40 PR hits from the likes of Billboard, Hypebeast, Nylon, Pitchfork, Variety, etc.

Finally, the series was further supported by a small-scale TrueView campaign.

Artists are scouted based on a mix of Google Arts & Culture and YouTube music recommendations and were chosen to lend its global dimension to the project.

Once their participation was secured, we sent them a selection of artworks based on our partners’ collections and their affinities for them to choose from. A pre-interviewed was then conducted with each artist by our partner agency, La Blogothèque, to work on the script and gather their insights on their chosen pieces. The recording was set-up in lockdown and Blogothèque took part of the entire production

The process took approximately 4 months from the outreach to the delivery of the masters.

Google Arts & Culture and YouTube Music worked hand-in-hand on the go-to-market strategy and global launch on YouTube on September 15th 2020.

Thanks to a strong PR story and global line-up, season 2 has marked a turning point for this YouTube format which now boasts 3M views.

On social media, season 2 generated 17M engagement and 12M public impressions with 80% positive sentiment and some of the best user comments we ever received including references to “binge-watching” and calls for more episodes to be released. The project was endorsed by all artists who were proud to share Art Zoom with their fan-base.

Finally, as mentioned above, the project was a hit with the press across the world generating +40 hits of major outlets in the music, tech and art industries.