On the Thalys railway network, Brussels has to compete with iconic cities like Paris or Amsterdam. People don’t necessarily think about going to Brussels for the weekend. But, nevertheless, Brussels has something more than the others: its inhabitants, who are probably the warmest people in Europe, always smiling and welcoming.

To promote our train journeys to this destination, we put its inhabitants up on a pedestal because in Brussels the real monuments are the people. We decided to give the people the opportunity to be part of their city’s cultural heritage.

Our target audience were people, who enjoy travelling, between the age of 25 and 45, wealthy and who enjoy city trips, cultural experiences, immersion in local atmospheres and getting off the beaten track. We wanted to mobilize everybody living in Brussels to show to what extent the city was full of “monuments”: its inhabitants. A week before, we created an event on Facebook, inviting them to come along. We used sponsored posts and worked closely with Visit Brussels, the Brussels Tourist Office. At the event, we proposed that they were “hologrammed” and gave them the opportunity to share their experience on social media. A live Instagram event was broadcast to our community at the same time, followed by a film of the event.

Using unique, interactive technology, we set up a “Holobooth” in the Mont des Arts in Brussels, a truly futuristic photo booth capable, in just 2 minutes, of capturing a person in 360° and creating their hologram. This hologram was then projected onto a stone slab, creating gigantic silhouettes of more than 5 metres high. On the slab were the words “In Brussels, the real monuments are the people”. The event took place over the period of a weekend in the Monts des Arts, one of the main squares in Brussels.

More than 2000 visitors in just 3 days. More than 500 holograms A reach of more than 80 000 people with our various posts, live videos and 6000 interactions. More than 2000 fans recruited on our social media networks 100k visitors in 4 days to the event’s landing page.