50% of the artistic heritage of the world is in Italy. Millions of visitors travel every year to Italy to enjoy this cultural richness. But, judging by statistics, there is a population not particularly attracted by all this beauty: the Italians. The goal of the campaign was to encourage Italians to rediscover the artistic wonders of their country during Culture Week, a yearly initiative during which all public art sites can be visited for free.The restricted budget forced us to look for an idea that would keep production costs down privileging media investment.

The campaign base concept is very simple: it’s rare to get something so precious for free.

Therefore, via different types of media, viewing something ordinary and mundane was compared to viewing a masterpiece, underlining how the chance of enjoying the latter for free should not be missed.

A month before the start of Culture Week a fan page was created on Facebook (linked to a YouTube channel) called “Nonsense Videos | A Nonsense Video Per Day”. All this without revealing what was behind it. It was an instant success.

The virality of the project attracted thousands of fans on Facebook and hundreds of subscriptions on YouTube.

The users were also asked to help create new videos.

After a 28-day teaser phase (and 28 nonsense videos posted!), on the day the campaign was launched on the other media, the message was revealed online as well.

A super would appear halfway through a nonsense video saying: “You’re looking at a nonsense video for free. For the same price, you can look at a Caravaggio.” The message was delivered to all Facebook fans and to subscribers of the YouTube channel.

Culture Week 2010 has been the edition with the most admissions to Italian culture sites with over 1,580,000 visitors, i.e. +13% compared to 2009.

Culture Week coincided with the Icelandic volcanic eruption that brought to standstill European and worldwide air traffic for many days. The presence in Italy of foreign tourists during that week was well below average. Therefore not only a record number of visitors was achieved, but it can be arguably said that most of these were Italian. And judging on the event footage, a lot of them were young.