Brief:

London Symphony Orchestra’s 2023/2024 New Season, will comprise a series of concerts featuring the LSO’s growing family of musicians. For this year’s campaign film and collateral, LSO wanted to celebrate the unique and highly unifying relationship between conductor and orchestra, with an approach that showcases the dialogue, chemistry and connection they have during the course of a performance.

Solution:

The film, ‘Strung Together’, opens on an aerial view of strings connecting the conductor’s hands to each individual member of the orchestra. At the centre of the view is a giant entanglement of strings. As the music starts the tangled strings are contorted, stretched and twisted, but as the piece develops the strings begin to untangle responding to the conductor’s gestures (driven by motion capture). The film builds to a powerful crescendo, when the conductor’s final movement untangles the last strings – reflecting the lines of communication between conductor and orchestra growing ever clearer during the performance.

Placement & Implementation:

The film is featured on LSO’s website and social platforms. A series of stills have been adapted from the film for use in the Season’s brochure and outdoor posters, which are currently displayed at the Barbican, London where LSO are the resident orchestra – and at key London Underground & mainline railway stations.

The campaign has only recently launched in Spring 2023. However, initial social engagement has been extremely high and the LSO has already recorded a significant increase in their website traffic and ticket sales.

Timeline:

The New Season launched in March 2023 and is set to run until Jan 2024. The project was started in November 2022.

Brand Relevance:

The 2023/24 New Season continues to reinterpret the breakthrough brand campaign identity, originally developed in 2017 to help LSO reach new audiences, inspired by the energy and dynamism of Sir Simon Rattle’s conducting movements. This expressive and emotive approach was developed in response to insight that the traditional representation of classical music at the time (static photos of conductors, musicians, and music halls) was acting as a barrier to younger audiences, reinforcing their negative perceptions of classical music: that it’s old-fashioned, elitist and boring.