In 2014, Falu Rödfärg, the original producer of the paint that coloured the famous Swedish red cottage, celebrated it’s 250-year anniversary. But how could a local anniversary make global headlines and play a part in Falu Rödfärgs mission to preserve and develop a cultural heritage?

In 2003, Swedish artist Mikael Genberg started his most daring project together with Swedens space elite – to put a red house on the moon. However, by 2008 the world economy crashed, and with it the project, hit a brick wall.

In 2014 – the digital revolution had opened up new ways to fund and launch projects. Yet space remains only available to billionaires and states. So why not utilize this change to democratize space through The Moonhouse?

Inspired by these new opportunities, Falu Rödfärg created a global crowdfunding campaign to revive The Moonhouse and spark the idea of a Swedish cultural heritage on the Moon.

The preparations were out of this world, from signing a contract with Astrobotics moon lander, to building a crowdfunding platform. The strategy was to use this platform as a hub for curated content. The campaign then launched at a press conference held in UNESCO world heritage Falu Mine. From that day – the Moonhouse became global news and engaged people all over the world.

The Result?

A reach of 900 million people with a generated media value of €33 million and a ROI of 2000%.

Making The Moonhouse campaign a new milestone in the 250 year history of Falu Rödfärg.

1. THE PROJECT

We revived the project by gathering the key participants. We then signed a contract with the US Space Technology company Astrobotics to bring the house to the Moon, and built our own crowdfunding platform.

2. THE CONTENT

We used the platform as a hub for curated content and reinvented the story about the first art project on the Moon focusing on key elements such as visuals, films, press releases, Oculus VR, Instagram-competitions, ambassadors and a Kickstarter project. All the communicative activities were executed according to a detailed plan to last throughout the campaign period (6 months).

3. THE COMMUNICATION

In order to hype the launch, we leaked information to key target media. We set up a detailed launch plan to include a live press conference which made global headlines. All activities during the campaign were communicated through the hub and spread through social media channels and press.

Over 200 articles and featured in Yahoo News, HuffingtonPost, The

Guardian, Space.com, The Telegraph, The Boston Globe, Gizmodo, The ShanDong Weekly, The Hindu, CnBeta, Cnet, Big Think, Dagens Nyheter, Brasil Post, NBC, Inquisitr etc.

900 million in reach - compared to the goal of 4 million

Media Value: 33 000 000 EUR, compared to the goal of 600 000 EUR (ROI: 2000% on total budget of 160 000 EUR)

95% of the articles used pictures from the press-kit

60% of the articles had the 6 minute video embedded

The 40 minute press conference was live broadcasted by Aftonbladet TV (Swedens largest web-TV station), TV4 (Swedens biggest TV-channel) and Space.com.

Campaign site traffic: 50 000+

Time on site: 2:09 minutes

Facebook followers: From 0 to over 2 000

Instagram followers: From 0 to over 2 000

Additional:

CEO speaking at several events

Requests from art exhibitions all around the world