Our idea invited people to use the MCA acronym as a platform to express what our gallery means to them.

Via an onsite activation people could see their creation hanging on the walls of the MCA and make a personalised t-shirt. Better yet, every acronym submitted was given a place to shine on the side of our building overlooking the iconic Sydney Harbour.

From Mind Changing Art to Multi-Cultural Artists, Mediocrity Cleared Away and even My Cherished Afternoons, we received thousands of creations - with a top 10 being chosen for social and OOH.

At the end of the campaign our t-shirts had proved so popular they became an ongoing item at the beloved MCA gift shop, but most importantly we had shown people the true meaning of the MCA was to find your own meaning within it.

We handed our name over to the public and let them tell us what the MCA meant to them.

Firstly, we used our biggest piece of real estate (our iconic building on Sydney Harbour) as a place where people could see their MCA creation up in lights.

The side of our building lit up at night with the thousands of acronyms suggested by the public through our onsite activation and online experience.

Our onsite activation also featured the ability to make your own t-shirt, which turned everyone, including our staff into walking billboards for the campaign.

Finally, we selected a top 10 that were featured in OOH and social.

So whether your MCA was Mind Changing Art, Multi Cultural Artists or even Messy Children Allowed – we had found a way to connect with our audience like never before.

Imagine telling a client you want to change their name. Scary, right? Now imagine telling them you want to turn it into a blank canvas, and let anyone change it to whatever they want, as many times as they want?

That’s exactly what we did, and we learned that fortune favours the bold.

Our key objective was to spark a shift in brand perception that would get people talking, thinking and interacting differently with the brand. However there was no budget ($0!) to measure that. So we had to work with what we had: the MCA’s footfall during the campaign.

And the news was good.

During the 3-week period of the campaign, the MCA recorded the highest consecutive footfall of the quarter (August, September and October 2017). There were no other campaigns in market that could account for this increase. We were on our way.

When you sit next to the iconic Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge, it can be difficult to get the attention you want.

The MCA wasn’t getting the fame – or footfall – it deserved. This was both perplexing and frustrating to our client.

Maybe contemporary art isn’t everybody’s cup of tea… but the most talked about galleries in the world – MOMA, The Met, the Tate Modern, the Guggenheim are full of the stuff. Why wasn’t the MCA making the same cultural impact?

We took a good hard look at the brand, and realised we had an identity crisis. When you’re called a ‘museum’ but you’re jam-packed with ‘contemporary art’ – created by today’s living artists – your brand is at odds with itself.

MCA lacked meaning.

We were confusing potential visitors with our very name.

We had to tackle this head on.