You are a brand. Well known and well liked. But there is more to you than most people know. You support your local field hockey team, you like the library around the corner, and you have an impressive art collection.
You are a company turning into a museum, or visa versa. You no longer know what you are. You have a collection of artworks that represents your take on life, you have curators working for you. You maybe even have an audience, though you may wonder who and where they are.
You feel lost. You want to reach out, connect, you want a dialogue. But how do you reach the man on the street, the digital passers-by, the aficionado’s, your employees and customers, ?
T H E S T O R Y
Who are you?
The corporate world is infiltrating the art world. Companies sponsor exhibitions; partner up with profile museums and galleries; they might even adopt a museum to get their big corporate logo’s on the respectable museum walls.
More and more corporations have an extensive art collection. The art is displayed in lobbies, office halls and elevator rooms: nothing unique there. But recently Rabobank has opened an Art Zone in their new headquarters: a dedicated space, for exhibitions, lectures and guided tours. And that’s unique.
It looks like a museum, it feels like a museum. But, it’s not, it’s bank. You can look at a well curated exhibition, questioning your identity (and mine) - in a bank. This is new. A bank using art to pose questions like ‘who are you?’ ‘who are we?’.
The challenge
Art in Life, Life in Art. The Rabobank Kunstzone is ambitious. It's a place where you can meet, a place where you can work, where you can dream, and contemplate the larger things in life. It’s a podium for the Rabobank Art collection, but also a podium for artists like Alicia Framis and Job Koelewijn. In line with their brand Rabobank wants to share, be involved and stay close. This is why they make a point of supporting young talent: helping them develop and grow.
This raises some questions. How do we involve our employees and the general public? How do we show this involvement and communicate our intentions? What should we look like?
S O L U T I O N
Rabobank is a bank – a very successful one. They’re not a museum and this unique context for art has to be made visible and meaningful to visitors.
It’s all about the story behind the art: we wanted to show Rabobank Employees building an artwork, the cleaning lady vacuuming an artwork at the end of an exhibition. People can see art everywhere but what makes this art extra special is how it fits into Rabobank’s reality.
Rabobank’s intentions needed to be communicated simultaneously through multiple channels. For example, if they work closely with an artist, we show how she thinks, what her vision and her dreams are and in doing so another side to Rabobank is revealed.
Above all we wanted them to keep looking at what they show through their special glasses. They’re a bank, and that’s what makes, them, the collection and the story so interesting.
R E S U L T
In an ongoing process Ping-pong advises the Rabo Kunstzone. We’re involved in the search for the Kunstzone identity. We help define the context and design media.
At the same time we ask them to inspire us and hope our enthusiasm rubs off on them. The Kunstzone can be a lively place where people meet to fuel-up, put things in perspective and remember what’s really important in life.