Every now and then an event comes along that is truly unmissable. This is one of them. Now in its third month, Ramses & The Gold of the Pharaohs is the latest ‘blockbuster’ exhibition at The Australian Museum (AM), and it’s playing a huge role in magnifying tourism for Sydney this summer.
To promote the show, AM turned to long-term brand and comms partner SomeOne to bring it to life in a glittering campaign that celebrates the magic of the golden age of Egypt. A campaign that helped to sell more than 100k prelaunch tickets! Currently the world’s most valuable touring exhibition, Sydney is the 4th stop on its tour and the only one in the Southern Hemisphere. Once finished, the artefacts on display will never leave Egypt again. A literal once-in-a-lifetime exhibition in need of a striking media presence.
The brief for SomeOne was to make it so compelling that anybody with feet on the ground in Sydney HAS to see it—or to ‘make it shine’. Keen to really capture the magnificence of Ramses II’s legacy, fittingly referred to as Egypt’s ‘golden age,’ the challenge fell on balancing epic wonder with careful attention to detail for millenia-old artefacts.
“It was instrumental to centre the campaign around the objects themselves, paying them respect rather than to develop a movie-like narrative around the story of Ramses. (That’s a job for Hollywood),” said SomeOne’s creative director Tom Dabner.
“When you’re given the opportunity to showcase such precious, powerful, and historically significant artefacts, the last thing you want to do is to mess with them. They already speak volumes. We simply enabled them to shine even brighter,” said senior designer Julien Bertouille.
Inspired by sands of time, and a spiritual take on Ramses himself the campaign bursts to life in swirls of glittering ‘gold-dust’ that uncover and augment the ancient objects of his reign. Including the king’s real coffin which has never before left Egypt.
Retouching artist Dave Mercer was engaged to ‘amplify the truth’ in the photography of key objects to bring out every detail. From stress fractures and weather marks to the intricate gold-leaf texturing that covers the funerary mask of King Amenemope.
Creatively this only works when it’s made ‘for real’ — which feels refreshingly fitting against the vast backdrop of AI generated content rapidly populating the world around us. History can be learned from, it can inspire, but it can’t be recreated. By working into the real artefacts the campaign helps to preserve the culturally significant, ancient narratives that are there to be uncovered in the exhibition.
SomeOne also called on Never Sit Still to design an organic motion system for the gold-dust to further elevate the objects, in a mesmerising film sequence used to launch the exhibition to the public and a library of moving particles used across digital applications.
The success of the campaign on the exhibition continues with more than 400K visitors since opening in November, with the campaign driving awareness and recall with 83 per cent of Ramses exhibition visitors interviewed remembering seeing the outdoor creative, 74 per cent the digital campaign and 41 per cent the TVC.
