Campaign Spotlight: New Ads for Warhol Museum Offer Different Look at Summer

New Ads for Warhol Museum Offer Different Look at Summer

Mention the name Andy Warhol, and it is safe to say most people would not immediately think of summer or summertime imagery. Warhol would, in the mind’s eye, most likely be ensconced indoors on beach or pool days, taking Polaroids or painting.

An ad from the campaign for the Andy Warhol Museum.

The incongruity of Warhol in a summer setting is the basis for a new campaign that promotes the summer exhibitions at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The ads, which began appearing last month, give seasonal mainstays a wild, Warholian perspective.

The campaign, by the Marc USA agency in Pittsburgh, carries the theme “Summer’s different here.” The print, outdoor and digital ads bring that promise to life in surprising â€" even startling and perhaps shocking â€" ways.

Each ad is styled to look like a nostalgic postcard, with the words “Must be summer at the Warhol” displayed above a photograph that delivers a skewed view of a summertime staple. For instance, in one ad, a woman has in her mouth a ball gag that is decorated like a beach ball.

Here are what the rest of the ads depict:

■ A bare-chested man standing next to a barbecue grill holds a shish kebab on a skewer that is piercing his left nipple.

■ A hot dog roll, in close-up, is filled with worms that are topped by mustard.

■ A man is wearing a skimpy swimsuit woven out of firecrackers.

■ A pair of flip-flops or sandals has barbed wire in lieu of rubber or leather straps.

■ A woman in a bikini reclines on a chaise lounge that includes a bed of nails.

The campaign, with a budget estimated at $200,000, is promoting exhibitions at the museum by Nick Bubash, a sculptor and tattoo artist; Caldwell Linker, a photographer; and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, an avant-garde musician and visual artist.

“Summer’s different here,” the text reads on some ads. “Enjoy three provocative exhibitions under one roof.”

The ads are another example of an increasingly popular trend in marketing: ads that seek to stand out by featuring images that were once deemed unacceptable to appear or be used in public. The trend even has a name, shock-vertising, that speaks to its roots in provocation.

Shock-vertising was once mostly confined to small, upstart advertisers that sought to gain attention in categories dominated by bigger, more conventional competitors with far larger marketing budgets. It was commonplace for jeans brands like Calvin Klein and No Excuses.

Of late, however, some mainstream brands have been dipping their toes into the water, usually taking a humorous tack that is meant to deflect criticism. So, too, are organizations like charities and museums that were once perceived as too strait-laced or upright to try shock tactics.

When the Warhol Museum began working with Marc USA last year, says Eric Shiner, director of the museum, there were conversations initially about ads that would “go in a really different direction” to be memorable.

“We definitely wanted this ad campaign to say: ‘We’re going to challenge you. We’re going to provoke you,'” he adds. “We absolutely intend people to look at it and say, ‘What on earth are they doing at the Warhol now?' ”

The museum may have more license or permission “to take people out of their comfort zones” than other cultural institutions, Mr. Shiner says, because “we have a reputation for doing exhibits other museums would not touch with a 10-foot pole.”

In fact, if the ads had showed actual images from the exhibits at the Warhol, “maybe our average audience person would say, ‘There’s no way I’m going to see that,' ” he adds.

The campaign is not meant to administer a “shock treatment” per se, Mr. Shiner says, because “I don’t think that ever works.”

But he acknowledges that the ads are “definitely more provocative than we normally do,” partly to let museum visitors know they “are going to see something that will shock them, so we might as well get that out of the way.”

The campaign displays a “sense of dark humor,” Mr. Shiner says, that “will play well to the Pittsburgh audience.”

Since the ads began running, “we’ve been getting positive feedback,” he adds, with “only one phone call along the lines of ‘How on earth could you do something like this?' ”

“But we get that all the time anyway,” Mr. Shiner says.

Marc USA’s working for the museum coincided with the appointment of Michele Fabrizi, president and chief executive of the agency, as the chairwoman of the museum’s board.

“We get a lot of the services pro bono” from the agency, Mr. Shiner says, “which is critical when you’re trying to raise money for a nonprofit.”

Josh Blasingame, creative director at Marc USA, says that he and his colleagues at the agency “took this idea of doing something different for the museum in the summer and ran with it.”

“It was a really fun project,” he adds. “They let us cut loose.”

That was not unexpected because “the Warhol is about changing convention, looking at the world through a different lens, turning things on their head,” Mr. Blasingame says.

The theme of “Summer’s different here” is also “about challenging yourself,” he adds, and signals to visitors that “however you do that, this museum will help you.”

At the same time, “there’s a tightrope, a fine line, we’re walking to not be repulsive,” Mr. Blasingame says, because “we still have a responsibility to get people into the museum.”

“People will be less uncomfortable with some” ads and “more uncomfortable with others,” he adds.

That was demonstrated by the negotiations with some publications about accepting the campaign. If one ad was met with a rejection, Mr. Blasingame says, “we’d say: ‘How about worms and hot dogs? O.K.?' ”

The creative team at Marc USA, he added, is considering “some real-life tactics” to give the campaign tangible form in public spaces.

In addition to Mr. Blasingame, who is also an art director, the team is composed of Bryan Hadlock, chief creative officer; Greg Edwards, associate creative director and copywriter; Craig Ferrence, associate creative director and art director; Alyssa Davis, copywriter; Tyler Bergholz, art director; and Dave Slinchak, art director.

The campaign began running on June 14 and is to continue through September. There are print and online ads, outdoor installations at events like PrideFest and the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, posters on bus shelters and at the Pittsburgh International Airport, and ads on actual postcards.

The agency and the museum are already considering their next campaign, Mr. Shiner says, to promote an exhibition that will offer a retrospective of the work of Yasumasa Morimura. He is known for appropriating images from artists and photographers like Warhol, Rembrandt and Cindy Sherman and inserting himself into them.

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