Eurovision is the world’s largest musical event, a show infused with a cultural relevance like no other. Organized annually by the European Broadcasting Union, the song contest features participants from all over the region, as well as some non-European countries like Israel and Australia. But in 2020, the show was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic—and when the time came to get back on stage in 2021, we helped it shine like never before. 

With a 200-million plus audience, Eurovision 2021 will go down in the history books as the largest in-person entertainment event in Europe since the start of the pandemic. Italy’s win was a deeply emotional one, capturing the overarching feeling of hope and celebration that a new start signifies. An Italian journalist said it best, “After all that happened with [the coronavirus], we had such a bad year in Bergamo. This is a new beginning.” On that note, the Eurovision team commented, “A few months ago we weren’t sure this was going to happen, but here we are. What a night, what a fortnight, what a YEAR.”

But before the most exciting musical event could take place, we were there to get the show on the road. Inspired by the new Eurovision logo designed by CLEVER°FRANKE, we partnered with Dutch host-broadcaster NEP to refresh its motion GFX system and build a dynamic brand that reflected the wide-ranging cultural identities the contest showcases. The goal? To create something colorful and fresh that served as a much-needed boost after a tough 2020. 

Building Brand Identity With Versatility

Each year, Eurovision attracts millions of viewers with its enthusiastic nature and extravagant production. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, each participating country submits an original song to be performed on live television, with viewers casting votes on their favorites to determine a winner. Given the broad audience and the diverse array of talent featured, an equally diverse strategy to engage viewers was needed. 

“Our challenge was to create a new, refreshed, colorful experience,” says Frank Gouwy, Lead Designer. “A design system that went beyond the logo and brought the vibrancy of the show to all platforms, tying the onscreen and digital experience all together.” In addition to the most basic deliverables any branding campaign would demand, an event like Eurovision required animated motion graphics that kept millions of viewers informed throughout the night—such as bumpers, title cards, wipes, split-screens and scoreboards.

From (D)OOH to social media and everything in between, versatility was key—and each element was equally important in translating the Eurovision feeling to something concrete. “For a project like this, you have to think beyond the usual set of touchpoints,” explains Design Director Jonny Singh, who recently sat down with Campaign to dive into the making of Eurovision 2021. “It’s important to evoke an emotional connection with each detail, from something small like an app icon to a huge billboard in Rotterdam.”

Delivering at Scale With Smart Design

As we move toward an era of hybrid events—with both remote audiences and in-person interactions—striking the balance between the tangible and intangible becomes fundamental. Although hybrid events allow for more flexibility, they also add a few extras to the normal event package. “Light, stage design, AR, pop-up graphics. Everything has to work for both the audience at home and the artists on stage,” says Gouwy.

So, how does one produce and deliver design at scale and at speed for such a vast array of formats? It’s no easy feat, but as the team explains, using smart design to keep up with today’s pace is vital. “To ensure coherence, we took the concept of ‘opening up’ and the sense of connection that Eurovision evokes—creating a seamless outward expression, which opens up to reveal content and connect information,” explains Singh. “But of course, as always, it was MediaMonks’ pace and efficiency that enabled us to produce such a long list of deliverables in no time.”

While working with multiple formats, having a fluid design system helps create cohesive experiences while increasing speed-to-market. “Smart design also allowed for the balance of personality and functionality,” added Singh. The “Eurovision track” for instance—a frenetic zigzag of color and texture—became the foundation of the brand’s language: as it presents information along its path, it captures the festivity of Eurovision while representing geography and music.

Putting Culture in the Limelight

Another priority for Eurovision’s 2021 edition was paying tribute to the country that hosted it: The Netherlands. Through some hidden easter eggs and more obvious nods to the Dutch culture, the contest’s new branding strengthened its geographic nature and ensured Holland’s style and colors were transmitted far and wide. 

“We created a set of organic and kinetic patterns that represented five different parts of the country,” explained Sophie Smolders, Animation Producer. “Some things are very abstract, but even in the smallest details you can see Holland.” For example, crosshatching evokes the lined tulip fields the region is famous for. And other countries were paid due respect, too: as singers took the stage, the Eurovision track’s palette changed to match the colors of their home country. When looking to maintain consistency across a broad range of touchpoints in a branding strategy, meticulosity is key.

But before getting that far, one has to be familiar with the brand’s identity. “This is the most research the team has ever done for a project,” said Singh. “Since redesigning was important for the brand, we watched all of Eurovision’s past editions to identify the things we could use and focus on.” On that note, Smolders explains: “The stage design was definitely a source of inspiration. We studied it and applied some elements, but went for a more simplified style, removing the unnecessary and stripping it down to the essence so that the design wouldn’t get lost as we translated it to different formats.”

Stoking Excitement Before the Big Day

Leading up to the show, our influencer experts got together with Eurovision’s Official Travel Partner, Booking.com, to stoke excitement all over social media. Through an integrated strategy covering influencer and organic content—both before and during the event—we inspired audiences to experience the music, language and cultures that Europe has to offer, right from the comfort of their own home.

Under the #FriendsAboveRivals hashtag, six famous creators like Vita Cleo Boers and Jamie Windust took their followers on a local trip around their hometowns—a one-night staycation in which they sparked curiosity around their cities. Additionally, all creators received a “party box” filled with foreign snacks and prompt cards to use in conversation with an influencer from a different country on Instagram Live. “This inspired some meaningful conversations around culture, which was a key part of the campaign,” says Renaud Berger, Influencer Project Manager. “Eurovision is such a multicultural event, and Booking.com really cares about diversity, so we made sure our team of creators reflected that.”

During Eurovision, the focus was on enticing passionate followers with exclusive behind-the-scenes content from the venue. Interviews, sneak peeks into rehearsals, wardrobe tours and more were the main ingredients of this combination of live footage and post-produced content. “The mood on set was great,” says Berger. “Everyone was so proud of being there that even though COVID-19 safety protocols made it harder to produce content, our amazing production team, together with our Fan Reporter Mandy Woelkens, were able to create amazing social content for the client, live from the Eurovision scene!” 

As brands experience a demand for more complex, hybrid experiences, smart design systems and powerful social activations can help them show up for their audience with quality and speed—answering to today’s demands for agility, boosting accessibility and improving overall performance. This, of course, is especially true for brands that seek to speak to multiple cultures and build their relevance across geographical borders, cultivating brand love everywhere.

What separates your brand from competitors? Across industries, brands are increasingly investing and allocating resources to improving the customer experience (CX). While that’s great news for customers and the audiences they serve, for brands, it means they’ll have to work much harder to stand out. With a sea of sameness looming over the horizon, brands must hone in on their key, unique qualities that differentiate them from the rest through best-in-class creative experiences. 

Creative differentiation is more than simply raising awareness or traditional notions of driving customer loyalty. In his Forrester report “The Cost of Losing Creativity,” Jay Pattisall writes that “every brand offers the same digital experience because they all address the same customer needs.” Rather than fulfill the same KPIs as their competition, organizations must seek out opportunities that fulfill a unique brand promise and offer memorable creative experiences.

MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar notes that what separates average or even good creative from truly exceptional work is impact. “It’s not just about big ideas. If you have the right idea, you have to go really big on the idea itself,” he says. “The scale of those ideas–the way you commit to them to have real impact–defines the pinnacle of creative work.”

One way brands can begin thinking about this is through purpose. Look at it this way: while you might know your brand’s purpose, what really matters is whether consumers do. 76% of brands may think their organizations have a defined purpose, but only one in ten have actually defined a purpose statement that they’ve put into action, according to the ANA. 

When faced with competition from digitally-native brands that have integrated purpose well within their platforms (like making it easier to get a ride in a couple of taps at a guaranteed rate), brands must likewise ensure their promise is fulfilled through the creative user experience. It’s through these experiences, if done right, that brands can strike an emotional connection and build brand love in the mind of consumers.

Creativity as a Key Factor

The challenge of creative differentiation is felt across all industries these days, though it’s especially relevant to industries that push traditional strategies around growing loyalty–retailers, travel brands, and fintech are just some of the industries that could benefit most by embracing creative differentiation. As part of a digital transformation process, MediaMonks worked with leading Mexican airline brand Aeroméxico to revamp their app, turning the typical ticket-booking experience into a space for wanderlust and travel inspiration.

“What differentiates one brand from another nowadays?” asks Carlos Rivera, Consulting and Platforms Lead at MediaMonks Mexico. “Loyalty is not easily achieved unless through experiences that result in habits or small moments that inject emotion to the customer journey.”

Craft alone doesn’t solve the challenge. Brands must leverage consumer insights and data to address and solve the primary needs of customers, aligning the essence of their brand with a strategy that reacts to those needs. This makes all the difference between novelty and designing truly differentiated experiences that cultivate lasting emotional and business impact. “Differentiated creative combines an understanding of culture with real, heavy-lifting business impact that drives real bottom line value,” says ter Haar.

The process must begin with placing the human at the center of your creative focus. Working with Aeroméxico, MediaMonks put this idea into practice, helping the brand creatively differentiate by striving to truly transform the full scope of the customer experience. 

“Often it’s not about the place you’re going; it’s about the person you’re visiting,” says ter Haar. “This insight bubbled up, can we build people into the app as a destination? That’s a really nice message and normally if you look at the siloed nature of our industry, that’d be it–with some shiny creative around it. Instead, we’re filling the gaps. Yes, there’s creative and an app, but what’s happening in between?”

This question sparked the development of “People are the Places” for Aeroméxico, a state-of-the-art platform that enables the brand to build meaningful relationships by letting travelers experience places like never before: linking them to the people actually living there. This experience was recognized with the Gold Cannes Lion 2019 in Brand Experience & Activation.

What separates the best from the rest?

The challenge in embedding such emotive experiences in a platform lies in “trying to communicate different experiences to different audiences,” says Aeroméxico’s Angélica Romero, UX and Web Optimization Lead. Brands must design strategies to create personalized experiences that impact users directly and make those experiences memorable. For example, once a user fills in their profile in the Aeromexico app, their name appears throughout the reservation flow, along with geolocalization and recent searches, which anticipate their needs and require fewer taps for them to take.

Redesigning the Customer Experience

Nowadays, many brands are redesigning their corporate image, but these tweaks are often a matter of brand identity. True transformation requires balancing commercial goals with experiences that resonate with consumers. The challenge with the Aeroméxico app was clear from the start: establish a strategy to increase ticket sales by improving the experience of buying a ticket in mobile format. This prompted the team to study the booking process, looking for opportunities to redesign the process as a whole, from discovering flights to inspiring users to act on a destination–a strategy that we’ve taken with subsequent campaigns for the brand, too.

The focus was put not only on helping the user find flights, but also on inspiring them to travel. “And so we launched the complete redesign of the reservations section with a user-thought experience process,” says Carlos Rivera. “We carried out prototypes, interviews and even testing sessions to ensure that every button made sense and to determine what information to show at what time during the reservation flow.” From color choice to animations, each element in the process serves a specific purpose to impact the user experience. Through ongoing analysis, MediaMonks and the Aeroméxico team can tweak and adjust the app to enhance the CX even further and continuously iterate.

González notes that the centerpiece of the design is how visual elements change and conform as the user follows the flow. From the background image that changes when you select the destination, to the copy and image that indicate the step in which you are in the header of each screen, the design builds a sense of excitement and anticipation before culminating in an animated message that lets you know that “Your trip is ready!”

“We know that buying a plane ticket is a rational decision,” says González. “But that carries a very important emotional load because, in the end, it materializes in your next trip: It’s happening!” 

Creating user-centered experiences goes a long way to help brands make their purpose clear and to establish the differentiator that will make them stand out from the crowd. Addressing customer’s needs is something any brand can do, but doing it in a relevant and unique way is something only brands with defined purposes can aspire to achieve.

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