melbourne food & wine festival
Take your taste buds on a journey
Despite having a world - class culinary culture, after 22years, Melbourne’s Food & Wine Festival was feeling stale. We were asked to create a campaign to inspire the fussiest food critics to see the Festival with fresh eyes. To express our new platform ‘Discover Something New’, we created a series of posters crafted by hand, just like the dishes in top Melbourne restaurants. Inspired by classic food and beverage posters, we blend traditional screen- printing with a modern style to give this genre a fresh twist. Each abstract visual is designed to take the viewer on a sensory journey as they discover new elements with each glance. These limited edition A1 posters were hand -numbered, embossed and hand-delivered to Melbourne’s best restaurants. With an overwhelming amount displaying the posters, they served as a major talking point in the food community - igniting renewed interest from the press and receiving generous coverage on food, culture, and even design blogs.
D&AD Wooden Pencil / Melbourne Food & Wine Festival Discover Something New Tongue Art Direction D&AD Wooden Pencil / Melbourne Food & Wine Festival Discover Something New Poster Series Illustration in Design Ogilvy Melbourne's first ever D&AD pencil win for Melbourne Food & Wine Festival
Film
LAUNCHING A DESTINATION
To launch the Festival’s positioning as a destination to ‘Discover Something New’, we created a series of communications as handcrafted as the dishes themselves. Taking visual inspiration from the classic food and beverage artwork of the past. Each touchpoint challenged the viewer to discover new meaning with every glance.
GETTING RESTAURANTS ON BOARD
With a limited advertising budget, the festival relies on restaurants to help sell tickets. Trouble was, none of Melbourne’s top restauranteurs were willing to display traditional advertising material. Taking inspiration from the classic food and beverage posters that are now considered collectible art, we created 150 limited-edition framed art posters and hand-delivered them to the city’s best restaurants - accompanied by a personal invitation from the Festival Director to hang them on their walls as a targeted reminder to foodies while they dined.
Helping people explore deeper
A big part of bringing the Festival to life was an app that used Bluetooth smart beacon technology to send personalised micro-location-based notifications to people as they wandered Melbourne in search of new culinary adventures. Very handy in a city that prides itself on keeping its treasures well hidden.
