"I've witnessed the impact, influence, and value you've brought to CIRCA across our major artist rollouts."
Overview
In 2024, Ai Weiwei launched Ai vs AI: 81 Questions on the global CIRCA platform — an 81-day public intervention asking philosophical, political, and cultural questions across giant digital screens in Piccadilly Circus (London), Times Square (New York), Milan, and Seoul.
As CIRCA’s embedded digital marketing and media lead, Tell Your Friends orchestrated the global media strategy, high-intent collector acquisition, and digital campaign architecture supporting both public engagement and the artist’s limited-edition print release.
The Challenge
Engaging the public with profound inquiries on artificial intelligence, state power, and human consciousness while driving high-value contemporary art print acquisitions requires distinct positioning.
The campaign needed to resonate with corporate technology leaders, museum curators, and contemporary art collectors across Europe, North America, and Asia without reducing Ai Weiwei’s critique into conventional retail marketing.
Strategy & Media Architecture
1. Multi-Territory Funnel Alignment
We engineered a multi-tiered acquisition model running across Meta, Google Search, and LinkedIn:
- Discourse & Awareness Layer: Targeted business and cultural leadership segments with thought-leadership framing around the philosophical implications of AI and censorship.
- Collector Conversion Layer: Retargeted engaged visitors with museum-grade product storytelling, emphasising paper stock provenance, hand-numbering, and provenance certificates.
The campaign system:
- Global public broadcast (Piccadilly Circus and Times Square)
- Targeted search and social
- Custom landing page
- Collector conversion
2. High-Intent Art World Segmentation
Leveraged custom audience cohorts built over three years at CIRCA, cross-referencing interest in major international institutions (Tate Modern, MoMA, Centre Pompidou) and contemporary art journals (Artforum, Frieze, The Art Newspaper).
The Outcome & Impact
- Global Cultural Footprint: Synchronised international paid media with physical screen broadcasts in four global capitals.
- High-Value Collector Acquisition: 683 purchases at £500+VAT from contemporary art collectors across international markets.
- Prestige Retention: Maintained absolute institutional credibility for one of the world’s most scrutinised living artists.
