"Tell Your Friends understands both the cultural sensitivity of artist activism and the commercial mechanics of limited-edition art sales."
Overview
In 2023, Russian feminist protest art collective Pussy Riot (founded by Nadya Tolokonnikova) partnered with CIRCA to broadcast anti-war and anti-authoritarian interventions across global digital screens, accompanied by a time-limited benefit fine-art print release (Putin’s Ashes).
Tell Your Friends led performance marketing and media buying across Meta and Google, capturing global cultural attention and converting viral activist solidarity into substantial charitable and platform revenue.
The Challenge
Activist art releases possess extreme, condensed momentum. The campaign had a narrow two-week sales window and required rapid budget scaling while navigating strict social media advertising policies regarding political and anti-authoritarian speech.
Strategy & Media Architecture
1. Rapid Scaling & Algorithmic Policy Navigation
We designed creative framing that highlighted artistic provenance, collector exclusivity, and museum exhibition history (including the Icelandic National Gallery), ensuring ads remained compliant with Meta’s commercial guidelines while preserving the raw activist power of the work.
2. Live Dynamic Retargeting
With traffic surging from international news coverage (The Guardian, Dazed, BBC), we implemented real-time retargeting funnels that dynamically captured interested visitors and guided them to the Shopify storefront before the edition window closed.
Funnel Topology:
[ International News & Public Screens ] ──> [ Targeted Meta & Search Retargeting ] ──> [ Time-Limited Benefit Store ] ──> [ £220k+ Direct Sales ]
The Outcome & Impact
- 20x–29.5x ROAS: Delivered unprecedented commercial efficiency across four consecutive campaign weeks (reaching 29.58x ROAS during peak week).
- £220k+ Attributed Revenue: Generated over £220,000 in print sales from an initial media spend of just £11,000.
- Global Supporter Base: Expanded CIRCA’s high-intent collector CRM with thousands of new verified international patrons.
