Melbourne-based Love + Money creates branding for Sydney Opera House’s new festival BingeFest
The Sydney Opera House has launched its first new festival in five years, BingeFest: a 24-hour celebration of addictive storytelling, performance art, journalism, video games, pop culture icons, podcast trailblazers – and cats.
The Sydney Opera House brought in Melbourne-based agency Love + Money to create the artwork and look and feel of the new festival brand.
Says Christina Erskine, head of marketing, Sydney Opera House: “Our curator Danielle Harvey has created a live experience that is as binge-worthy as our audience’s online and screen addictions. Our target market don’t just watch content, they immerse themselves in it. Knowing this, our team created a campaign underpinned by two principles: be true to our audience, and be adventurous with the Sydney Opera House brand.
“Our year-round brand promise is to ‘shift perspectives,’ and this sort of product is wonderfully placed to do this for our audience. We knew that Love + Money were the right fit from the instant we connected with them – they’re young, bold, digital first and content 
led – they magnify the culture BingeFest celebrates.
Says Charl Laubscher, director and creative, Love + Money: “With a clear mandate from the Opera House, we aimed for a BingeFest identity that allows pictures, words, podcasts, movies, TV shows from the 90s, youtube videos, GIFs of cats, and whatever it is that Shia LaBeouf is doing, to all live together in some semblance of equilibrium. We felt we needed to show, not tell.
“The idea of the brand wasn’t to try and explain how great the festival was going to be. Rather, it was about getting out of the way to let the content speak for itself. So it sort of made sense that our identity be derived from the UX of the microsite, which is modelled on the environment the modern content consumer is most at home in: their desktop. We kept everything pretty reductive and responsive, to allow the content to be as crazy as it wanted to be. Or, as some .jpg somewhere on the internet says: all these open windows, no fresh air. Throw in a little techno-nostalgia, a touch of ironic RGB norm-core, a couple of postcards of the Sydney Opera House and you’ve got yourself a brand identity. Sort of.
Says Danielle Harvey, founder and curator, BingeFest: “The Opera House is about exploring and reflecting the culture around us as its morphs and evolves. Television, podcasts, gaming and the internet at large create an artistic frame through which we view the world.
“Over the last few years, we have tried to push the boundaries of what audiences can expect to see at the Opera House – from Michael Cera to Ira Glass, Alan Ball, RJ Mitte, R.R Martin, Tavi Gevinson, Piper Kerman, Mallory Ortberg, Joss Whedon,and Gideon Raff. Bingefest is the culmination of all of these wonderful moments; we cannot wait to explore binge culture at the Sydney Opera House in the all-encompassing, immersive environment that only a festival can create.”
The inaugural Bingefest 2016 will take place over two action-packed days and across the Opera House – from the sprawling forecourt to the Joan Sutherland Theatre, traditional home of ballerinas and opera singers.
Highlights include artists Shia LaBeouf, Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner in a new participatory performance artwork, which will take place over two successive nights, from midnight until 6am, and 10pm until 6am.
In February 2014, Shia LaBeouf appeared on the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival wearing a paper bag over his head emblazoned with the words “I Am Not Famous Anymore.” This performative gesture signalled the beginning of an enduring collaboration with UK artist and author of The Metamodernist Manifesto, Luke Turner, and Finnish artist, Nastja Säde Rönkkö.
Since then, the trio have launched more than a dozen projects, using empathy, emotion and social interaction to foster new forms of communality across digital and physical networks.