How do you make a new cultural website attractive for cultural
die hards and cultural lights?

cobra.be

And when Panamarenko does something interesting, you can experience it on cobra.be

1. The Challenge

On January 29, the website klara.be was re-baptized cobra.be.
From that moment on, klara.be only offered information about programmes on the Klara radio channel, whereas cobra.be offered a very wide selection of the VRT's cultural news, enriched with exclusive documentaries, a cultural agenda and small gems from the VRT archive.
The challenge we were offered: how to launch the new cultural website cobra.be?

2. The Solution

We did not try to depict the wide target group of cobra.be. Nor did we try to illustrate its wide content offer. Both approaches would have defined cobra.be much too narrowly. Instead we showed what you would not be able to find on cobra.be by having very interesting artists doing very uninteresting things.

So we see Panamarenko baking a steak in a TV commercial. He stands in front of the fireplace, moves a plate, looks around and waits for the meat to be properly cooked. The message is: “And when Panamarenko does something interesting, you can experience it on cobra.be.” In the same way, we see in the other TV commercials artists doing very uninteresting things: Marie Vinck is watering the flowers, Dimitri Verhulst is getting fuel and Jan Decock is blowing away the leaves in his garden. The digital part of the campaign is as remarkable as the TV campaign. Tom Lanoye, Annelies Verbeke, Gilda De Bal and Vic De Wachter are twittering about totally uninteresting activities. And when they do something interesting, you can experience it on cobra.be.

On top of that, we put a viral on YouTube with the title ‘Panamarenko bakes a steak’. The movie lasts for almost 7 minutes and is, throughout, totally uninteresting.

3. The Results

cobra.be was launched on January 29. On the first day, the website already counted 20,000 unique visitors.

By now, the joint reach of cobra.be and klara.be is already 50% higher than the reach of klara.be before the cobra.be launch.