In this article, I will share with you my group’s and my experience in this semester’s class “AD Discovery and Creativity Virtual Digital Agencies”. Our agency focuses on advertising and it’s called “ATHENUE”. The students who participated in this project are (in alphabetical order): Anagnostou Argyris, Antoniou Maria-Eleni, Gherasim Ntiana-Eleni, Lakioti Lais-Eirini, Nikdima Mihalis, Petridou Eirini-Amygdalia. The coordinator of this group is me, Eirini-Amygdalia, and further on I will inform you about our work, our agency, and its values and mission as well as any type of assignment, like our website, our creative brief, our podcast, etc.
To start off, our start-up agency “ATHENUE” is an advertising agency for educational or entertainment events that are happening inside the capital city of Greece, Athens. We came up with the name whilst playing with the 2 words in our minds (Athens + Venue), also its design is very intentional. We used a calm color for our background while ATHENUE is colored with a bright orange to attract attention and we decided to write it with bubble letters since it reminded us of the graffiti that has become a brand for our city (picture 1). Athenue’s vision is to bring people together through education and entertainment and its mission to inform as many people as possible about social events happening in Athens and attract citizens and also visitors from abroad. Our values as Athenue but as a group as well are education, creativity, teamwork, self-improvement, and communication.
Our Cannes Lions Award client for their next campaign was the International Paralympic Committee for the Paralympic Games of 2024. Our goals were social inclusion, equality, inspiration, and sensitizing the audience through the athletes’ passion. Our main competitors for this campaign were other athletic events that support and include disabled athletes, such as the Deaflympics, Défi sportif, or Invictus Games, but it’s only a friendly competition for the athletes. The promise we wanted to advertise about this campaign is that the Games promise inclusiveness from all around the world and they hope to represent social minorities. They also wish to create a friendlier environment for disabled people and athletes by funding public services (ex. social transport), and the educational system to support any disability and not exclude them. The tagline we have used for the poster is “The Paralympic Games: an inclusive and worldwide event that supports and inspires all disabled athletes” (pic. 2) and the motto is “WE MOVE TOGETHER”.
Furthermore, for our creative brief and ideal customer, we have chosen as our client “City of Athens” and our project is called “Omonoia Lovers Project”. It is an event hosted by City of Athens’ “Athens City Festival”. The event is called “Omonoia Lovers: a photographic exhibition” and we have been included in the promoting team for it. Right below this passage, I have included the advertising creative brief template, and at the end of the article you will find the promotional video we have created (video 1).
On another project, we were given the choice to create a newsletter, a podcast, or videos for our Tik Tok account. My group and I decided that a podcast would be wildly interesting. So, we created our podcast called “Athenue” on Spotify and the concept is that every Sunday some people from our group will join the coordinator and discuss events that are happening in the near future. In our first episode, we discuss the Pride Festival, Narratologies, Athens Release Festival, and Roll in Athens.
For our final presentation, we decided to continue our collaboration with City of Athens and create a new event that will be hosted by Athens City Festival. When we presented this project we were speaking very generally about the concept, since as the coordinator I wasn’t sure if it was okay to use the “Omonoia Lovers” creators’ names about a new project without communicating with them first (we weren’t able to reach out to them prior to this). But our professor advised us that it would be better to have a complete picture of the event. So, Athenue will be organizing the promotion for this event as their main advertising team. Athens City Festival will happen once again in May of 2024 so our promotional videos and pictures will begin appearing on our social media around 2 months before the event. The videos will be similar to the video we had for the previous event. One thing that will be different is that we will provide the opportunity to anyone interested in photography to speak to the creators during the event. We believe that, unfortunately, photography can be underappreciated amongst the other arts, but we want to change that by providing advice and insightful words to any inspiring artists out there.
The concept of the photographic exhibition is quite similar to the vibe from the previous one. We wanted to keep the “lover” theme and continue the previous exhibition but on a much larger scale. “Omonoia Lovers” was an event that focused on how people with their unique characteristics made Omonoia. Now we want to show how uniqueness is hidden everywhere around us and it is what makes so many people fall in love with our city. “Love is hidden everywhere. It’s hidden in people’s faces, in their smiles and their eyes. It’s hidden in a hug, a shake of the hands, or a glance. It can be in a person, in an animal, or in a view. It can be everywhere you are looking and everywhere you are not. But if you do find it, make sure you keep it”. This will be the main description of our event with the hashtag #hidden_love. In the end, I will provide some photographic examples to get a glimpse at how the exhibition will look (please remember that the photos aren’t professional).
To sum up, our experience in this class was wildly interesting. It was very nice to get a taste of how an agency works together and with other businesses. We learned a lot about coordination, scheduling, and creating something out of nothing, but mostly we learned a lot about ourselves. Thank you for giving us this opportunity and we hope you enjoy our project.
Athenue welcomes you to Athens.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuMd3qtIbHL/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== (it doesn’t let me add the direct video so please click the link to see the promo video for “Omonoia Lovers: a Photographic Exhibition”)
These photos describe the concept “Hidden Love” will have later on. Also at our presentation, you told us that we can communicate with “City of Athens” for this exhibition if I understood correctly. Please, if you believe that the concept is appealing and interesting, I would love to talk to you more about this. Thank you.
Here are our social media accounts as well as our website and podcast.
Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, ATHENUE Website, ATHENUE Podcast .
And, finally, these are all the members: Argy Anagnostou (Αργύρης Αναγνώστου), Marilena Antoniouu (Μαριλένα Αντωνίου), Ntiana (Ντιάνα-Ελένη Γκερασίμ), Larena Lakioti (Λαΐς-Ειρήνη Λακιώτη), Nathena (Μιχάλης Νικδήμα), Petridi Eir (Ειρήνη-Αμυγδαλιά Πετρίδου).
