Opera is not only a declining art form, but also a more or less non-existing choice for a younger generation. Therefore, Folkoperan, an opera house in Stockholm, faced a rather big challenge when setting up Neil Gaiman’s Coraline as a family opera.

The objective was simple, get kids to visit the opera.

The brief was also simple – more or less no budget, but "do whatever it takes".

In order to make opera less uninteresting, we turned to the one thing kids dislike even more, and gave them a choice – broccoli or opera.

Kids are not stupid. Giving out candy or making funny commercials wouldn’t get us anywhere. So instead we gave them an offer they surely would refuse.

How? By targeting parents in Stockholm and providing them with a cunning tool in order to get their kids to "self-willingly" choose a night at the opera.

In the end, it was up to the kids to decide – broccoli for dinner or a visit at the opera.

To start with the campaign was limited to Stockholm, during the three weeks that the venue played the opera. That meant that we were on the streets of Stockholm and in grocery stores. In addition, we also documented an experiment with over 30 participating kids. The experiment was later spread on social media in order to inspire and instruct parents on how to use our broccoli method.

Then, all of a sudden, our campaign had reached new territories through social media. A multitude of other opera houses around the globe recognized the campaign, and in fact our little stem of broccoli traveled all the way down under to the opera capital of the world, Sydney.

Record sales for a family opera at Folkoperan (96% tickets sold out).

51 million media impressions. Coverage in some of the biggest national media outlets, as well as international impact, for example in Australia's biggest morning show, Masters of Spinn.

Most importantly the stunt showed over 4000 children that a visit at the opera isn’t so bad after all.