The City of Chicago wanted to advertise its new master brand platform ‘Chicago. City of Stories”. However, instead of telling Chicago stories in Chicago, we’ve decided to show that our stories go way beyond our borders. Why? Because Chicago has influenced most of the major cities across the Globe and only a few people know about it. That’s true, Chicago is truly a trailblazing city of firsts. We were the first city to ever have a skyscraper, we're home to house and electric blues music, we invented the first Ferris Wheel, American Cinema Industry, and even the first cellphone was created here, besides many other inventions. Along with the Bus Tour in NYC, posters, films, and social content depicted how Chicago has influenced capitals worldwide. Our goal was to change people’s perception about Chicago and show how our city is a world-class city.

We’ve created a Chicago Tour in NYC. The idea was to show that many things that people know and love in New York only exist because of Chicago. A Chicagoan comedian guided the tour through sixteen landmarks and explained to tourists and New Yorkers how many things surrounding them originated in the windy city, like the Flat Iron Building, the World Trade Center, the Coffee Maker, the Street Art, and much more. But NYC wasn't the only target. The campaign with posters, films, and social content depicted how Chicago has influenced capitals worldwide.

The Chicago flag is beautiful, it’s a design piece per se. As a plus, Chicagoans are very proud of this symbol. So, we’ve decided to use that symbol as a starting point to design our posters. Firstly, we used only the official colors of the flag – blue, red, white, and black. And as the stars symbolizes important events of Chicago’s history, we gave to them a special recognition in each poster: we broadened its meaning by using geometric forms to model posters depicting Chicago inventions. Or, in other words, every piece got a part of the star tip on it. Also, the types are not just types. They are part of the artwork and embrace each one of the inventions, helping to tell better the story, and making the posters very pleasing to anyone’s eyes.

So far, the results have been amazing. The campaign has received:

*over 200mm views

*over U$ 7mm in earned media

*75% positive sentiment.

Many people have been asking for a tour in another city, and that’s why the next chapter of the campaign is going to take place in London in the summer.