Lights On România
In 2023, Timișoara discovered Lights On
Friends before business—that’s how our team and Andi Daiszler, the founder of the Lights On project, started bonding 8 years ago. After several get-togethers and the creation of the Daisler Association, we started working on their first projects, beginning with the first Lights On event in Cluj-Napoca. Since then, we’ve traveled around Romania, including Timișoara, to capture the light.
In Timișoara, culture does not sleep.
Last year, the city became a nocturnal artistic laboratory that was both our home and office. This project was a challenge for us because it meant not only capturing the installations on the lens but also connecting them with a new kind of public.
Light installations are visual metaphors
Light installations are visual metaphors — art pieces that connect us to ourselves and the world. They generate introspection, conversations, and moods. They are always something else, something defined by the viewer. And it's been eight years since we took the pulse and relayed their story—eight years of capturing the light for Lights On Romania.
The light stayed the same, but its form and artistic message changed. But 2023 felt different for us. We added another layer—more responsibilities and satisfaction.
This time, we were responsible for developing and implementing a part of the communication strategy, designing some of the festival's offline and online materials, and handling the overall photography and image aspect of the Timisoara festival, part of Timișoara 2023.
10 days festival
Although the festival lasted only 10 days, we spent 4 full-time months preparing for it, being creative in Excel and trying to prepare the city for the first interaction with Lights On. We considered all the aspects, emergencies, and teams - more than 60 people - that had to be coordinated.
În Timișoara, the public was not exposed to a Lights On festival and its feelings. Seeing light in so many ways and spaces was something we wanted to share with others. Light not only shows the way, but it also connects people and tells hidden stories.
This time, we’ve sketched a bunch of ideas to build the festival’s image and gain brand awareness through various strategic, intentional, and creative actions.
A lot to learn from ...
During the festival, we were exposed to a few unfortunate organizational events that had to be resolved through online communication. An unannounced rain, a flight delay, and some technical issues arose, so we had to be creative. From coordinating ad-hoc Social Media posts, updating the festival’s website and communication plan in real-time, and sending DMs to our community. Unlike a usual brand, we were there, ready to talk and act like real humans.
As attention spans are constantly decreasing, we started to prepare for this. Even though most of our effort was put into the website and its articles, we wanted to create micro-content and photograph the installations. We coordinated all of Lights On's social media posts and maintained our relationship with the press. This was our biggest communication project so far, and we had a lot to learn from this experience.
Results
More than 120.000 people interacted with the event.
The online presence grew from 500 to 1,4K users (Facebook) and from 100 to 767 users (Instagram), all new followers living in Timișoara. Currently, the city is one of the top three as an audience.
Overall reach before (Jul-Oct) & during the festival Facebook - ~600k; instagram - ~220k.
767 K users reached through Social Media posts during 3 and half months.
More than 60 de billboards were installed all over Romania.
The challenge arose when I photographed the same installation in a different context and environment, altering the story conveyed through the visuals.
These photographs have gone viral on the internet, gaining hundreds of thousands of views on social media, and have been featured extensively on local and national media outlets, including television. They have also been able to attract a large number of participants in each festival edition. Despite the winter weather in many editions of the Lights On festival, people have been motivated to leave their homes and explore each light installation individually. The festival has gained momentum and captured people's attention and curiosity like a tiny snowball that kept rolling.
We've been friends since way before Lights On and Komiti and that has always played a very important role. And hopefully the friendship will outlast any other projects. This mindset has helped us navigate the professional relationship as well, since the number of projects that we do together grew in the years that came.
We've always had just one stop, when it came to the way our projects look. It has always been Komiti and Gabriel Aldea-Turcu. Their way of seeing the creative world has always been similar to ours, using culture and creativity to solve day to day processes in a very unique way.
So, thank you.
- Gabriel Aldea-Turcu, Communications Manager, Photographer
- Isabella Kajcsa, designer
- Rareș Mihai Rus, designer
- Andrei Bradu, designer
- Daisler Print House Design Team
- Petru Cojocaru, Photographer
- Daniel Opris, Photographer
- Vlad Jelmarean, Photographer
- Daisler Association
- Andi Daiszler, founder