The German Foundation for Monument Protection
Digital Day of Open Monuments 2020
- # Digitale Transformation Beratung
- # Webdesign Agentur
- # Videoproduktion
- # Content Marketing
- # Social Media Marketing
- # Symfony Programmierung
The VUCX team implemented the culturally themed action day, which took place digitally for the first time, in an interdisciplinary manner. We supervised the programming of the website, the production of the video contributions, as well as social media.
What specific challenges needed to be overcome?
When the decision was made shortly after the initial COVID-19 lockdown that the Open Monument Day 2020 should go digital, there were only a few months available for detailed planning, development, and production. Additionally, achieving the desired impact and success could only be guaranteed through a thorough digital transformation. This situation demanded a high degree of creativity, organizational skills, and perseverance from all parties involved.
The Approach and the Outcome
Digitalization requires analytical and methodical approaches, especially in a time-critical situation. In the case of digitizing the Open Monument Day, the analysis of the existing infrastructure, previous workflows, and competitive environment took precedence. After this phase, many processes were initiated simultaneously, such as conceptualization, media production, and the establishment of the technological foundation. Through prototyping, tightly coordinated approval cycles, and effective interdisciplinary collaboration among all disciplines and with the client, not only was the lack of experience with digital events compensated for, but also a creative melting pot emerged, unlocking numerous innovative forms of media presentation for the format. The resulting content was offered and made accessible through a user-friendly and content-coordinated online platform.
The outcome: a digital Open Monument Day that was more diverse and exciting than a purely in-person event could have been. We are certainly looking forward to the next one and are excited to hopefully experience a fusion of both worlds in 2021.
The Technology
For this project, we built on the Symfony framework, implementing a flexible headless CMS that can be expanded for future possibilities and requirements.
Due to the expectation of a high number of visitors, a distributed server architecture with load balancers was set up, which could be expanded within minutes as needed.
The data structure was designed to quickly and easily integrate with applications already used by the client.
Social Media
Management
Based on the corporate design of the Day of Open Monuments, the VUCX design team developed a social media concept in the form of a style guide for image editing, posts, and stories.
The content team was responsible for topic research, editing, content creation, and community building.
The "Day of Open Monuments," during which thousands of historical sites open their doors to visitors for free every year, went digital for the first time in 2020. To reach new audiences, the diversity of the German monument landscape was visually and contextually portrayed in an appealing manner through social media.
In line with the existing corporate design, VUCX initially developed a social media style guide that catered to the demands of various target groups. In parallel, the editorial team researched topics and built an editorial calendar based on the client's specifications.
Through precise targeting via Facebook Ads and high community engagement, an Instagram community of over 1,000 followers was established within a short period of time. Additionally, more than 1,200 posts about the Open Monument Day were shared by other accounts.
About the Client: The German Foundation for Monument Protection (Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz) is the largest private initiative for monument preservation in Germany. Since 1985, it has been creatively, professionally, and independently dedicated to conserving endangered architectural heritage. Thanks to the active participation and donations from over 200,000 supporters, the foundation annually supports approximately 500 projects.
