The artwork was the proof.
AT&T had spent years building a relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. By 2023, the audience already knew what we stood for. We could move into a new stage of the work where the relationship with the community was felt rather than explained, and our communications could invite people to go deeper into the culture with us.
Turn Up the Love was already in culture.
By 2023, Turn Up the Love had already entered the cultural spaces of music, political and social advocacy, creators, and the actual spaces of Pride events.
We saw an opportunity to enter another space:
ART.
How do you make the relationship felt?
We wanted the work to put three things in the same frame:
AT&T.
Turn Up the Love.
The LGBTQ+ community.
We didn’t want to simply place the campaign into an art context. We wanted the visual expression itself to feel at home in the culture.
Why Zipeng?
We wanted someone who could make Pride feel like Pride.
Zipeng had the combination we were looking for.
He is part of the LGBTQ+ community and understood the culture from the inside.
His work extends beyond aesthetics, with a history of using creativity in work connected to positive social impact.
The talent is clear. The work is bold, joyful, highly crafted and brilliant.
And it already had a visual language that felt at home in Pride.
We wanted someone who understood the culture from the inside and could lend Turn Up the Love the aesthetic point of view of an insider.
We sensed that the greatest possibility for the brand was to give Zipeng the entire campaign to create visuals for.
Zipeng Zhu
Artist · Designer · Creative Director
“We gave him the canvas. He made it his.”
Zipeng was incredible to work with. He brought an unmistakable point of view to Turn Up the Love, met every deadline, and consistently exceeded our expectations.
More importantly, he understood the opportunity and ran with it.
His work gave Turn Up the Love a visual language that could move from advertising to merchandise, from retail to live experiences, and from static artwork to motion and social.
We gave him the entire campaign.
This wasn’t a key visual.
Zipeng created a creative system that could animate virtually every Turn Up the Love touchpoint.
One cultural expression. Everywhere the brand showed up.
Suffused with joy, Zipeng’s work became the visual language of Turn Up the Love, from advertising and merchandise to retail, live experiences and social.
Getting culture right means coming correct.
AT&T had spent years building a relationship with the LGBTQ+ community. By 2023, the audience already knew what we stood for.
We could move beyond explaining the relationship and let people feel it.
We chose an artist who understood the culture from the inside, gave him an enormous canvas, trusted his point of view, and put the work everywhere the campaign lived.
We didn’t ask Zipeng to make a piece of Pride advertising.
We gave him the opportunity to make Turn Up the Love his.
See for yourself.
From static to motion.
A short look at how Zipeng’s artwork moved across the campaign.
The artwork could carry the cultural message.
The artwork communicated celebration of the LGBTQ+ community without AT&T having to say that.
That created room for the communications themselves to do something more useful: invite people into the unique cultural experiences Turn Up the Love had created for them.
The work was the proof.
Getting culture right isn’t about showing up in more places.
It’s about coming correct when you get there.
We gave the right person real authorship and a canvas big enough to matter. Then we let the work sing.
The result was a visual language that allowed Turn Up the Love to enter the world of art while making the brand, the platform and the community present at the same time.
Start with the people and the prime cultural spaces to reach them.
Understand how you’ve earned or must earn the right to participate.
Find the right partner to help you enter.
Give them something meaningful to work with and enough room to make it their own.
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