Nicky Dyer

Know your night skies campaign

The challenge —
Space Place at The Carter Observatory in the Botanic Gardens Wellington is a wonderful place of learning, fun and events. Many different audiences come for a wide range of eclectic events such as; movies, planetarium shows, educational programmes, corporate events, music gigs, courses about the stars, to learn about science and space or to enjoy the interactive exhibits.

Space Place is suitable for all ages, there is something for everyone.

The team were on a mission to let the public know that there is a lot to learn about our unique southern skies and it needn’t be boring or difficult to learn more.

The approach —

We created a campaign around the proposition ‘Know Your Night Skies’.

We start with a simple constellation, and have a bit of fun with the type of constellation it is, there are so many fun ones to learn, from rabbits to unicorns and more.

We then support each constellation with a factoid, (the real story) and extend the invitation to learn more, by coming to Space Place!

We created a mix of general brand ads for bus backs, bus shelters and print mags and went to town via our social channels. We’re on a mission to help people learn about the night sky.

Collaborators — Jason Burge, Marketing | Space Place

Social

We did a series of animated ads all around the central premise of helping people engage with the night sky. We used simple to see/find constellations and had a lot of fun with story-telling.

Outdoor interactive advertising

We’ve had a lot of fun, customising out advertising around what was is actually IN the sky during the time the ads where shown.

Know your night skies — hook line and sinker.
Here we see a riff on the idea of the phrase a “hook, line and sinker”. During September Mauis hook, the pointers and the southern are all visible in our night skies at the same time, we played around with their format for the ads, but supported this with quickfire animations showing people how to find the real constellations and asterisms in the sky.

We produced a range of outdoor PVC banners for advertising with glow in the dark dots for night time so car lights would shine on the banners.

Merchandise

T-shirts for Space Place featuring various constellations, planets or the moon.

Left: “It’s just a passing phase — she’ll get over it” [the cycle of the moon]
Right: “My best friend” — Canis Major one of Orion the hunters dogs.

Retail packaging for Space Place.

The constellation we’re focussing on here is Gemini… of course,
using a fun join the dots approach makes our paper bags an interactive game — reusable item.