The cross-media campaign for the European Capital of Culture 2025 wins the German Brand Award “Winner” in the category Brand Communication – Integrated Campaign and “Special Mention” in the area Brand Efficiency of the Year. The implementation of the campaign was only possible with the help and support of the citizens of Chemnitz, who turned the Capital of Culture application into a movement. Starting with the survey of approx. 6,000 Chemnitz citizens, to the sowing of the flowering meadows, the Capital of Culture streets, to the handing over of the bid book at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin – all projects are based on the overwhelming commitment of the citizenship. Hand in hand with the bid campaign was the creation of the bid book by the communication agency zebra | group, who created the most authentic bid book among the candidate cities. In line with the message “No title without a team!”, this joint approach now also led to this title.
Chemnitz will be the European Capital of Culture in 2025 – and this was only possible thanks to the great support from the population. Together, the people of Chemnitz have shown what culture can mean, that in addition to theatres and museums, sports, allotments, gastronomy and culinary delights also play a role. And that culture is also present in the park, in the open-air swimming pool or at the dinner table and can have its place.

During the application process, this analogue content was the basis for the primarily digital campaign, which was played out in particular via the social media platforms. Local and regional multipliers were involved and very individual campaigns were launched. All in all, this was an internal campaign with a great external impact: with 58.3 million reach, the Chemnitz campaign achieved as many contacts as all the other applicant sites combined. In addition to the authentic bid book, the application was rewarded with the title “European Capital of Culture 2025” in October 2020. The entire team is all the more pleased about the award, which highlights the quality of the brand and is a special recognition for the work done over the past year. It made why Chemnitz deserved the title digitally visible far beyond the city limits and proved that sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of financial effort to reach people and get them excited about an idea.
Due to a pandemic, the Chemnitzer Wirtschaftsförderungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH took over the communication for the application for the Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 in May 2020 and applied for this award together with the zebra | group on behalf of the Chemnitz 2025 team. A jury selected the winners from more than 1,200 entries. The German Brand Award is one of the most important marketing awards in the German-speaking world. This goes hand in hand with an international visibility of the campaign and thus also of the title of the city of Chemnitz as European Capital of Culture 2025. In this sense, the creative doers of the city are also honoured and put in the focus under the motto of the Capital of Culture application “C the Unseen”.