It's Official: Advertising is Art.

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What happens when a small, San Francisco ad agency teams up with the largest modern and contemporary art museum in the country? 

Division of Labor has launched a new campaign with our partners at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The campaign pairs popular San Francisco destinations with iconic works of art from the museum’s collection and encourages people to, “See them both.”

For example, the Golden Gate Bridge is juxtaposed against Mark Rothko’s similarly colored painting, No. 14, 1960. While a rainbow flag flying in the Castro sits alongside Ellsworth Kelly’s painting, Spectrum I

The goal is to inspire the 25 million annual visitors to San Francisco to visit SFMOMA along with the bridge, Alcatraz, cable cars and the like.

When we started the project, our research showed that of the favorite destinations for tourists coming to San Francisco, museums rarely cracked the top 10. Even though SFMOMA is the largest modern and contemporary art museum in America.

We also found that while the majority of travelers use social media and the internet to plan their trip, 85% of the final decisions are actually made on the ground after people arrive.

So the campaign utilizes social and digital to build awareness when people are planning their travel and then uses outdoor and geo fenced mobile to target people while they’re visiting other places around the city.

All the artists’ estates were incredibly gracious in letting us use their work. Huge thanks to XYZ who did all final production and helped us ensure that we were reproducing these amazing works of art accurately. You can check out more of the work here.