Using Campari’s Artistic Heritage, Spinach Reimagined East London as an Open-Air Gallery

Recently, Campari turned its East London advertising spaces into the country’s largest open-air gallery, staging Art Without Walls — an ambitious exhibition of UK artists created in partnership with the Affordable Art Fair. Designed to support a creative industry hit hard by the pandemic, the project saw 500 original works from independent galleries take over billboards and sites usually reserved for Campari campaigns, with all proceeds going directly to artists. Spinach Branding worked with PR agency 3 Monkeys Zeno and media buyers Wavemaker to help shape and facilitate the activation.

For Campari, this wasn’t a departure but a natural continuation of a century-long tradition. Since 1910, the Italian icon has understood the power of culture as a brand asset — commissioning provocative, avant-garde artists and designers from Fortunato Depero and Leonetto Cappiello to Federico Fellini and Milton Glaser. These collaborations didn’t just create memorable imagery; they cemented Campari’s identity as a fearless patron of creativity.

With Art Without Walls, Spinach helped Campari draw on this rich heritage and make it resonate with today’s audiences: turning heritage into relevance, brand history into cultural currency. The campaign spoke directly to a younger generation that expects brands to support creativity in visible, tangible and meaningful ways, while reimagining public space itself as a platform for cultural expression.

“As a brand with a deep-rooted, 160-year affiliation with the creative world, we wanted to use our platform and advertising space to support artists and independent galleries pushing the boundaries of creativity in the UK,” says Nick Williamson, former marketing director at Campari Group UK. ‘Through immersive creative, and the sheer scale of this project, our latest campaign aims to inspire consumers, as well as generate sales of the artwork to provide much needed support to these talented artists, who have been impacted so heavily by the pandemic over the past year.”