Here's a throne
for the rest of us
Seats on Chicago's El trains are turned into thrones
By Toni Fitzgerald
Apr 29, 2011
As the world well knows, Kate Middleton is getting the royal treatment today, but she's hardly the only commoner who gets to sit on the throne.
Such a seat is available to practically anyone, and they don't have to marry a prince.
The seat is a deep (one might say royal) blue. The headpiece is the same color, with a soft background pattern that gives it some texture.
The headpiece is topped by an elaborate gold brocade, which builds high above the person's head in order to ensure that everyone can see the stunning throne behind the royal head. Sturdy gold legs jut out from below, decorated by a series of intricate curly-cues that lend the throne an air of sophistication.
But there's one catch. To sit on this throne, you must be in Chicago, and even then you may have to wait your turn.
The thrones are on El trains, and they're quite the attraction on this wedding day, with mothers, toddlers, grandfathers and pretty much everyone else scrambling to sit on them as friends and strangers snap pictures with their smartphones.
But coincidental as the timing might seem, the El thrones actually have nothing to do with today's royal wedding. They're an alternative media stunt for the Art Institute of Chicago, which currently has an exhibit entitled "Kings, Queens and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France."
The Art Institute wanted its agency, Energy BBDO, to find a fun way to inform Chicago residents as well as tourists about its new exhibition.
"We wanted to bring the exhibition to life and help contemporize people's perception of the Art Institute," say Energy BBDO art director Mike D'Amico and writer Jenny Lui via email.
"In general, art museums can sometimes seem a bit inaccessible because there's always a physical separation between you and the art. So we thought that making something more interactive and playful would be a great way to invite people into the experience."
It took a good deal of planning. The agency realized almost immediately that the stunt would only work on certain seats, ones facing out from the wall. They needed the wall in order to attach the pressure-sensitive adhesive vinyl clings that turned the chairs into thrones.
A few field trips were needed to get the design of the thrones correct.
"In order to make sure we had the perfectly correct size, we rode the trains with Pantone color books and rulers in hand, and did a LOT of measuring and sketching," says Energy BBDO senior print producer Heather Beck.
"We also took a trip to the CTA train yard/maintenance garage at Howard, where we walked through some non-moving, uninhabited cars, and really got to make sure we knew exactly what we wanted and where we wanted it all to be."
The clings were attached to 50 seats in even-numbered red line trains in early April. A small sign, made to look like a gold-framed museum placard, was placed above each seat with details on the exhibit.
It also invited people to upload photos of themselves in the throne seat to the Art Institute's Facebook page, where they have been viewed hundreds of times.
The stunt worked because it turned the ordinary, a seat on the El, into the extraordinary, a seat fit for a king. It grabbed people's attention, and it certainly didn't hurt that the campaign, which ends next month, seemed timely what with all the interest in the royal wedding.
"It's getting attention in numerous mainstream media outlets in Chicago, and is being enthusiastically shared on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other social media outlets," says Katrina Cabrera, communications director at Energy BBDO.
"The Art Institute's Facebook page has been flooded with photos, and the feedback they've gotten has been overwhelmingly positive."
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