Audi × Diptyk · Driven by Art

Diptyk's CIO contacted my team at Arroz Con Pollo for a complete overhaul of the magazine's digital strategy and its marketing and communication behaviour. My team and I rebuilt that system from A to Z. That work is its own case.

Once Diptyk behaved like a media brand online, it could carry partners. The relationship expanded into partnerships and activations, among them the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in Marrakech and Driven by Art with Audi, across six seasons by my archive's count.

A carmaker at a contemporary African art fair is a familiar picture, and usually a weak one: a logo on a wall, a vehicle in a courtyard. Audi's presence was only worth something if it borrowed Diptyk's credibility with artists and collectors. Diptyk's credibility was only worth protecting if the partnership did not turn the magazine into advertising.

Diptyk's audience is small and exacting: artists, gallerists, collectors, curators. It notices immediately when an editorial voice starts selling, and it does not come back.

That was the line the programme had to hold. The art had to lead and the brand had to be the host, not the subject.

Arroz Con Pollo delivered the brand programming for Audi and Diptyk around 1-54, a 360° content campaign across channels and the live campaign during the fair. The film and the Driven by Art playlist remain public, and the studio's portfolio documents the work.

Programming means deciding what the brand does at the fair, not only where its name appears: which moments it hosts, what content it produces around the art, and how the live campaign carries the fair to people who are not in Marrakech.

My role was on the brand programming, the content and the live campaign, inside a studio team. The work is credited to Arroz Con Pollo, the studio I co-founded with Nabil Nadifi, and I keep it there.

Driven by Art is the moment the Diptyk work stopped being a digital rebuild and became a platform that sponsors wanted to stand on. The OCP mini-documentaries on Mohamed Melehi and Chaïbia came out of the same relationship the same year.

It also changed the studio's position. Arroz Con Pollo was no longer only rebuilding a client's digital behaviour. It was designing what a global carmaker would do inside that client's world.