Believe. Further: Bringing a high-profile collaboration to life in three months
One of the world’s most recognisable voices. A multinational reinventing what it stands for. Three months to make the partnership feel real in a room, then six concerts and peripheral events across three countries to prove it travelled.
A collaboration is easy to announce. It is far harder to make people feel it in a room.
That was the brief: One of the most globally renowned Italian classical artists and PM International, brought together in a way that would read as credible to both audiences at once. After winning the pitch, BRS built the full visual and experiential concept for the collaboration: identity, spatial design language and guest experience. From concept to opening night, we had three months.
The platform launched with a two-day press event and concert in Venice, then travelled with the tour through Italy, Poland and Austria across the summer of 2026. Every guest, from a sceptical journalist to a curious VIP, had to leave understanding the partnership as clear, relevant and worth believing.
Striking a visual balance between the collaborators
PM International arrived with a tagline and a narrative: Believe. Further, two voices on a similar path. One artistic, one corporate, both arguing that the world had decided who they were too early. Compelling on the page, but a premise is not a platform. Our job was to take it somewhere.
We found the answer in the overlap. The key visual is built from two sets of rings, each formed from its own path, meeting to create a third space where they cross. That space is the collaboration. Nothing is absorbed, and nothing dominates. It is a difficult balance to hold.
One signature carries three decades of visual heritage and enormous public affection, the other is a leading global consumer goods giant actively reinventing itself. The system had to honour both without collapsing into either, then survive being scaled from a large premiere screening setup down to a welcome letter.
Translating the partnership into a physical space
While the identity was still being finalised, we were already building the spatial language and the experiential elements that carry it. The ring motif recurs through the physical build, so a guest moving between the press screening in Venice and a Meet & Greet in Warsaw reads the same idea in a different room.
At full scale, the narrative spine was a family of premium black and gold totems: a screen totem animating PM International’s four narrative pillars, a narrative totem introducing the collaboration ahead of the documentary, a quote garden carrying key lines from both partners, and decorative totems holding the ring motif.
Large-format screens and curved LED walls ran the short-form documentary in configurations that flexed to the venue, and wherever the footprint allowed we built a striking photo moment, so guests left with a keepsake rather than only a memory.
We encouraged guests to become part of the collaboration
Across nearly every stop on the tour, within our curated spaces, guests were invited to add something of their own to the collaboration. The word cloud activation we designed asked one question: what does believing further mean to you?
Guests scanned a QR code and chose their word. Imagination. Creativity. Progress. It appeared moments later on a large screen in front of them, joining a live cloud that grew as the room filled and others participated, each guest watching their own answer change the picture.
The finished word cloud video was then played in front of the concert audience before and after the show. Tens of thousands of people watching something a room of guests had authored themselves, directly related to the collaboration.
Venice: the press launch
The platform launched on June 26th, 2026, and the press event was ours to design end to end: the guest journey, the flow of the night, the branded giveaways, the way every element sat in the room. Venice was the collaboration at full strength, and the reference point for everything that followed.
Around 60 guests, senior European media, board members and PM International internals, arrived by boat at the historic Torre dell’Arsenale for the documentary premiere of the collaboration, and a fireside chat with one of the most globally renowned Italian classical artists.
Venice: the press launch
We wanted the sense of occasion to start before the event did. A welcome letter was waiting in each hotel room, sealed in gold wax with the reduced collaboration logo. Mysterious, elegant, personal. At the press conference, guests received gifts with a note explaining why each had been chosen, including a personalised, branded notebook to capture what matters and to set an intention inspired by Believe. Further.
Venice was also the hardest build of the programme. It is a city famously difficult for permitting and access, with almost everything arriving by water, and we were working to a compressed schedule, a large on-site production presence and a wide field of stakeholders: PM International Global and Europe Region leadership, individual market teams, the artist’s team and collaborating agencies. It was a trial by fire that forged the collaboration over one magical night in Venice, and was followed the next day by the first concert of the tour at Piazza San Marco.
Believe. Further on tour
After Venice, the platform travelled on tour. Each stop brought a new venue, footprint, audience, local market and regulations to adapt to, redesigned to fit every time.
Lajatico, Italy
Two July nights in the brand partner’s birthplace, with product engagement stations and VIP areas carrying the full Venice system.
Forte dei Marmi, Italy
The system re-cut for a charity dinner at the end of July.
Gdańsk and Warsaw, Poland
Two August concerts, scaled down to VIP, product and Meet & Greet areas.
Vienna, Austria
The final stop on 22 August, a compact setup closing the tour so far.
The end result
Three months from pitch win to press launch. Six concerts, three countries, one summer, and a platform built to outlast all of it.
Built at speed without seeming like it. A full identity from scratch, a style guide, a modular spatial system, a documentary environment, an interactive activation, a gift programme and host training, all designed, approved and produced in three months, then delivered live for the first time in one of the most difficult cities in Europe to build in.
Scaled with a modular system without diluting. The same identity ran from a full-scale Venice takeover to a compact Vienna backstage room, localised across six cities, and read as one coherent platform throughout.
A partnership guests could participate in. The word cloud turned an abstract proposition into something guests authored themselves, then put it in front of concert audiences in Italy and Poland.
Developing a system, not just an event. The framework now exists as reusable infrastructure for the platform’s next chapters. What began as a two-day launch became a six-city programme across three countries in a single summer.
“Believe. Further” launched as a long-term corporate communications platform rather than a one-off campaign, and it survived the hardest possible first audience. A demanding, fast-paced summer, and one we are genuinely proud of, because we helped turn a collaboration that raised questions into one that answered them.
What we delivered
- Overarching visual, spatial and experiential concept, developed from the client narrative
- Key visual and platform identity designed from scratch, including a style guide
- Spatial design system and environmental graphics
- Video, digital and print content for the six-city tour
- Full concept, design and delivery of the Venice press launch and documentary premiere
- Word cloud activation, from concept through technical development to concert video
- On-site creative and production lead across the programme
Our integrated scope included
- Guest journey design, localised per city and per audience
- Host station design, scripts, briefing and training materials
- Individualised welcome letters with gold wax seal, and branded gifts localised per market
- Stakeholder coordination across PM International, market teams, the artist’s team and collaborating agencies
- Technical planning and coordination, supplier contracting and management, dismantling coordination
- A touring system built for localisation and repetition
This project was developed for PM International as a long-term corporate communications platform.
Launching an important collaboration or product event?
We build platforms from the narrative up: identity, space, language and guest experience as one system. Designed to survive contact with real people in real rooms, and to keep working long after opening night.
Credits
- BRS — Creative Team
Brendan Shelper
Co-CEO & Executive Creative Director
David Bray
Executive Project Director
Tina Lovasic
Creative Producer
Catalina Figliolia
Head of Spatial Design
Anne-Katrin Senst
Spatial Design Manager
Philipp Hohmann
Lead Spatial Designer (Hey Hoh Studios)
Mert Aytac
Spatial Designer (Hey Hoh Studios)
Lucas Confurius
Spatial Designer (Hey Hoh Studios)
Conor Todd
Spatial Designer (Hey Hoh Studios)
Tim Meier
Associate Creative Director (Concept)
Stefan Spendier
Video Producer
Shan Blume
Art Director
Duncan McDade
Motion Designer
Victor Treushchenko-Bernhardt
Motion Designer
Morten Fossøy
Motion Designer
Marika Mihalache
Graphic Designer
Lara Gessner
Graphic Designer
Rosario Magnanini
Graphic Designer
Jesse McCormack
Graphic Designer
Holger Stüting
Graphic Designer - BRS — Client Services
Chrissie Overton
Head of Client Services
Nathalie Back
Project Management
Michele Müller
Project Management
Simone Beck
Project Lead - BRS — Production Team
Adrian Noack
Head of Production
Alessandro Carta
Production Coordinator
Matthias Korn
Technical Director (Plan Union)
Michele Müller
Travel & Logistics
Milica Stojanovic
Head of Events and Activations - BRS — Documentation
Lucas Pouly
DOP / Videographer
Basile Bachmann
DOP / Videographer
Marcus Zumbansen
Photographer (Intern) - BRS — Permits, Health & Safety
Alessandro Carta
Health & Safety Manager - Partners Along the Way
Paola Ursino
DMC — WI.RE
Edoardo Tacchetto
DMC — WI.RE
Virginia Di Girolamo
DMC — WI.RE
Enrico Baron
Location — Torre dell’Arsenale
Max De Tomasi
Catering — Pazzesco
Marta Melgrati
Catering — Pazzesco
Benjamin Preuss
Build — Atlantis
Maria Wandas
Furniture — Party.Rent - Activations (Word Cloud)
Rave Space
Interactive Installation Programming
