Broadcaster ARTE's Summer Campaign Captures Unbreakable Brother and Sister Bonds

This year, family ties are the leitmotiv for public broadcaster ARTE’s annual ‘Summer of…’ line up. Venus and Serena, William and Harry, and Beyoncé and Solange all feature in ‘The Summer of Brothers & Sisters’. To promote the curated programming, creative agency KesselsKramer launched a campaign celebrating the relatable, yet one-of-a-kind relationships that only exist between siblings.

The sibling bond 

The bond between siblings, long ignored by researchers, is now thought to be one of the most important –and often longest– in our lives. No other peer relationship involves a shared upbringing, shared genes and shared secrets. Maartje Slijpen, creative director at KesselsKramer, elaborates: “Sibling love is as strangely deep as it is deeply strange and often leads to the most unusual situations. But to siblings they somehow make perfect sense. This years ‘Summer of…’ campaign illustrates this special dynamic between brothers and sisters. It’s simultaneously recognisable and absurd, pretty complex and completely normal. And as real as life itself.”

Home video-style

Dangling from a coat rack, covered in ink or a fridge turned into a hideout: we see young kids jump from innocence to guilt in the blink of an eye. All is captured in the intimacy of the family home: warm, close-up, and messy. To create a home-video aesthetic, photographer and director Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek was brought back on board. Having collaborated with the agency on previous ARTE campaigns, he has a talent for showing the good, the bad, and the ugly. Shot on analogue and filmed with a camcorder, all visuals carry a sense of childhood nostalgia. And, with a cast of actual brothers and sisters, the emotions were as honest as possible, too. 

Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek said, “Sharing a passion for imperfection, raw imagery and a certain kind of humour makes working with KesselsKramer a no-brainer. Working on the 'Summer of…' campaigns for ARTE is always a highlight of my year. This time it was extra special because it allowed me to travel back in time when I was doing all that weird stuff to my little sister. To create this campaign, we experimented with very old and cheap camera techniques, messy set design and vintage styling to make us feel like we were back in the days.”

*https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/01/sisters-sibling-bond