Around 2013 we collaborated with the Conde Duque Shop and Hospitality Association, on strategic planning, the creation of a discourse and a notion of neighborhood and launched a Christmas campaign to promote local shops and begin to build the quarter’s identity by communicating its milestones and activities. 

 A neighborhood is something very important. It is the front line of interaction between people and it constitutes one of the most sincere feelings of belonging we can have. The Conde Duque quarter can be considered the sum of different co-existing layers: shops, hotel establishments, cultural spaces and public areas. What should define Conde Duque is the way these layers mix.

 In a very reduced space, this neighborhood brings together lots of leisure activities that blend these layers together very well. We felt that that overlapping potentially constituted the soul of the neighborhood. And our initial advantage was its play on its overlapping names: Conde (Count) and Duque (Duke). One plus another.

 A marketing campaign can’t build a discourse, basically because it has to be true. No huge unrealistic promises can be artificially made with a back turned to the community. Instead, the discourse needs to be something that the community can take on board, in line with its actual experience. 

 Conde Duque can be just a simple name, or it can move on and be something laden with meaning, the product of its overlapping layers, a combination of things that together form something else: Conde Duque is that but it’s also this.

 “This and that” is an everyday expression that is introduced into the conversation naturally. It defines variety. It is used as an etcetera, and can be declined in different ways.

Communication should be based on reality, which is why events and actions that haven’t yet been produced in the neighborhood need to be built around that concept. And those that already are present should begin to be perceived through that lens.

All our work for the association, based on the building of that concept, aimed to promote the quarter. By using images and communication as a support, we began to develop a visual identity to bring Conde Duque’s culture and history into the present. We did it through deeds (parties, encounters, activities, workshops...) that brought back life on the streets, and by generating ties between the layers we mentioned.

Identities, deeds and ties with an intention of remaining, and taken on board by those who live and work here. Pure local business: bookshops, restaurants, studies shops, little concert halls and galleries. A vibrant neighborhood.

Among the projects we developed was the creation of a Christmas campaign to support the local Conde Duque shops. A letter to Santa Claus on change.org explained all the reasons that buying near home shapes not only your neighborhood but your city in a way you like to see. And we also took care of communicating the association’s presentation, the tapas routes in the neighborhood -Exquisitapas-, the Madrid Wine Week (Semana del Vino de Madrid) and MFShowmen.