The brief
Homerun Festivals is the largest festival promoter in Sweden, with five existing festivals across the country including Brännbollsyran in Umeå. In 2025 they announced Butterfly Festival, a new two-day festival landing at Frihamnen in Gothenburg in June 2026, targeted at a Generation Z audience that wants the music they actually know and the party they actually want. Macklemore, Bolaget, Alan Walker, Tom Odell, and 25+ other artists across the lineup.
The challenge: launch a brand new festival into a market with deeply established players, with a clear and self-aware position. Butterfly was positioned as the festival that played the songs from your pregame and served food without making a statement about it. The brand had to communicate that without sneering, and feel like Gothenburg's own festival rather than an outside import.
The thinking
The fastest way to make a new festival feel like it belongs somewhere is to put the city inside the festival. We did it as characters, not as backdrop.
We built a cast of mascots and visual elements that were Gothenburg-specific to the point of being inside jokes. Glenn, a fisherman with an eye for a head, anchored the brand as a kind of guide character. A construction worker fish referenced the never-ending construction projects across the city, an ongoing local frustration affectionately translated. Karlatornet, the tallest building in the Nordics, and Hisingsbron, the new bridge connecting Hisingen to central Gothenburg, were used as recurring brand elements rather than just photographed locations. The visual world treated Gothenburg's specific architecture, sea-facing character, and dry humor as the festival's actual furniture.
The campaign rolled out across outdoor placements, tram wraps moving through the city, and social. Walking through Gothenburg in the months before the festival, you would see Glenn looking back at you from a bus stop, a tram wrapped in the festival's identity passing through Brunnsparken, and the mascots filtering through your social feed. The festival became visible before it became real.
Brand identity and mascot design
The identity system was built around a cast of Gothenburg-native mascots and illustrated characters. Glenn the fisherman anchored the brand as a guide figure. A construction worker fish turned a city-wide frustration into affectionate visual commentary. Karlatornet and Hisingsbron became recurring graphic elements rather than photographic backdrops. The result was a festival brand that felt specifically Gothenburg, not generically Scandinavian.
Campaign and out-of-home
The campaign launched across outdoor placements, tram wraps, and transit advertising throughout Gothenburg. Trams wrapped in the festival identity moved through the city center. Bus stops carried Glenn and the cast. The work was designed to be encountered in the same spaces the festival would eventually occupy, making the brand feel like it was already part of the city before the gates opened.
Social and content
A content system carried the visual world from billboards and tram wraps into social feeds and ticketing channels. The same characters, the same dry humor, and the same Gothenburg-specific references ran across every touchpoint so that encountering the brand on Instagram felt like seeing the same festival you passed on your commute.
The outcome
The festival runs in June 2026. As of this case study's publication, the campaign is live across Gothenburg and the brand is in the city's bloodstream months before the gates open. We'll update this case after the festival with attendance, press, and audience response. Until then, the work is on every other tram in Gothenburg.