MATTER’s role
Brand Campaign and Event
ICLR is one of the largest machine learning conferences in the world, and in 2026 it came to Rio. Instituto Kunumi has around twenty partner labs and ties to Stanford, MIT and Harvard, and frames science as awakening rather than accumulation. That is a hard argument to make from a trade-show stand, so we did not build one. The campaign ran in public, where the delegates were already walking, and the evening was small enough that people finished their sentences.
The problem
ICLR brought the people building the next decade of machine learning to Rio. Kunumi, an AI research institute with around twenty partner labs, wanted to be in that room without the costume of marketing: no screens, no keynote, no branding exercise.
The position
A conference about intelligence leaves little room to think. So we asked one question in public, and gave one evening back.
What we made
A bilingual out-of-home campaign across Rio de Janeiro, Santos Dumont airport included, built around the question “Where am I in AI?”; then an evening at Sítio Roberto Burle Marx on 25 April 2026: curated music, handmade food, no agenda, and an hourglass with a bilingual letter as the parting gift for each guest.
The result
The evening became an ongoing engagement. Kunumi hired MATTER to build its editorial and cultural presence: leadership strategy, a monthly editorial platform, guest experience for its Colabs gathering and the next chapter of its institutional campaign.