Working in the Creative Marketing Department, I was assigned as the lead designer for Bay Area Theatre Week; the largest campaign done in TodayTix’s second largest US market. The campaign was to run from April 1st to April 12th with print, out-of-home ads; postcards; paid social ads; and animated, interactive Uber/Cab ads running from March 16th.
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 regulations the campaign was placed on hold for a later date. These same assets will be adapted with the new dates and run for the 2 weeks prior to the start of the campaign.
Copywriter(s): Diane Cardoso, Laura Kelley
I was only given a lead time of 8 business days for the print, out-of-home ads as a result of the production time required to produce and install them into San Francisco’s Municipal trains. Because of this, the first assets that I began design on were these landscape train ads.
The initial direction of the campaign was to utilize the advertisements to show the plethora of shows offered during Theatre Week at the low prices of $15, $25, and $40. The idea was to follow a similar visual direction of TodayTix’s London Theatre Week which we had just completed the creative assets for. However, because the season was just beginning, many of the local theatres had not set their shows for the season nor began producing artwork for the shows that were decided.
Data collected from past campaigns suggested that leading with price taglines performed the best in this particular market, so I suggested leading with price in collaboration with the eye-catching names of Hamilton, The Book of Mormon, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Because the three shows were set, I was able to create a creative direction based on “cutting” the characters out and tagging them onto their own ads with show-specific copy.
This direction would become the basis of all creative for the entirety of the campaign.
In addition to the interior cards, part of the train, brand “takeovers” included a ceiling, or “Michaelangelo Unit”.
This unit presented an interesting dilemma: because the unit would be placed on the ceiling in the center of the train car, any copy written onto the unit would have to mirrored onto all four sides so that any passenger in the card would be able to read it. But because we already had five separate cards along the sides leading with price and our large eye-catching shows. I felt that this would be a good opportunity to demonstrate the plethora of shows that we couldn’t. Using the same creative direction from the train cards, I placed characters from ongoing and upcoming shows around the edges so that passengers could identify all of them.
This was not only the first time that the Municipal train system had introduced the Michaelagelo unit but it was also the first time that they were allowing brand take-overs in their train cars— similar to subway cars in New York— so we wanted to do something that would set the tone for brands down the line.
In addition to the brand take-overs in the trains, we had ad placements on a third of the buses in SF. Because there were fewer units, we decided to use this opportunity to lead with our top, most-recognizable, Broadways shows.
Part of our digital advertising included two animated and two static social media ads. With this in mind, we wanted to highlight our three most recognizable names with our low prices.
So for this animation, I wanted to create something playful based on an interactive trivia question. By doing this, I was able to incorporate the same creative direction originating from the Municipal train cards while simultaneously highlight Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Part of our digital advertising included two animated and two static social media ads. With this in mind, we wanted to highlight our three most recognizable names.
For this animation, I wanted to create something playful based on a decision tree. By following a path, the user could trace the decision tree to The Book of Mormon, and this ad would link to The Book of Mormon’s purchasing page on the Bay Area Theatre Week page.
Part of our digital advertising included two animated and two static social media ads. With this in mind, we wanted to highlight our three most recognizable names as well as the campaign as a whole.
The static advertisement on the left came from a conversation with a group of persons from the Bay Area. As someone from the Bay Area myself, I inquired about their individual awareness of theatre in the Bay. Like me, they weren’t aware that high demand shows that even non-theatre people wanted to go to are even in town for them to see. This static ad mimics a conversation among friends where they learn that they could get tickets to a show like Hamilton for the price of a couple of cocktails!
The static ad on the right is based upon the shows that we led our campaign with: all shows are originally Broadway productions, but could be simultaneously found in both cities. A part of the conversation that was held amongst the group of people from the Bay Area was the idea that there was often a one to one comparison drawn between the two cities.