EVENT CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

freelance project for walking cinema productions

Challenge

Develop a marketing and campaign strategy for The Fillmore Eclipse, an immersive theater show set in a jazz club on the night before African and Japanese American families lost their homes in the 1950s during Urban RenewaL. The goal was to sell out tickets to all 13 shows with only a 2 week lead time and $1K media budget.

solution

As the first step, I defined the audience, as fairly general with a specific subset of people interested in local San Francisco history, jazz music, and African American culture. Next, I created an Instagram account for the show as I noticed there was no presence for the show online. I created a social media content plan that had various buckets to engage the target and draw interest. One area was behind the scenes content with snippets of the show and cast, one area was historical context with pictures and educational tidbits about the Fillmore neighborhood and the third area was visually impactful promotional materials. 

Next, I leveraged paid social media campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. With my background in graphic design and copywriting, I was able to plan and create these posts myself. I performed daily monitoring to optimize the copy, media targets, and creative for the most effective combination.

Lastly, I engaged local media such as the SF Chronicle and getting an interview with the Japantown newspaper Nishi Bei to tap into the promotion to local communities. I also reached out to well known event aggregator sites such as SF Funcheap and DotheBay, and paid for boosted posts, leveraging their existing engaged audience, which was especially useful due to our short timeline.

Result

Ultimately, I was able to sell out all 13 shows, with 2 additional shows added last minute, leading to with over 750 tickets sold, netting $50k in ticket sales. It was so successful that the head of the production company is looking into potentially expanding this show into other cities.

Instagram Story I created as a boosted post

Example of Boosted Post on DotheBay.com

Sold Out Shows on FuncheapSF.com

Review from the SF Chronicle