PA Ballet
The Pennsylvania Ballet was founded in 1963 by George Balanchine protégée, Barbara Weisberger and has since served as a hub of arts and culture in Philadelphia. In recent years the Ballet has struggled to find their role in an industry as tough as the sequences themselves. The company was suffering from declining ticket sales and needed a second wind. We found they were promoting each of their six yearly programs the same way, to the same people.
We crafted a phased solution that entailed strengthening sales, refreshing the organizational brand, and lastly building a responsive digital platform to communicate its performances, programs, and schools. After identifying the Ballet’s distinct audiences, we were able to implement individualized marketing approaches to each performance, differentiating the pirates from the princesses and the pliés from the pirouettes. For three season’s, ticket sales were revitalized as each performance was paired with a custom-fit, integrated marketing and media strategy that matched its spirit and attracted the appropriate interests.
Key Deliverables
Qualitative ResearchQuantitative ResearchDigital Analytics ReviewAudience Journey StudiesAudience Engagement SurveysBrand Voice & Message PlatformBrand Identity & Visual LanguageBrand Identity GuidelinesSales & Marketing MaterialsWebsite Design & DevelopmentPromotional CampaignsSearch Engine Marketing
The 2016 performance of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker was the most outstanding production to date, generating more revenue than ever before. With our collaboration, the Ballet has reversed its three-year decline in profits.
The fall mixed-repertoire program Revolution, reining in 600,000 impressions through digital advertisements and delivering revenue higher than average for a Merriam Theater Production.
The 2016 performance of Cinderella doubled 2009’s ticket sales for the same production and broke the previous record for most tickets sold in October.
Leaping Forward
To bring the organization forward, we evolved the brand identity to link the past to the present and created a modern web presence that enabled them to easily update content and work across different devices.
