Award-winning Royal Opera House advertising campaign
The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden is a landmark building, a world famous performing arts venue and home to the Royal Ballet.
The advertising campaign was devised to advertise the venue for meetings and events.
THE BRIEF:
The venue relied on the profile of its main arts function as generator of events bookings along with listings in MICE directories. With our specialisation in venue marketing we were invited to pitch for the required venue advertising campaign which was charged with building awareness of the venue for daytime events.
As the Royal Opera House events business had no history of advertising i.e. there is no established dialogue with market – the single-minded proposition for the campaign was simply a straight-forward ‘you CAN hold your daytime event at Royal Opera House’.
THE APPROACH:
Using the creativity of its stagecraft, costumes, show advertising and also it’s architecture, we were inspired to propose a creative opera advertising concept for this campaign. Our costumed pens (here representing the everyday tools of business) are wearing outfits associated with opera and ballet.
A ballpoint in a tutu for the generic execution followed by a fountain pen for corporate prospects, a pencil for not for profit and a highlighter for media. The headline ‘watch your daytime event perform’ connects business performance with the artistic excellence achieved at the ROH.
Print and OOH adverts were complemented by e-shots to a segmented prospect database. These clicked through to a campaign landing page, the meeting space brochure was rebranded and branded venue team e-signatures completed the integrated campaign.
Our advertising brief was difficult to fulfil but Design Inc came up with a truly unique and inspiring campaign. The concept has been extremely well received and has generated increased bookings and enquiries for Royal Opera House daytime events.
"THE OUTCOME:
The modest aim of the awareness campaign was to secure at least enough new major event booking revenue that the campaign be self financing – target 2 major events.
Both the above the line (advert recall) and the direct elements (48% opens) performed well above expected levels resulting in new corporate bookings into double figures and the campaign also won a Meetings Industry Marketing Awards (MIMA).
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