Challenge
The Stratford Festival brings more than a dozen productions to the stage every season across their four venues. It is the largest repertory company on the continent. For the 2018 season, they wanted to explore a fresh approach to their brand strategy and visual identity as audience demographics were shifting.
Approach
We developed a more ownable strategic and creative platform to guide the creation of messaging and marketing materials. With a more contemporary approach to cinematic photography, we captured the emotion and unique spirit of each breakthrough production, including The Tempest, Coriolanus, The Rocky Horror Show, Julius Caesar and The Music Man. All photography and design was completed in-house at The Garden, providing Stratford's own production team with an image database and a set of working templates to use throughout the remainder of the season.
Outcome
A fresh look and feel and marketing toolkit that reflected a bolder, more diverse playbill for The Stratford Festival. Overall, the festival recorded a $1.9 million surplus for this season and their highest ticket revenue in a decade. Attendance exceeded 500,000, a 10% increase from the year before. Over 100,000 of those patrons were newcomers, up from 86,000 the previous season.
Audience growth amidst declines in theatre-going
increase in attendance
10%↑
new patrons
20k
“
The Garden does a really great job of getting to the crux of the issue, deciphering all the details and coming up with a crystal clear approach to a business problem.
- Gursharan Flora, Director of Marketing & Digital Media
