Creative Content
Creative content development is a key pillar in today’s marketing landscape. Customers want to know more about the product or experience. They want to know how they’ll feel while utilizing the product or attending the event. They want to see themselves in the situation.
Through her time at the Charlotte Symphony, Candace was an advocate for content creation. She planned and produced content marketing campaigns, led thought provoking meetings with various teams in the organization to brainstorm and develop content plans, and managed plans while others produced the content.
Below, you’ll find two of her favorite campaigns that she planned and produced while at the Symphony:
Mahler Symphony No. 2
The “Resurrection” Symphony was written by one of the most influential figures in classical music, Gustav Mahler. The Charlotte Symphony performed this work in May of 2017 as the conclusion to the Classical Series for the 2016-17 season. The performance was held in the Belk Theater. With just over 2,000 fillable seats across four levels, the Belk Theater is the larger theater in which the Symphony performs. Subscriber attendance was low, meaning more single tickets were available for purchase. As Music Director Christopher Warren-Green had a particular affection for this piece, there was pressure to fill seats appropriately within the theater. As traditional marketing channels had not returned, a new approach to selling those single ticket seats was needed.
With her Marketing team colleagues, Candace devised plans to bring the work to life. She utilized the Maestro’s deep connection to the piece as a way to explain the emotion and grandeur that the audience would experience. She recorded and produced a video interview with him, and turned some of the content into a letter “from” the Maestro to the audience as an email blast. She recorded 5 video interviews with musicians about their experiences performing the piece before, or discussing their feelings about performing it for the first time. She recorded and produced a Listening Guide with the Resident Conductor, giving potential audience members insight into the program, background information about the piece, and interesting tidbits to carry into the performance hall with them as they took in the performance. As this work had quite the footprint on stage, she gathered statistics about the grand nature and working with the Graphic Designer, produced an infographic to illustrate what the audience would see on stage when they attended the event.
Below, you’ll find samples of this content work:
Thorgy and the Thorchestra
Thorgy Thor is an accomplished drag queen, and she’s also a classically trained violinist. After appearances on RuPaul’s Drag Race and Drag Race: All Stars, Thorgy used her fame from the shows to develop an orchestra show, and began performing with orchestras around the country. An avid fan of Thorgy Thor, Candace had been following her career after the shows, and suggested the performance as an audience development tool. Thorgy and the Thorchestra was added to the 2019-20 season as a mainstage special.
As this show was being used as a tool for audience development and to show representation to the community being served by the Charlotte Symphony, potential purchasers were likely not in the databases or marketing funnels. This campaign needed a different approach than the mix traditionally used for other Symphony performances. Working with colleagues across the organization, Candace developed a campaign that included video messages and social support from Thorgy Thor, created community partnerships to increase the visibility of the performance to target audiences, devised list trades with key organizations, connected with select local publications for paid advertising and sponsored content, and utilized grass roots marketing like poster distribution and ticket giveaways.
Below, you’ll find examples from this campaign:
