Brooklyn, New York City, USA
Brooklyn Academy of Music - Education and Community Engagement
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BAM offers free, world-class, After-School Arts Programs with a culturally responsive, progressive curriculum. Enrollment needed a boost - but how do you capture the elusive teen interest? As Marketing Manager for Education and Community Engagement, I was tasked with driving this campaign, and had an eye on refreshing Key Art for marketing materials, while removing barriers to access - a big stumbling block for the client.
With brilliant creatives, we refreshed the Style Guide and Key Art to reflect teen-signaling purpose and power, with sophisticated and eye-catching graphic design. The suite included brochures, postcards, a digital overhaul, and this poster, which was distributed to schools in partnership with the city’s Department of Education, to post on bulletin board.
We revamped the entire application platform and process to be more accessible and user-friendly, which was a huge hurdle in enrollment the prior year.
Enrollment increased by 60% from the previous season, and The style guide became the template for other campaigns throughout the institution.
There was no shortage of appetite for multi-lingual materials in BAM’s Marketing, especially since Spanish is the second most spoken language in Brooklyn, but this was never done in a more streamlined manner. I led the process of producing a pilot for Spanish marketing materials, with the hopes of expanding to other languages to draw in more of the local Brooklyn audience. The images above and below (side 1 and 2) are from small batch of bookmarks given during the annual “Brooklyn Reads” festival, featuring BAM’s seasonal humanities offerings.
With unusually short lead-up time and no past references for the first LGBTQ Senior Social event at BAM, I worked with the event’s organizer to dream up a visual concept, with key words and cues for Key Art - a nod to The Wiz’s “Emerald City” - classy and funky at the same time.
With the creative team, we were able to repurpose an unused, past design for a gala, revised to be LGBTQ and Senior signaling, and produced the postcard in record time.
A splashy, eye-catching postcard was essential - marketing to Seniors rarely involves a digital strategy, and printed materials are the way to go.
With longstanding partnerships with Senior communities, including newly established Senior LGBTQ Centers in Brooklyn, postcards were swiftly mailed and hand-delivered to the centers. The event was successful and well-attended (at the venue’s maximum capacity), with attendees going home pleased and happy.
A long revered annual community event at BAM, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, features speeches from elected officials, musical performances, and an exciting Keynote Speaker. This year’s speaker was Nikole Hannah-Jones of “The 1619 Project” - Key Art needed to reflect the speaker’s values and tone, necessitating powerful, strong, visuals. The image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used was thoughtful and deliberate, with “King” positioned prominently.
I led the production process for this poster and strategized it’s placement throughout Brooklyn, where local foot traffic ensured high visibility. The aim was to be as hyperlocal as possible - corner stores, laundromats, small business and local places of commerce, etc.
Multi-generations of Brooklynites lined up at BAM’s Howard Gilman’s Opera House as early as 6 AM, packing the venue to capacity.
The event captured an extraordinary amount of press prior to, and over the following 48-hours.
Having found success and establishing a process for multi-lingual marketing materials, I led the team in creating a suite of marketing materials for the upcoming BAMkids season with Spanish alongside English copy. The season featured mostly non-verbal live-performances, so we went full-steam ahead and welcomed non-traditional BAM audiences in to the fold. The mailer above was sent to tens of thousands of household throughout Brooklyn.
Additionally, digital strategy included a pilot of ads in Spanish, geo-targeting Spanish-speaking neighborhoods and families, expanding BAM’s audience to invite new audiences, with the hope of audience retention, diversifying the make-up of BAM patrons.
Receiving training in Accessibility in the Arts and having a bit of experience in Accessibility communications, I was a member of the Working Group for Accessibility at BAM. I led the initiative to create BAM’s Accessibility page, developed and launched in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in consultation with subject matter experts, other cultural institutions’ Accessibility Focal Points and accessibility advocacy groups. You can find the page here.