2020 was a year unlike any other. Scheduled to begin on Friday, March 13th, the much-anticipated event barely had a chance to start before the global pandemic shut everything down. All face to face gatherings planned for the week were postponed only two days into the event.
The main event of the week is the Modern Phoenix Home Tour, which had to be postponed indefinitely. The Tour was also the event's main source of revenue, so retention of these patrons in the face of uncertainty was key. Months dragged on. When it became clear that holding a face to face tour again in May — or even in October — was just a pipe dream, we had to pivot and convert the tour tickets to an All-Access Pass for different educational and entertaining events instead.
The 10-day event was re-envisioned to suit a virtual format. The relaunch required a reassuring, friendly, and honest customer satisfaction and retention campaign.
The movie above shows a sampler of Instagram Story communications that used custom animated GIF dragonflies as a way to disseminate information and diffuse uncertainty around constantly-shifting protocols and perceptions.
The revised marketing objective was to promote acceptance of virtual events in place of face to face events and to stave off the hemorrhage of Tour refund requests. The primary target audience was local patrons who already possessed tickets and were fiercely loyal to the brand. The secondary audience was design lovers nationwide who did not already own tickets to the sold-out event, but would be able to attend the event for the first time through the convenience of virtual conferencing. Patrons as far afield as Australia ended up attending!
Design elements pulled from the original illustrated collateral helped maintain a consistent brand look and tone. The background landscape and sky combined with repositionable animated Instagram stickers allowed us to create messaging on the fly, directly inside the Instagram app.
Frequently-updated social media communications, talking head updates direct from the event organizer, and direct email worked together to encourage a substantial amount of ticket holders to accept the new virtual All-Access Pass in place of a home tour.
The event website continued to serve as a one-stop portal for ticket purchases across multiple box office hosts, as well a platform to encourage acceptance of Zoom as the new delivery format. A large part of the target demographic was first-time Zoom users, so touting the ease of use and can-do attitude was key in retaining these customers.
As a result of successful patron retention, the event was able to make donations to five Valley nonprofits as a goodwill gesture on behalf of Phoenix's design community in uncertain times.
