2019/2020 Season Membership Campaign
The Goodman is a non-profit theater which produces a full season of eight to ten plays each year, augmented by free festivals, summer theater in the parks, and events in partnership with local and national groups. The core season is a crucial source of the Goodman’s annual income, and a significant portion of the revenue comes from memberships—subscriptions to multiple productions purchased in advance of the season’s start date. Unifying a season of diverse plays under a strong marketing campaign with broad appeal is one of the most challenging—and critical—projects for the Goodman’s in-house team each year, representing three to four months of work and requiring flexibility, creativity, clever problem-solving, and strong collaboration from each team member.
For me, the 2019/2020 Season Membership Campaign represents one of the most successful, cohesive examples of these campaigns from recent years. We had a full creative team and a budget that supported collaboration with an independent photographer to craft the images exactly as we envisioned. Months later, the season was brought to a halt by COVID-19, but the initial membership campaign remains a strong point of pride in my career.
Created in close collaboration with Cori Lewis, Laura Hooper-Doughty, and Alma D’Anca.
Photography by Ian McLaren. Videography by Cody Nieset and Alberto Mendoza.
After solidifying the campaign’s overall visual direction, we began to conceptualize the individual show images with a series of sketches and color studies. Like the inspiration photos, each of our show images would have a unique color “story” told through the background, costume, and props. Above are the sketches I prepared to demonstrate our vision for The Outsiders. Below are several more examples of these image proposals: on the left are my sketches, mini mood boards, and brief descriptions—and on the right, the final photos that resulted.
My team partnered with the Goodman’s Costumes and Props departments to outfit each image, and we had fun sourcing some materials ourselves—we built the Graveyard Shift spotlight, hand painted the Mariachi’s flower, and brought in nail polish from our personal collections to add extra pops of color and interest. It was incredibly gratifying to pull these “color stories” together piece by piece! Photographer Ian McLaren was an absolutely wonderful collaborator from start to finish; over several weeks of long and often complex shoots, he confidently brought our visions to vivid, hyperreal life.
Above: the envelope designs for three mailings of the Membership Renewal marketing materials.
Above: the corresponding Membership Renewal brochure covers for those three mailings. The pink version shows the front and back cover laid flat as a spread.
Above: selections from the Membership Renewal brochure interior. In coordination with this campaign, we updated the Goodman’s signature house font to Brother 1816. Its personality and clean geometry was an excellent fit with the Goodman’s brand voice, a modernized nod to the letters of the front marquee, and the perfect complement to the 2019/2020 campaign imagery.
Above: interior and exterior building posters promoting the campaign. Advertisements with the same layout and messaging appeared in local and national publications ranging from the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune to the New Yorker and Broadway Playbills.
The Goodman offered three subscription packages for 2019/2020: the Classic, Choice, and Whenever Memberships. To help patrons distinguish between these options we associated each package with a show image and color, creating three sub-brands within the broader campaign. Above are several website headers and thumbnails, square images for social media, and examples of Membership-specific collateral.
Above: the 2019/2020 Season announcement video, the first piece of campaign collateral released to the press and public. Our in-house videographers were present at every photoshoot to capture the show images in motion—befitting the tagline, Theater That Moves, and ensuring that each show got a dynamic moment of life in this important introductory piece.
