Lyric Opera Posters
By Ogilvy, Chicago, USA
For Lyric Opera of Chicago
Winner in category Design & Branding
In subcategory Craft - Writing for Design
Project Description
Lyric Opera of Chicago believe that opera is a living, breathing art form, not just a museum curiosity. But today you can’t browse any music blog or arts news section without stumbling upon articles on the slow, inescapable death of opera citing sagging ticket sales, shorter seasons, aging funders, etc. In recent years, also the Lyric Opera, which until 2008 had always had sold-out seasons, has started to encounter problems in renewing its audiences and subsequently to struggle in order to keep its high-standard productions.
Personal taste aside, everybody agrees on the fact that Opera addresses the most primal human emotions. It attempts to shed light on love, hate, lust, despair, greed, fear, etc. These are universal feelings; therefore they are timeless. They don’t rely on the setting of an opera and they find themselves just as poignant and powerful today as in the 16th century. For this reason only, opera is still alive. We needed to highlight this “all too human” core of opera and we needed to do it in a different, more compelling, and contemporary way. We created content that told all facts and figures of Opera, and provided our prospect with a large set of tools to not be intimidated by their first experience and to better understand any aspect of the opera art form.
Personal taste aside, everybody agrees on the fact that Opera addresses the most primal human emotions. It attempts to shed light on love, hate, lust, despair, greed, fear, etc. These are universal feelings; therefore they are timeless. They don’t rely on the setting of an opera and they find themselves just as poignant and powerful today as in the 16th century. For this reason only, opera is still alive. We needed to highlight this “all too human” core of opera and we needed to do it in a different, more compelling, and contemporary way. We created content that told all facts and figures of Opera, and provided our prospect with a large set of tools to not be intimidated by their first experience and to better understand any aspect of the opera art form.
Agency Solution
It's a pretty established rule of Opera houses marketing that advertising should just show off what happens inside the opera building—particularly if you've got some famous singer/conductor in there.
Audience’s knowledge of the art form is simply taken for granted. No opera company takes the time to educate beginners and potential new audiences explaining more in depth the art form in general or the specific operas they perform. The educational part is left to brochures and leaflets handed at the shows.
We set to change that and decided to bring the educational approach outside the opera house to the general public. But we didn’t want the ads to be (boringly) informative, so we created a series of copy ads, which could educate the audience while still entertaining it, telling interesting opera trivia in an informal, funny, contemporary style.
Audience’s knowledge of the art form is simply taken for granted. No opera company takes the time to educate beginners and potential new audiences explaining more in depth the art form in general or the specific operas they perform. The educational part is left to brochures and leaflets handed at the shows.
We set to change that and decided to bring the educational approach outside the opera house to the general public. But we didn’t want the ads to be (boringly) informative, so we created a series of copy ads, which could educate the audience while still entertaining it, telling interesting opera trivia in an informal, funny, contemporary style.