CASE STUDY Talking Dog Adverting & PR · 1
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Meet the Team
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Background
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Insights
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Strategy
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Creative Executions
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Campaigns
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Results
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Future Recommendations
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MEET THE
TEAM
4 · meet the team
Leah Stratton Account Executive
Anna Gardner Project Manager
Gabby Boswell Art Director
Katy Warren Copywriter / Photographer
Becca Freer Digital Strategist
Catherine Iacono Photographer
Stephen Hewell PR Specialist
BACKGROUND · 5
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THE LIVE WIRE WAY More Than Just a Venue
Nestled in the northwest corner of downtown
Live Wire Athens is more than just a venue.
Athens, GA, you’ll find Live Wire Athens, a
Locally owned and operated by the Robertson
modern, industrial event venue that provides
family, they transformed the warehouse into
professional event planning services for any
a multifaceted venue that has the ability to
custom occasion. With three versatile indoor
change with each event’s needs. From weddings,
and outdoor spaces, multiple stages, a rich
concerts, corporate events, charity galas, Greek
history in the Athens music industry, expertise in
life events, and more, Live Wire Athens is ready
sound in light production, and state-of-the-art
to demonstrate exceptional customer service by
equipment, the LWA event service family is more
offering unparalleled, individual attention for any
than ready to leave a lasting impression on you
custom occasion.
and your guests.
Family Hospitality
Professional Service
Custom Occasions
That’s the Live Wire Way.
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“Live Wire is a premium event center with a unique downtown garden space, stocked full bar, and a stage that any artist would be thrilled to play. The venue is driven by a hardworking family that delivers complete customer satisfaction and sets the bar for what it takes to receive a 5-star review. The Robertson Family, takes personal pride in helping you celebrate moments and milestones with your friends, family and coworkers. Our goal, is to help you have an unforgettable experience. Live Wire Athens is a place where relationships flourish, memories are made, and anything can happen.” – Erin Robertson, Event Consultant
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Challenge Live Wire Athens offers a multitude of different events and atmospheres. Since they are able to fit any occasions’ needs, LWA lacked a clear, united brand identity that properly encompassed the vast possibilities of the event space. The struggle to create a distinct, yet unified tone for each event style lead to an inconsistent brand identity. LWA wanted to define the unifying elements that represent all the events held in their space and implement them consistently throughout all of their materials.
The Strategy In order to implement a unified theme across event platforms, the LWA team set out to create a strong, coherent brand identity that would be used to create social media posts, website copy, event packets, and everything in between. From this, we utilized an in-depth content calendar, shot more footage, and created a multitude of new graphics, posts, and mock-ups to produce a unified, cohesive brand presence.
The Results We updated their branded materials, from their drink package, wedding rack cards, Mailchimp newsletters, to event posters. We built a completely new website from scratch and revamped their social media accounts. In addition, we recommended future campaign ideas with media mockups.
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CREATIVE BRIEF Key Fact Live Wire Athens is a modern, industrial event venue that provides professional event-planning services for any custom occasion.
Problem Live Wire Athens struggles with maintaining a consistent brand identity and social media presence, which hinders them from creating compelling, unified content.
Objective Create a strong, cohesive brand identity across all platforms, which will help them display all that they have to offer, and create more effective and visually pleasing content.
Promise An exceptional event-planning service that provides unparalleled, individual attention for any custom occasion.
Support Aside from the three versatile indoor and outdoor spaces with multiple stages, the owners have a rich history in the Athens music industry, expertise in sound in light production, and state-of-the-art equipment.
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SWOT ANALYSIS Strengths: Full service and custom events, LWA family is skilled and professional, great location in the heart of Athens, beautiful event space. Weaknesses: Inconsistent branding, lack of professional photography, poor social media presence, elementary graphics, dysfunctional website. Opportunities: presence in local publications, events for campus organizations and Greek life, grow target market beyond Athens, early days of the week are usually open for booking events, more corporate events. Threats: Athens has many similar venues that offer live music and spaces to host private events.
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RESEARCH APPROACH To gain a deeper understanding of Live Wire’s target audience, we conducted a brief survey to learn more about their habits, assumptions and knowledge surrounding the venue. Specifically, the survey inquired about social media usage, venue preferences, and preferred review websites. We aimed to gather insights within our relevant target audiences: college students, Greek life members, and adults between 18 and 27. In total we garnered 275 responses.
Survey Results: The top three factors that venue attendees find most important are venue space, venue amenities and customer service. Over half of the respondents consider the reviews of others last when determine the best event venue. We found that 45% of responders use Google reviews and only 31% use Yelp. We also discovered that a wide majority of our target plans to get married. We found that a majority of participants learned about Live Wire Athens through friends and word of mouth. When asked if Live Wire presented an incentive program for bookings, 58% said that would participate. In terms of our targets habits and preferences, we discovered that their preferred music genres are Rap/Hip-Hop, R&B, and Alternative. Our target also prefers restaurants over food trucks, with 88% in favor of restaurants. We found that 54% of respondents prefer Twitter over any other social media app, with Instagram not far behind. In addition to this, the majority of respondents prefer to be contacted by text message.
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COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS Georgian Hall: Located in the historic Georgian building, Georgian Hall hosts many events ranging from upscale rehearsal dinners to casual gatherings. Also, they can have their events catered by their adjacent restaurant. Georgia Theatre: The Georgia Theatre has served as a performance venue for emerging and established musicians since 1935. 40 Watt: 40 Watt Club is a well known music venue in Athens. They also host many private events and have an in house bar.
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REBRANDING THE WIRE LWA is at the forefront of what Athens encompasses - music, life, business, friends, and family. The venue was in dire need of a new brand identity that better encompassed their electric, unique identity. From this, we captured how LWA embraces the multiple personalities that Athens has to offer.
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TARGET MARKET Meet Jenn, Our Bride-To-Be Jenn is an UGA alumn who always finds herself returning to Athens for football games and concerts. She can be found perusing record stores, going to yoga, and telling everyone she’s gluten-free. Jenn is incredibly outgoing and doesn’t like to stick to trends. When she began planning her big day, she knew she wanted her wedding to be a unique, vibrant experience that her family and friends of all ages can enjoy, this means that Grandma Sue and her sorority sisters have to be equally entertained! Jenn wanted her night to be memorable and talked about for years to follow and she immediately knew that Live Wire Athens was the venue to help her achieve that.
Meet Nancy, Our Fearless CEO Nancy is a hard working business woman who puts great pride in her Atlanta-based company. When she isn’t working, she loves taking family beach trips, posting embarrassing photos of her kids on Facebook, and playing tennis at the neighborhood club. Nancy wanted to celebrate her company’s 50th anniversary in a memorable, fun environment. When a coworker suggested Live Wire Athens, Nancy thought that it was the perfect spot for her coworkers to escape from the hustle and bustle of midtown Atlanta, socialize, listen to live music, and soak up the wonderful atmosphere.
Meet Joel, Our Vinyl-Owning, Guitar Enthusiast Joel can be found working at Trappeze by day and bartending at Blue Sky by night. He prides himself on liking things before they were cool, knowing the newest coffee shop, and learning new songs on his guitar. Joel loves to spend his nights off at Live Wire, where he discovers new artists and spends times with his fellow musical friends over some drinks at the bar.
Meet Adam, Our Work-Hard Play-Hard Frat Star Adam is known and loved by all of UGA Greek life. He’s the life of the party while still somehow maintaining a 4.0. He’s incredibly involved with his fraternity and is on the Executive Board. When he’s not planning his frat’s next epic tailgate, he’s working to ensure that they have a great parents’ weekend at LWA. Adam doesn’t have much knowledge about event planning, so he was thrilled to
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learn that LWA could help him plan every step of the way.
strategy
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STRATEGY 20 ·
STRATEGY To get to the root of our communication issues, we started our process of rebranding with overhauling LWA’s website. Before we could engage our community and begin creating the new feel of our social media presence, we had to make the foundation of our communication solid. This makeover encompassed a total redesign of LWA’s brand identity, a complete website transformation, new photography, and a reinvention of their brand voice. These renovations to LWA’s brand allowed Live Wire to grow their roots even deeper into the Athens community, giving it even more of a personality for people to associate and latch onto. After beginning Live Wire’s brand identity and complete website reconstruction, we began conducting advertising and promotional efforts to elevate the brand.
These advertising and promotion efforts included: -- Maintaining cohesive branding on social media through consistent use of brand hashtags, updated photography, and brand voice.
-- Creating a “Summer Series” campaign to target Athens families and locals during the venue’s off season.
-- Pitching concert stories to The Red & Black and Flagpole Magazine. -- Placing LWA upcoming events in The Red & Black and Flagpoles event calendars. These efforts exhibited the diversity of Live Wire as a venue in order to display that Live Wire Athens is more than just a place for head banging concerts. We also partnered with UGA’s student-run organization, WUOG 90.5, to promote concerts and events in a more traditional medium. Finally, once LWA’s brand identity was solidified, we created branded materials such as updated menus, promotional materials, and bi-weekly newsletters.
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old website
Upon starting our work, LWA asked that the creation of a new website be a top priority. We wanted to create a website that perfectly showcased their bold and electric brand personality. It was as equally important that we
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made the website as accessible and clear as possible.
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new website
With any event venue website, it’s vital to properly convey all of the different company offerings, the multiple event types, room descriptions, and the technical details. This resulted in completely new copy, formatting, and photography. When the site loads,
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the customer immediately sees a beautiful, clean, and accessible homepage that will certainly encourage them to stay and explore.
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PROMOTIONAL EFFORTS Throughout the year, our team engaged in promotional tactics to raise brand awareness within the Athens community. Some of our promotional tactics include: Submitting LWA upcoming events to The Red & Black, Flagpole Magazine and Athens Banner Herald event calendars. Pitching event stories to The Red & Black and Flagpole Magazine. Creating a branded bi-weekly newsletter.
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PARTNERSHIP We successfully formed a relationship with The University of Georgia’s studentrun radio station, WUOG 90.5. Through this cross-promotion, the station was able to complete two ticket giveaways for February’s JUICE concert and March’s VCTRE concert. This partnership has allowed Live Wire Athens to further reach the UGA student community in the more traditional medium of radio. In the future, this partnership will allow Live Wire to stay connected with the music lovers of UGA.
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MAILCHIMP WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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CREATIVE EXECUTIONS 30 ·
BRANDING Voice Live Wire isn’t just a venue; it’s where event hosting meets endless opportunities. With a dynamic, striking atmosphere, it’s the farthest thing from cookie cutter. As forward thinkers, innovation is always just around the corner. We welcome the eccentrics and celebrate the bold. The energy here is electric and boy, is it contagious.
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Media Gothic
BRANDING Color palette & typography
Our team set out to recreate their color palette and typography in order Shree Devanagari 714
to emulate their electric, unique identity. We wanted a color scheme and font that would properly attract and represent their diverse target market and event offerings. With the incorporation of psychological color theory, Live Wire Athen’s color palette was born by utilizing deep value warm colors that reflect passion and enthusiasm and pairing them with cool, neutral colors that are welcoming and reliable. The combination signifies brand sophistication and proficiency and lends the ability to appropriately represent polarizing markets such as concert goers and wedding couples.
Runda
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NEW LOGO CONCEPT The team created three new, different logos to present to the client. We used elements of contemporary design to produce a more modern, sleek, and dynamic graphic that can be seen in all three These striking and energetic logo designs were inspired by Live Wire’s “Love Music” graphic that the LWA family used in their original music venue in Savannah, GA. The designs allow for versatility by pairing together specific colors in the color scheme that might be more suited for different LWA hosted events and their respective markets. Ultimately, the family decided to stay true to their roots and use a revamped version of their original logo.
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live wire athens
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original logo
The original logo features Live Wire’s classic triangle with a brown thrasher, Georgia’s state bird. This logo holds sentimental value to the Robertson family.
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new logo
This updated logo benefits from sleeker lines, inverted colors, and modernized manipulation of the typeface. This version of the original logo proved to be successful as it maintained the tradition of the original, but stayed consistent with Live Wire’s updated branding.
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BRANDING IN ACTION
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old beverage package
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old
new
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new beverage package
creative executions executions 4242· ·creative
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old wedding pamphlet
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new wedding rack card
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GUERRILLA MARKETING Concept When people look through this viewfinder, they will first see a dull scene with text saying “don’t let your next event look like this…” After viewing this, they will flip to an exciting and electric event taking place at Live Wire Athens. This is meant to showcase Live Wire’s diverse offerings and especially points towards their corporate events, something they are hoping to advertise more.
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CAMPAIGNS 48 ·
CAMPAIGN: SUMMER SERIES In order to make Live Wire Athens the premier place to be during the summer, we had to be strategic about the planning and promoting of Summer Series. The various events would take place bi-weekly starting in May and ending in June. The various events would occur on Sundays when Athens families and locals have extra free time. In addition to this, we chose Sundays because it’s the day of the week when the venue typically does not have a private event booking or concert. The campaign would kick off with a lively concert featuring a local kidfriendly artist, for example, DJ Willy Wow. The kids concert would set the tone for the campaign and hopefully create enough buzz to get the campaign started. In the weeks following, we plan on breaking up the larger events, like the Allegro music class and the family food truck event, with classic movie screenings the whole family will enjoy. The final event, taking place at the end of July, would be the kids-only open mic night. We chose to make this event the grand finale for various reasons. The open-mic night will take the most planning, due to our goal of promoting it as the premier event in the series. In addition to this, we hope to generate enough awareness throughout the campaign to attract a complete list of young performers. At all of the Summer Series events, we plan on having at a minimum of one local food vendor present, preferably a food truck vendor. Some local vendors and food trucks we hope to partner with include; King of Pops, Chick-fil-a, Nedza’s Waffle and Ice Cream Truck, Kona Ice Athens, and Taqueria 1785. Our goal is to make every event, whether it’s a concert or a movie screening, reflect the high energy and exciting atmosphere that Live Wire always delivers.
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PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY To achieve our goal of creating the most exciting summer Athens has ever seen, we designed a promotional strategy to create the needed buzz and awareness surrounding the campaign.
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Facebook most popular within target
-- Announce campaign event 05/01/2019 -- Post and promote heavily during May 2019 -- Create targeted FB ads a week before the first kids concert, open-mic night, and continuously throughout campaign
Instagram -- Announce campaign event 05/01/2019 -- Create two targeted ads for first kids concert and open-mic night -- Throughout campaign, post pictures and videos to LWA’s story to display various events
-- Create a highlight on LWA’s Instagram called “Summer Series” to showcase the campaign during and after it’s completed
Twitter -- Announce campaign event 05/01/2019 -- Post new events within the series a week out from each event Additional promotions -- Collaborate with Athens’ school and music programs to generate campaign awareness and acquire performers for kids open-mic night, including:
• UGA Community Music School • Athens School of Music • Athens Piano School
-- Create a promotional poster in a similar style to a music festival lineup poster, like Coachella or Bonnaroo, to be posted around Athens.
-- Place Summer Series announcement in May’s first bi-weekly newsletter and keep in newsletter until campaign is complete.
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Kids coloring ticket
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CAMPAIGN:WALK THE WIRE As a business that values philanthropic efforts, we wanted to pitch an exciting, new campaign concept that displayed the charitable side of Live Wire. Thus, Walk the Wire was born. Walk the Wire is a charity walk that started and ended at LWA. After the mile walk around downtown Athens, participants would gather at LWA and enjoy food trucks, vendors, and a live concert. The proceeds would benefit Extra Special people, an organization that serves individuals with behavior disorders, Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome, Autism, Asperger’s, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Angelman Syndrome, Spina Bifida, and many more. Overall, this campaign would allow the business to make a positive difference while also increasing their awareness with the Athens community.
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RESULTS 58 ·
ROCKING REVIEWS “Live Wire is one of my favorite venues I’ve ever been to! Anytime I see one of my favorite artists is playing at Live Wire I immediately buy a ticket. The inside of the venue is incredibly accessible, open and beautiful, and the staff is so friendly and helpful. I cannot wait until the next concert I get to go to at Live Wire!” Sarah Piche
“I went to Live Wire to see one of my favorite DJ’s, Mersiv, perform and I had a great time. The environment is unique and the production is top of the line, making for an awesome show for me and my group of friends to go to. The bar was also really easy to get drinks from and not overpriced. Overall a really fun experience!” Dylan Kearney
“Live Wire provides a beautiful space that allows people to come together and celebrate what means most to them. From going to a concert with your friends, to marrying the love of your life, to dancing with your mom during silent disco, Live Wire helps create unforgettable memories. The Robertson Family makes it a priority to ensure all of Dakota Gulasa
their customers enjoy their Live 3Wire experience. This is a venue that provides different experiences for different needs, and it’s something they’ve really learned how to do well over the years.”
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old social
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new social
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FACEBOOK RESULTS
154 more likes (4.7% increase)
10 more reviews (18.9% increase)
Double the posting Double the likes
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INSTAGRAM RESULTS
63 new followers (4.6% increase)
Double the posting
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FUTURE SUGGESTIONS 64 ·
HOW TO KEEP THE BALL ROLLING 1.
Hire an intern with social media, advertising/PR, and photography experience.
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Create a promotional video that showcases the versatility of the space and the event offerings.
2.
Continue to edit website and send biweekly Mailchimp newsletter.
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Partner with more local vendors for events, like food trucks night.
3.
Consistently post to social media while maintaining the updated brand identity.
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Put on Summer Series to increase summer traffic and encourage their family-friendly atmosphere.
Pursue promotional relationship with Bulldog 93.3 and continue relationship with WUOG.
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Continue to write copy that is consistent with the brand voice.
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Always stick to the brand guidelines (colors, fonts, graphic style, etc.) in order to maintain a strong brand identity.
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Continue to submit upcoming events to The Red & Black and Flagpole.
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