Strong Feelings
Glenbow | Brand Awareness Campaign
Glenbow's 2013 rebrand gave us the confidence to boldly step into our role as a major public attraction in Calgary. Audience research had unlocked an important insight: Calgarians held generally positive, but passive feelings toward Glenbow. Armed with the new brand, my team created communications campaigns and marketing materials designed to inspire stronger emotional connections and make the museum personal for our audiences.
Setting Expectations
The core brand wordmark "At Glenbow" is a way to orient the audience and build anticipation for their Glenbow experience. It is the answer to questions like "What is it like at Glenbow?" and "What's in it for me at Glenbow?"
Sharp copywriting skills are required to create short, intriguing statements that situate Glenbow as a place where interesting things are happening. Paired with a bold and adaptable typeface, and a colour palette that encourages unexpected juxtapositions, the text-based brand is adaptable to different moods and meanings. Using inviting, engaging, and accessible language, brand statements can be factual, poetic, or playful.
Video produced by Light Factory
Bitesize Creative Briefs: Core Campaign Tactics
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"Always on" brand campaign:
Running parallel to exhibition-specific advertising measured by ticket sales and visitation targets, an ongoing brand awareness campaign is measured by increasing interaction on social media channels, growing membership numbers, and media attention. Marketing strategies are designed to bring Glenbow to where people are using a mix of digital, outdoor, television, experience and content marketing to make an impact. Glenbow's ads must embody the organizational mission: activate art, objects, and ideas so everyone who experiences Glenbow leaves with something to share.
Glenbow's booth at the Calgary Pride Festival
Experiential Photography: Build an ever-green, expanding library of images by inviting diverse photographers to capture images of people interacting with each other in the museum. De-emphasize the art and focus on capturing the wide range of experiences people have at Glenbow.
Encouraging people to take the museum home with them by producing quality, limited edition swag
The destination is always Glenbow
Our strategy to meet audiences where they are led to our early adoption of Pattison's Calgary Transit two-tiered bus ad placements. We pioneered the conversational play between the narrow band of copy running along the top of the bus with the brand statement on the traditional side panel ad. Now everybody's doing it!
Glenbow's in-house creative team
Graphic Design: David Biggar & Nancy MacEachern
Marketing Specialist: Anna Lake
Communications & Media Relations Specialist: Zoltan Varadi
New Media Coordinator: Charles Roberts
Director, Communications & Marketing: Jenny Conway Fisher
My Role
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Creative direction for Glenbow’s in-house marketing & design team, and for freelance video producers Light Factory and Green Frog animation.
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Copywriting, editing & content development
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Art direction for all final creative
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Marketing campaign strategies included print and digital display ads, SEO and search campaigns, 15-second TV ads running on CTV and online, and Out-of-Home transit advertising.
