Vicenza Municipal Theatre
Subscription campaign and coordinated image, 2019/20 Season

The challenge

Every year, more than 80 performances of dance, theatre, music and live cinema fill Vicenza’s Municipal Theatre, a cultural destination for anyone seeking shows that are engaging and always extraordinary.

The new look for the 2019-2020 membership campaign arises from a preliminary brief from the client: to present the season’s programme in a personal, passionate style, and create a more dynamic digital image of the theatre. It all begins with the phrase “Theatre, your passion”, and the desire to reach and engage a younger audience who are more accustomed to visual stimuli.

The approach

As an art form, theatre expects to be presented with awareness and a critical spirit. And this is where we, and our creative role, come in: we reinvent the very relationship between audience and performance, making the former a central part of the latter, and the latter an incubator for the former. Because the theatre is first and foremost “home”, a place where talent, a sense of wonder, laughter and tears can come together and flourish. It is here, in this amalgam of emotions, that the concept of “You are the theatre” emerges: we speak directly to the spectator, reminding them of their active role in the promotion and the very essence of theatre. Without the spectator, there would be no theatre.

The logo, placed like a mask on the faces of potential spectators, is the new synthesis of the relationship between audience and the incubator of culture. With this motif, the graphic vehicle for the Vicenza Municipal Theatre’s new communications, we strengthen the bond between stage and audience, and the logo becomes a symbol of belonging for all theatre enthusiasts. The creativity born of this concept has enormous expressive scope, partly due to its links with the local area: the use of the city’s colours – red and white – defines the theatre’s spiritual and geographical identity. Reinforcing the graphic and photographic intensity is the slogan “You are the theatre”.

The concept finds expression in every format – LED walls, brochures, posters, press releases, invitations and banners – providing consistent communication which is recognisable in the various channels.

The filter

The mask, or rather, the logo of the Vicenza Municipal Theatre becomes an Instagram filter. With the aid of augmented reality, a facial recognition marker can personalise selfies and stories, turning the user into a social media ambassador for the theatre. In this way we bring the world of traditional entertainment into the digital age, where the show is seen through special effects and filters.

The results

The Municipal Theatre finds new communicative power and succeeds in conveying all the details of its personality through a coherent, homogeneous image. The theatre places itself in a position of dialogue with its chosen interlocutor – the spectator – who now has the opportunity to converse with a reflected image of herself, without institutional barriers. Moreover, the filter has created the possibility of special contests on social media which encourage interaction among users and open up space for new digital exchange.

There is also a gratifying result in terms of subscriptions, which are up by 5% on the previous season. The theatre as a place of culture and encounter once again thrills people, especially the young: participation among this target group has increased by 30%, bringing young men and women to fill the seats as they (re)discover traditional (but never boring) entertainment.