Right Turn: An Avenue To A New Audience
A braid is only a braid if each of its three sections are woven together just right. If one section is off, you can see it — you can even feel it. We didn’t expect to compare WHYFOR’s proprietary L.A.B.S. branding process to a bohemian hairstyle, but here we are.
The Avenues Plan, the third section of hair for that beautiful rhetorical braid, brings all of our branding work home because it weaves together the intel we gained from our Anatomy Profile and our Audience Personas. By now, we understand a brand’s DNA and we know who it wants to talk to. The Avenues Plan strategizes the route.
It’s exactly what we did for the Celebration of Fine Art, a juried, 10-week art show in Scottsdale celebrating its 31st year of connecting art lovers with artists as they work. For 30 years, CFA hosted thousands of artists and welcomed tens of thousands of collectors who would gather under white tents and witness the creative process, live.
A global pandemic prompted a new approach, as gatherings were limited and social interactions needed to be distanced. CFA would continue as it always had, while following suggested guidelines, but it needed to reach out to a new audience — one that felt at home collecting art online — in order to sustain the annual show and expand its influence in the art community.
So, we went to work creating an online marketplace, an integrated shop CFA had long considered but had realized was now necessary for future success. We researched what that audience looked like, what it liked, how it engaged and purchased, and we built a platform that met that audience exactly where it was.
Because the online art-buying world is different than the in-person one. Different audiences use different avenues.
WHYFOR’s Avenues Plan dovetailed with CFA’s content marketing plan for maximum exposure, included artist relations to recruit the show’s participants to create shops online, and involved the development of tutorials and instructions that detailed how to build those shops. All of it came together on an expedited timeline, too, so the marketplace could launch during 2020’s holiday shopping season.
So, how did it go? Pretty great.
After coordinating messaging that announced the launch of CFA’s new online store across print, digital, email and social channels, artists and collectors responded in a way that helped WHYFOR and CFA exceed the goals that were established before the launch.
Would stats be helpful? Our case study tells the story.