The strategy was to develop a way to impact and talk directly to Shaw’s audiences in places they are comfortable interacting, as well as to encourage viral distribution of the Shaw and its productions online. Developing a voice and tone for each community, building out content such as comments about the productions, backstage photos, video’s, images – and developing a strong engagement level with this audience was the focus in the early growth stages for the campaign. A unique strategy was developed for each social channel including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, a Blog and more.

The campaign was also supported with Google Adwords campaigns as well as optimized

Press Releases, website content development, and ongoing Search Engine Optimization.

By growing connections (fan base, followers), aggressively distributing content, and building the level of engagement with new core audiences outside of their typical target audiences, the Shaw Festival was successful in expanding brand awareness, and in Increasing sales online by 25%.  As a result of the digital marketing efforts Shaw Festival has experienced significant E-commerce sales growth.

The Spring 2010 season (April to June) was 7,000 tickets ahead of Spring 2009, selling almost 50% more tickets for the April launch of the season than the April 2009 season.  Year to Date 27% of sales are online and currently sales are $325,000 over the Year to Date total last year at this time.  Traffic to the website increased by 17% over the same time in 2009.  The campaign was featured in the Globe and Mail, and used as a best practice case study at a leading Canadian Online Marketing Conference. The campaign also successfully built a platform that will continue to evolve and drive targeted traffic and sales moving forward.