Broad Stage
A mile from the ocean, ten feet from the stars.
West of the 405.
When faced with the challenge of changing decades of perceptions imprinted on Angelenos that Downtown is where you go to see world-class performing arts—go boldly. That’s what drove our work with Broad Stage to carve out a space in the imagination of westsiders: “A mile from the ocean, ten feet from the stars.” The Stage’s leadership empowered us with a creative sandbox that we leveraged to create a brand distinctly built on belonging and intimacy, a place nearby where there’s not a bad seat in the house.
In the performing arts, the one asset more valuable than an effective marketing strategy is a supportive community. When building brand awareness for the 499-seat theater in Santa Monica, we chose to focus on proximity and people’s genuine sense of belonging — making patrons feel closer to the artists onstage and to one another. That connection became synonymous with The Broad Stage brand: a community larger than the sum of its parts.
Organize community, not propaganda.
The highly-recognizable Broad Stage brand created an astounding response from the community, attracting patrons, subscribers, and donors not necessarily dressed in suits, but comfortably wearing leopard print or flip-flops. The playful intimacy of the brand opened up an eight-season partnership with DISTINC_ that yielded dozens of mailers and ads, hundreds of emails, and tens of thousands of seats sold. A new, vibrant theater community west of the 405 was born.
“DISTINC_ is a great partner to Broad Stage. Their work has been instrumental in defining and broadening the brand, and has merged strategic marketing and design to brilliant effect. They not only get what we are trying to do, they help us define it.”
—Mitchell Heskel, Director at Broad Stage
Services
-
An immersive study investigates quantitative data and qualitative evidence from a variety of stakeholder groups. This audit helps identify how far your organization has come as well as understand what may stand in the way of progress.
-
Ideation workshops offer a variety of hands-on exercises tailored to your organization’s unique situation. The group experience is strategically designed to test readiness for change and to help envision how quickly your organization can pivot.
-
A strategy for change is not always easy to deploy as it often challenges old habits. Brand evolution permeates throughout your entire organization and we work together as a team to cultivate opportunities as well as navigate challenges.
-
Your brand identity is much more than the sum of a logo, a set of typefaces, and hex codes pleasing to the eye. It can be a living, breathing, flexible system that is both open enough to communicate across your varied audiences and focused enough to cultivate a united brand experience, full of intent.
-
Every organization has a voice. And every brand voice has a purpose: to distill your collective personality and ethos into a coherent expression that is accessible across many audiences.
-
Transformational ideas move organizations forward. When the moment calls for a capital campaign to realize such an idea, the biggest challenge is articulating campaign goals via a unified story. We name, theme, and design campaign identities to help you tell that story in the most compelling way possible.
-
Compelling brands can only go so far without a proper deployment plan to put them to market. We architect strategic communication roadmaps across social, digital, print, experiential that achieve measurable results.