Charles Rubinoff

Overview

Illuminate SF is a festival of light art during the holiday season that features outdoor installations highlighting neighborhood streets and iconic landmarks.

I led the creative effort to design a commemorative graphic to celebrate its tenth anniversary and and art directed an integrated campaign that went from video to online travel agency websites to brochures to BART car ads.

My work ensured we had consistency and coherence across the various formats of marketing pieces. I worked with our Director of Arts Marketing as well as partnerships team to ensure everything aligned and stayed focused on our shared goals.

Background

San Francisco Travel sought to leverage the tenth anniversary of our citywide, public light art installations by world famous artists, including Jenny Holzer, Jim Campbell and Leo Villareal, to attract visitors during what is typically a quiet time of the year.

Goal

Attract visitors by showcasing the city’s light installations and support local neighborhoods. 

Challenges

The campaign was focused on the time of year with cooler temperatures and longer nights, which meant a relatively slower period for visitation.

The design challenge was to create something that called out the anniversary and history of the festival, yet remained flexible enough to adapt for celebrations in future years.

Additionally, we were working with a partner and presenting sponsor and needed to make sure they were getting due visibility throughout.

Solution

The team built, and I lead the art direction of, an integrated marketing campaign consisting of five components: partner support, a campaign video, landing pages, targeted digital marketing, and a sweepstakes.

The campaign video was the perfect way to show the vibrancy of San Francisco’s art and culture scene, and in particular the light art installations throughout the city and gorgeous vistas that inspire visitors.

This video was featured on landing pages from our own to a dedicated microsite to one with expedia.com

We worked with BART to install a series of ads in stations and cars throughout the Bay Area. The targeted digital marketing focused on select domestic cities with messaging highlighting the unique content of the campaign. I ensured the look and feel was consistent with other components while following best practices and highlighting our campaign business partner.

Impact

Illuminate SF’s 10th Anniversary was a huge success, driving increased audience engagement with a single Instagram video totaling 30,349 views and 809 shares. Our campaign partners were so pleased that they have all joined or plan to join in successive arts campaigns. We also proved that this visitor segment drives room nights, with 53,000 brought in through Expedia. The non-endemic partner, 5M, a developer with light art installations on their property, saw a 500% increase in page views after the launch of the campaign. They were thrilled with their investment.

Learnings

This was a successful campaign that has served as a model for future work. While the return on investment was certainly impressive, we sought to further challenge ourselves with a longer promotional period and updating the creative to keep the content fresh and engaging for viewers.