Project Details

Every year, Portland nonprofit, DanceWire, hosts an event named the Citywide Dance Connector where aspiring professional dancers and directors/choreographers come in to either take a class or observe classes in hopes of finding their next gig. That gig might be teaching, performing, or even doing administrative work for a local dance company.

The problem was, not many people knew about this amazing opportunity. Many dancers did not find out about the opportunity until after it was over, or didn't understand what the event was.

The goals for this campaign were to: educate local dancers on what the Citywide Dance Connector is, and what it isn't, and of course, to increase attendance from past years.

Creative Process

Dancewire already had prominent Portland dancers on the roster for their event. My philosophy was that people in the dance community did not think this event was for them. The title could come across as vague and they had to go too deep into the website to truly understand what it was all about.

After speaking with some of the event instructors and other Portland dancers, I also realized that some of them had attended the event in years past or knew someone who scored an audition at a local dance company through the networking of this event. The issue was that no one was talking about it or spreading the word about it!

With this in mind, I created the following strategy:

We needed to SHOW people what they could expect at this audition via short-form videos on Instagram, where Dancewires engagement was highest. My strategy was to capture video of every instructor dancing in the style they would be teaching in and conduct interviews with the instructors highlighting their professional dance journey and how the Citywide Dance Connector fit into it. Many had gotten their current gigs through this event!

I edited the videos to be branded with Dancewire branding to connect the faces of these prominent dancers with the organization and event.

To push this campaign to the top of the community's mind and their social pages, we made sure to equip the instructors with a social media kit that included their personal "get to know me" video as well as other Citywide Dance Connector branded content. We also connected with local dance studios and got their support by having them share this campaign on their pages which expanded our reach past just our followers.