subscriptions
When it comes to ticket sales, the Kennedy Center's bread and butter is subscriptions. Dozens of waves and variations of subscription acquisition and renewal brochures (and their online equivalents) roll out all throughout the year featuring different events, offers, messages, and deadlines.
Some are straightforward, but most get pretty complicated. It was up to me as the writer to get all stakeholders on the same page with everything from the order of a brochure's contents and respective space allocations to cross-promotions, subscriber benefits, and pricing minutiae.
Below are four brochure examples from different performance genres, each with their own unique audiences, approaches to language, and creative challenges.
National Symphony Orchestra
Perhaps the Center's most complex sequence of rollouts, NSO subscriptions usually involve elaborate schematics of choices - like this "choose your own series" brochure that lets you mix and match performances to create your own concert package, with help from descriptive themes I developed.
Young audiences
Brochures for young audiences and their families were perhaps the most "fun" to write, because they lend themselves so easily to conceptual ideation, colorful word play, and wild imagination. But the writing also needs to speak to a wide range of ages and parental concerns. This particular brochure elaborated on the cover tagline inside, grouping shows into four categories: SEE it here first / FEEL the music / DREAM the impossible / BE a star
Ballet
Bold, strong visuals drive the Kennedy Center's brochures for ballet and dance. But enticing lead-in copy and storyline descriptions play an equally vital role in the impact and success of these pieces. As the writer, I needed to craft text that perfectly balanced the artists and the art, the classic and new, the power and grace.
Theater
No matter how much wonder and excitement it may boast in its opening pages, a Kennedy Center subscription brochure ultimately needs to get down to the business of closing the sale by the end. And that usually requires an abundance of fine details that "hand hold" patrons through the process of comparing packages, making their selections, adding optional performances, and remitting payment.
Perhaps no better example of this is the Center's 2019-2020 theater season, which for the first time gave subscribers the ability to choose the exact dates of their shows in addition to their seats. While this may sound simple on the surface, this change required a very thoughtful step-by-step insert in the brochure explaining exactly what subscribers needed to do.
