The Making-Box:
You’re a Weirdo. So are We.

Improv can be a daunting thing for people to try. However, the community benefits and life skills learned changes lives for the better.

The “You’re a Weirdo. So Are We.” campaign was an integrated digital-first content strategy to de-mystify improv as something strictly for “funny people” and highlight the real-life benefits of learning to improvise.

With a new theatre and classroom space open in downtown Guelph, the goal was simple: fill it up! As a new business, this was the first strategic campaign aimed at growing and scaling this funny-focused and community business.

The 12-month campaign was a major success allowing Braeden to brag about:

  • Over one-million digital media impressions (paid and organic)

  • Selling out over 95% of live shows and events we put on.

  • Tripling the amount of Level One improv class registrations

  • Expanding class offerings from Guelph to a second location in Kitchener-Waterloo.

The Strategy

Showcase the accessibility of improv by highlighting student stories and the applicability of improv in everyday life. Show, don’t tell the community benefits of improv by creating an open, accessible comedy community.

We had three interwoven marketing strategies:

  1. Create a central online hub of content highlighting the scientific benefits and real-life applications of improv.

  2. Host weekly live comedy events to build community awareness and engagement for local talent from our theatre and classroom.

  3. Create a strong and consistent digital and local media presence to engage community, promote events and spread key messaging to new local audiences.

The Central HUB

With a new theatre came a website re-design. All purchases for shows and classes were hosted on a Squarespace eCommerce site allowing us to automate process and easily communicate with all our customers — themakingbox.ca became a pretty popular place to be.

Results included:

  1. An increase of 20% month over month in organic web traffic consistently for 2 years. Big spikes in traffic anytime a new lineup of shows was announced via newsletter or a sale for classes.

  2. Hundreds of monthly views across blog content. Popular content included monthly show announcements, pop culture articles and interviews with comedians.

  3. One of the most popular pages was our community calendar which showcased upcoming shows, classes, and special events.

Improv Class Branding

Live Comedy Events

Every Friday night was comedy night in Guelph. We gained a loyal following of comedy fans who kept coming back week after week. Our theatre was licensed and completely accessible, gender-neutral and fun as heck.

Results included:

  1. Selling out over 250 weekly events. We became known, not just locally winning multiple Guelph Votes awards for best community theatre, but nationally featuring Canada’s top comedians alongside local stand-ups and improvisers.

  2. Hosting and selling-out dozens of Student Performance Showcases which highlighted students from our training programs. They invited friends, who then took classes. And the beautiful cycle continued.

  3. Our improv show, Royal City Heroes collaborated with local heroes (professors, athletes, artists, politicians) to raise money for charity and highlight stories through improv. We raised thousands of dollars and made community impact and connections in the process!

Live Comedy Branding

Integrated MARKETING & PR STRATEGY

Nothing happens automatically. At the core of our plan was consistent community engagement, digital PR, and content creation for our social media channels on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where we posted every day.

  1. Used a Facebook Ads Strategy to gain awareness through our “You’re a Weirdo” ad. This ad garnered over 500,000 paid impressions, and created a warm audience of thousands to re-target and re-market.

  2. Re-targeting strategy included showing ads with student testimonials for upcoming classes. Re-targeting ads also included promotion for upcoming comedy events. It was the prime period of FB ads, and we reaped the benefits of paying $2-$20/conversion on products ranging from $20-$400 dollars.

  3. Posted Student Showcase, Live Comedy photos, Facebook events for shows, improv news and stories, which were organically (and generously) viewed, commented on, shared and posted around the community.

Some Performance Notes:

  • The Making-Box is a prime example of living values first. Marketing second.

    • In many cases the marketing felt easy because there was always something exciting or heartwarming to highlight. The stories told themselves.

  • Improv is an amazing community and advocate builder.

    • We had hundreds of followers who willingly volunteered reviews, content, and word-of-mouth marketing (which remained the most effective marketing method by far).

  • Marketing consistently and strategically always helps.

    • Over the course of the campaign (2017-2019), there was an increase in people hearing about us through social media, accounting for about 20% of new class registrations.

  • COVID-19 completely changed this business. If you’re curious what happened after 2019 - see the next project!

Next

The Making-Box Pt. 2: Remote Transformation