Haha Haha Co.

Attractions, Tourism & The Arts

October 2, 2020

Riff Ram Bah Zoom – breaking the grid to connect

Covid-19 has changed everything and college football has not been immune to the impact of the pandemic. We partnered with TCU Athletics to expand on the tradition of the Riff Ram Video and create a hype video during the first-ever, socially-distant TCU football season. During normal circumstances, this hype video would run in the stadium to invigorate the audience, but under quarantine protocols, fans cannot attend the games and cheer their Frogs to victory. So, how can you inspire fans at home to leave their seats and chant along to “Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo?” By connecting them.

The video begins by nodding to the new reality of the fan experience. Football is part of the fabric of American life, Zoom is too now. Showing fans in the Zoom space and having them breaking the grid is a fun way to show that no matter where you Riff Ram, you’re cheering with s fans across ages, places and even a pandemic. Despite the virtual barriers (and real ones presented by pandemic quarantine protocols), we’re always connected as a part of the TCU fandom family.

The video illustrates to fans that we aren’t really that far from each other. From the athletes and students, to the family watching at home, we’re all living under a new normal. And while we can’t gather in person, we can find solidarity and spirit in the fact that we’re all in this together.

Director’s Note:

Creating this video during the Covid-19 pandemic was a challenge that required our team to solve problems that we’d never confronted before. The big question was, “how can we keep everyone safe while producing an effective video that serves campaign goals?”

The entire spot was shot on a green screen with all but two shots featuring one person at a time. Every background was added in post and every action and camera move had to be planned out prior to filming. Each crew member wore masks while we were working, and the only unmasked people in the studio were the on-screen talent. We booked each of the actors with their own timeslot to minimize their exposure to others. However, this made each studio session incredibly valuable as we could not invite the actors back for re-shoots later.

The game plan for this shoot was nearly as planned, practiced and choreographed as Gary Patterson’s defense (almost).

The shoot was difficult, but the team at Red Productions made collaborating on such a meticulous production much easier, more enjoyable and pretty impactful!

Go Frogs!

Credits:

Concept by: Haha Haha Co.
Produced by: Haha Haha Co. and Red Productions.

May 29, 2020

Multiple performances, one cohesive campaign

A season of ballet programming is made up of a series of performances, each standing alone as a unique story being told on the stage. How, then, do you create a campaign that communicates these different stories under one cohesive message? That was the obstacle we faced when ideating creative assets for the Texas Ballet Theater’s 2019-2020 season campaign, and here’s how we solved it.

Campaign Goals

Tell the individual story of each performance, while also fitting the unique designs into one cohesive, identifiable campaign.
Conceptualize ideas that work in photography to incorporate the dancers as crucial campaign assets.
Illustrate the ballet’s marriage of art and athleticism.
Attract a wider audience and convince them to become season subscribers.

The Challenge

Branding an entire season of ballet was a huge puzzle for us because each performance has its own story to tell, full of imagery and icons that are significant within the individual narrative but may not translate into one clear campaign. Plus, it was crucial for the dancers to be featured in each advertisement, so finding a way to marry all of those elements into a unified campaign was crucial.

We needed to create a full season campaign that is cohesive, blends together as a collective vision and message, but that also has enough individuality for each performance that a creative asset could confidently stand on its own. For that to occur, there needed to be enough interest and variety on a performance level as there was on the campaign level, so that the creative assets could be used in advertising on multiple platforms and mixed media.

The Creative Solution

We developed “Alive with Wonder,” a concept featuring the tagline Let Beauty Envelop You. This central message was accomplished by creating illustrations unique to each performance and then having those designs envelop the dancer on the page. Each pattern visually represented individual performances with elements that are important to the story on the stage.

This interaction between dancer and design alluded to the immersive experience of witnessing performances on stage and hammered home the overall campaign tagline – Let Beauty Envelop You.

Once finalized, the campaign imagery was extended into a full graphic system that allowed for both consistency and customization in the promotion of each performance. To accommodate the variety of mediums in our cross-platform media strategy, the flexibility of the system was imperative.

Making Life Better

The common misconception about ballet is that the performances are only suited for fans of high art or those that understand the nuances of performative arts. General audiences sometimes mistakenly assume that a barrier exists between them and enjoying and understanding ballet performances. The reality is this: over the course of a season of ballet programming, a performance will occur that is enjoyable for all types of audiences with different levels of ballet experience. Creating a campaign that cohesively communicated the different themes and tones of each performance and enticed a wider audience to attend was a hugely rewarding endeavor.

National Addy Award Winner

An Award-Winning Campaign

The Texas Ballet Theater’s 2019-2020 season campaign took home some prestigious awards from the American Advertising Federation at the local, regional and national levels. All totaled, the 2019-2020 season campaign won 9 Gold Awards, special Special Judge’s Awards at both the local and regional competitions and a National Silver Addy. It is such an honor to be recognized and earn shared success with our clients.

March 9, 2020

How we used audience segmentation to help Texas Ballet Theater grow their subscriber base

When the Texas Ballet Theater needed a way to reinvigorate their marketing, we created a comprehensive marketing campaign that expanded their ticket sales from a steady group of subscribers into a larger group of new season ticket holders.

The Problem

Season subscriptions to Texas Ballet Theater, while strong, had stagnated. Subscribers were offered the same options year after year, purchase the entire season or purchase single tickets at a later date. Within performing arts, the prospective ticket buyer ranges from the devoted fan to the person that wouldn’t even consider attending. Marketing resources are precious, and we have to ensure they are being invested where they will yield the highest ROI.

The Solution

Using data to drive decisions, Hahahaha proposed restructuring subscriber packages to give existing patrons more choice and convince new people to become subscribers and single ticket purchasers. Beyond subscriptions, the campaign was designed to have a positive impact on single ticket purchases. Single ticket sales launched in the middle of the campaign on July 1^st, and within the first day, more than 3,500 individual tickets were sold.

The Approach

One of the largest components of our overall campaign was audience segmentation. To accomplish this, we appended audience data from TRG Arts – the Ballet’s consultant.

We divided the Ballet’s existing consumers into four distinct groups of:

1 – previous year subscribers
2 – lapsed subscribers
3 – multi-performance buyers
4 – single ticket buyers

By building package options, we were able to convince larger subsets of people to subscribe to Texas Ballet Theater.

We added historic subscribers and single ticket purchaser data to create persona profiles based on audience demographics and psychographics. We then built lookalike audiences based on the four groups and mapped each of the groups’ behaviors to identify purchasing trends across multiple digital channels. This gave us the insight needed to better understand their consumption habits and likelihood to purchase either a full or partial season or if they were likely to be a single-ticket purchaser.

Once we isolated recurring trends in the audience segments, we hyper-targeted the right ticket package to each group through paid digital media. Further, website retargeting enabled us to identify those that had expressed interest but not yet purchased and then retarget them with the TBT message most likely to yield a purchase.

Goals

Clearly brand the full 2019-2020 ballet season, while also promoting individual performances on their own merits.
Earn more new, full-season subscribers.
Define the main buyer personas and outline their purchase-decision journeys to understand their motivations for purchasing a full-season subscription and a single-performance ticket.
Outline a way to recapture people that did not renew their full-season subscriptions from the previous year.

Results

Paid media campaign delivered 1.8 million targeted impressions, and generated more than $40,000 in ticketed revenue in just a few weeks.
After only 2 weeks of a dedicated full-season campaign, subscription sales up by nearly 3% YOY.
New subscribers up by 45% YOY.
Exceeded last year’s launch-day single ticket sales by more than 10%.
Total ticket sales up 18.43% YOY, despite a later season launch than 2018.
During the campaign, overall website sales totaled $199,000.

February 14, 2020

Day in. Day out.

Telling the story of an elite collegiate baseball program is a large task – and it’s one that we help TCU Baseball accomplish every year. But, like every task that our team tackles, it’s best to take it one small step at a time, day in, and day out.

Since 2014, we’ve worked with the TCU baseball team and Head Coach Jim Schlossnagle to create a video that helps attract the best baseball players from across the nation and shares the team values. We work closely with Coach Schlossnagle to talk about team dynamics and the themes that the team will source for inspiration that year.

This year’s theme was “consistency of purpose” applied throughout all walks of life. Beyond being baseball players, each athlete is also a student, a child, a friend, an ambassador, a budding young professional – the list goes on. For Coach Schlossnagle, if all that the TCU baseball program focuses on is getting better on the field, then they’ve failed these young players as mentors. The video serves as a reminder that the team believes in producing well-rounded young men that are capable of accomplishing goals on the field, in the classroom, and in their personal and professional lives.

The video starts small, focused on feet on the floor – the first step anyone needs to take to accomplish their goals is getting out of bed and setting upon their course. The video gets wider and walks the central characters through multiple scenes of their everyday life – from bedroom, to the gym, walking around campus, getting food at the cafeteria, through practice on the field, and back into bed – a day in the life. The process repeats as the camera expands its view of the subjects, and then focuses on all of the little aspects the characters practice on the field as they build toward the big game, while intercutting more of their personal lives as students and young men.
The narrator speaks to the value of consistency, and honestly depicts that it’s an inglorious, repetitive process that gradually builds a person up to be better than they were yesterday, brick-by-brick.

“The goal isn’t to better than the other guy. The goal is to be better than myself. At least 1% better than I was yesterday. Day, after day, after day. Consistency isn’t exciting – it’s necessary.”

The entire video communicates the small steps that we each take toward bettering ourselves. The editing and musical elements speak to that consistent repetition as the scenes cut in and out and the beat builds – small, consistent stylistic elements that communicate the overall message of the video.