On November 15, 2016, WeWork in Washington DC hosted a world premiere of a major modern dance work, “Lost in the City”, choreographed by the famed Company Danzante. WeWork relied on NPAFE to produce the entire event as part of NPAFE’s “DanceFactor” series, so that WeWork could identify new customers for its shared workspace offering.
Why Did WeWork Choose NPAFE?
NPAFE forms business-performing arts partnerships that are as valuable to corporate sponsors as they are to performing artists. NPAFE achieves this by enabling companies sponsoring specific performing arts events to reach the artists’ loyal audiences, win that audience loyalty for the sponsors’ own brands, and look very good to everyone every step of the way.
NPAFE identifies the demographics of those audiences beforehand, making it possible for sponsor brands to stand out at performance time with prospects that count the most. These audiences are uniformly professional, middle and high income, with disposable time and money, keen to know which brands are supporting the performing arts they love, and much more inclined than any other audience to trust sponsoring brands.*
While many major and lesser-known brands believe the performing arts deserve backing, their corporate philanthropy is mostly directed not to performing artists and instead to where they perform, venues big and small like the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and their large and smaller equivalents in cities across the United States.
That is a major opportunity missed. Audiences are in the room to see performing artists they love, not the place where they are performing. This is especially the case with site-specific performances like the NPAFE’s DanceFactor, where the event literally takes place at the time and place a sponsor chooses — often at the sponsor’s own location as was the case with WeWork on Nov. 15.
Until NPAFE began curating performing artists and their audiences, it had not been possible for marketers to know which artists were drawing in great audiences, when they were doing it, or how to tap that audience loyalty. To be able to amplify marketing campaigns with this tool is a major resource for marketers — available only from NPAFE.
What Happened?
This logic — reaching a curated high-end audience at a time and place of its own choosing — convinced WeWork, the world’s largest shared workspace company, to rely on NPAFE to position it as host for the DanceFactor world premiere of Company Danzante’s “Lost in the City” on Nov. 15 at WeWork’s Washington, DC Dupont Circle location.
NPAFE promoted the event to a carefully targeted audience that loves modern dance. These were people highly likely to be excited about seeing the special Company Danzante premiere performance, and — most importantly — at the same time to be impressed by the architecturally- and functionally-unique WeWork shared space location. This was precisely the new prospect demographic that WeWork wanted to reach with its own value proposition.
As is always the case, NPAFE created and distributed marketing collateral, promoted the intimate, invitation-only small-space event, organized the dance production, ran the PR campaign, and got the right people in the room. Targeted number: 50 new people who had not seen WeWork before; 73 came. Prep time was 4 weeks, start to finish. All within budget.
What Did the Audience Think?
More than half of the people who attended became new WeWork prospects. Better still, testimonials were highly favorable to WeWork, for example:
“I absolutely LOVED the performance,” emailed audience member Dana Mekler from Ashoka the next day, “and doing it interactively in that beautiful open space was special. The dancers were wonderful and the choreography made me think about the construct of ‘work’ and how liberating it is to break down the norms of dress and behavior to let creativity flow. I also really appreciate the model of partnering up with businesses to bring the arts to the office space … [and] am glad WeWork is leading the way in that effort.”
Bottom Line
WeWork looked great, reached a market that it wanted, and has asked NPAFE for more.
