CAMPAIGN + communications STRATEGY

freelance project for walking cinema productions

Challenge

Develop and execute a full marketing and campaign strategy for The Fillmore Eclipse, an immersive theater production telling the story of African and Japanese American families who lost their homes during San Francisco's 1950s Urban Renewal campaign. The goal: sell out 13 shows with two weeks of lead time, a $1,000 media budget, and no existing social media presence.

solution

Audience Definition: I defined the primary audience broadly: culturally curious San Franciscans, with three high-value subsets: people interested in local SF history, African American community members, and Japanese American community members. This segmentation directly shaped both channel strategy and content approach.

Owned Channel buildout: I created an Instagram presence from scratch and developed a content strategy built around three distinct pillars: behind-the-scenes content featuring the cast and production process to build emotional investment; historical context posts with archival photographs and educational content about the Fillmore neighborhood to demonstrate cultural credibility; and high-impact promotional materials to drive ticket consideration. I worked and directed a graphic designer but also handled creative production where I could myself, applying my design background to create more assets when needed.

Earned Media Strategy: I identified local media and community channels as the highest-leverage opportunity given the budget constraints, and built a targeted outreach strategy accordingly. I secured coverage in the SF Chronicle and a feature interview with the Nichi Bei, the Japantown community newspaper, which provided direct access to one of our highest-value audience segments with zero media spend. I also negotiated placement on SF Funcheap and DotheBay, two high-traffic local event aggregator platforms with established engaged audiences, using their reach to compensate for our limited paid budget.

Paid Social with AI-Assisted Optimization: I ran targeted Facebook and Instagram campaigns, using AI tools including ChatGPT and Claude to develop and rapidly iterate ad copy variations, compressing what would typically be a multi-week creative testing process into days. I monitored performance daily, optimizing targeting parameters, creative, and copy based on real-time engagement and conversion data. This data-driven, iterative approach ensured every dollar of the $1,000 budget was working as hard as possible.

Result

Every show sold out. Two additional shows were added to meet demand. Total ticket sales exceeded 750, generating $50,000 in revenue, which was a 50x return on the media budget. The production's success has prompted the company to explore expanding the show to other cities.

Beyond the numbers, the campaign demonstrated that a disciplined, insight-led strategy can outperform a larger budget deployed without strategic rigor. By concentrating resources at the right moments in the consumer journey, by building community credibility through earned media, emotional connection through owned content, and conversion through optimized paid social, the campaign punched significantly above its weight class.

expertise

Full-funnel campaign strategy and execution. Audience segmentation and channel strategy under resource constraints. AI-assisted creative development and optimization. Earned media strategy. Data-driven performance optimization. The ability to move from strategic planning to tactical execution and drive measurable business outcomes independently.

Instagram Story I created as a boosted post

Example of Boosted Post on DotheBay.com

Sold Out Shows on FuncheapSF.com

Review from the SF Chronicle