Ticketmaster Launches Fan-Friendly New Tech, Revived Brand
I joined Ticketmaster in late 2017 as Creative Director at an exciting time for the brand. After 40 years in ticketing — and often receiving fan and artist wrath — C-Suite leadership saw an opportunity to rehab the Ticketmaster brand based on the success of several new digital products, specifically Verified Fan, which protected fans from online scalpers and bots.
Reporting to the CMO, I led a rebrand workshop to define and document a new, fan-centric Ticketmaster brand, then pulled together a content strategy for projecting that brand across channels and user experiences, from email and SEM campaigns to blog and social, web and app shopping UX, live events, mass advertising, and more. Our strategy hinged on collaborating closely with talent and their brand cache, and showing the world that Ticketmaster was a fan, too. This meant editorial content — from artist and athlete interviews to City Guides in partnership with The Infatuation, SEO-driven bios, and social media-friendly roundups of events news. This meant on-the-ground social and blog coverage from NHL press day, music festivals, the Super Bowl, and beyond. It also meant paid advertising campaigns focused on the fan experience, specifically “Live Only Happens Once",” or LOHO, a multi-channel UGC video push. Together, this blitz led to a 23% increase in brand sentiment — a staggering achievement for Ticketmaster. Our editorial content, including City Guides and Arena Guides, also attributed to an 11% increase in last-minute ticket sales.
The team also spearheaded the creative effort to develop and launch the “Ticketmaster Touring Milestone Awards” to recognize the artists behind the top global tours. This was coordinated in partnership with artists like Beyonce, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Foo Fighters and others (see below — click thru the carousel).
Based on this success, I was soon promoted to the Head of Brand Creative & Content Strategy role, which expanded my scope to include the UX for our B2C and B2B app and web experiences. We dug into the existing data and decided to focus on a refresh of the Ticketmaster B2C app, introducing new features like “Favorite”-ing artists, teams, or events, which provided customers with push messages related to new events from that talent. We also led a refresh of the web experience for B2B customers.
