By 2010, Dixon Schwabl had already had lots of experience launching events and campaigns that included multiple phases and different mediums to bring about awareness. We often did this for clients, but every now and then we put together a series of events featuring the businesses and artists in the Greater Rochester area. Before I was hired at DS they had already done a couple of events in the series, notably one called Horses on Parade.
The idea behind Horses on Parade was that local businesses would sponsor a “horse”, an artists would design a horse statue that embodied the spirit of the local business, the artists would take an existing fiberglass horse statue and modify it to bring their vision to life. The final art pieces would be displayed in an art gallery, then they would be installed inside or around the business for the community to look at.
Benches on Parade followed that process with the difference that not only would the artists be creating a unique piece for the business, but it had the added challenge of making art that can be sat on and interacted with.
During the planning of Benches on Parade we broke our timeline up into major milestones. First, we planned on awareness for the project—getting business on board and looking for local artists to sign up to work on their bench. Second, we planned PR around the reveal of the completed benches and a time period where people could come see all the benches in one place. Finally, we planned on making a book and changing the website to include a photo submission process to bring about more community involvement.
The awareness stage included a website that featured the timeline for all of the important dates around the event. There was a blog to share more personal stories and reminders around the success of our previous campaigns. Most importantly, we highlighted sponsors and made sure businesses and artists could sign up for their parts.
The event phase was where our PR experts got to shine. They had a reveal event held in a building downtown where all of the benches fit into one large room. People involved in the project got a sneak peek.
During the process of moving these benches onto the event floor, each bench got taken into a photo studio where they were shot at an angle for use in print and web collateral.
After all of the benches had been moved and installed to their final destinations, we shifted gears to help people find and get to experience the benches around the city. We made changes to the website to include a map of all of the benches and their locations so you could hunt down one you want to visit. We added the ability to log into the Drupal-based website and upload your own photos. A collaboration with Kodak, one of the biggest bench sponsors, ran a contest where you could win a camera after sharing a photo of the bench in the wild.
In addition to the website updates, we created a book that featured the photos of each bench and a description written by our copywriters. Portions of the book sales were given to local community art spaces.
What I Did
I was involved in developing the website along with our co-op-turned-employee, Zach Horton. Most of the site was built with HTML, CSS, and PHP, but we eventually added Drupal to help manage users, photo uploading, and publishing blog posts and photos to the gallery.
Fin
In 2010, we had a small social media integration with Facebook, but I would bet that if we did this today a lot of the social engagement would have shifted over to Instagram and the TikToks and Snapchats we eventually worked with in later campaigns.
If you drive around Rochester, NY you can still see fiberglass horses, benches, and even golf balls. We’re not the only city that has done this kind of event as you might find painted pianos or other animals around town, but I remember feeling a great buzz while it was happening. I liked that local artists got to show off their talents and that the businesses in our community came together to support them.