Opportunity
Plans were advancing for Sarasota Orchestra's future Music Center featuring the Florida Gulf Coast’s first concert hall purpose-built for acoustic music. As stakeholders learned more about the project, a gap in understanding emerged: most people simply did not understand what differentiated a concert hall from any other performance space.
No existing collateral explained it clearly and, with a capital campaign on the horizon, Sarasota Orchestra needed to educate patrons and donors about the cultural asset it sought to build.
Approach
A community survey established that acoustics-related messaging was one of the strongest drivers of interest in the Music Center project. We leaned into the power of video to bring an abstract concept of concert hall acoustics to life, making the complex and invisible science of sound easily understandable for a general audience.
We developed a detailed creative brief drawing on historical and technical materials provided by the project’s acoustician, then worked with and creative motion graphics firm to produce the animation. From initial storyboards through multiple animation phases, we stayed close to both the production team and the client to manage complexity and maintain fidelity to the Orchestra’s brand and Music Center messaging.
We launched the finished video, “Inside the Sound: A Concert Hall,” to coincide with an announcement of the Music Center’s design architect, leveraging a moment of visibility to generate momentum.
Impact
The video now lives on Sarasota Orchestra’s YouTube channel and Music Center landing page, where it continues to reach new audiences as the project advances.
Sarasota Orchestra donors and patrons responded with unsolicited praise, describing the video as “fantastic” and “superb” — qualitative evidence of genuine community engagement. The CEO confirmed the video filled a communications gap the board had long identified, calling it exactly the kind of visual aid leadership had been requesting. It remains an integral part of the Orchestra’s communications toolkit, supporting patron, donor and media relations, and was adopted by the acoustician as part of his curriculum at Yale University.
