20 Years in 20 Minutes
Fall Capstone 2022
Personal Background
As a lifelong entrepreneur, and a career-long marketer and designer, my passion has always been to find innovative marketing and branding solutions. Throughout my college career, I have freelanced for various companies, providing my expertise in brand identity, marketing strategy, and design execution.
In 2019, I filed for an LLC, creating KW Branding and Design LLC, an agency focused on providing value through brand identity and design. I started with only a small handful of clients, working only 10 hours a week. Today, my agency bills over 60 hours a week, and has a multitude of contractors as well as myself, consulting nearly a dozen clients to ideate and execute strategy on their behalf.
Once I graduate from The University of Texas at Dallas, I intend to continue to grow the agency, hiring our first full-time employee in 2023.
Project Background
Chuck Eisemann, one of Richardson’s greatest Philanthropists created the Eisemann Edge Endowment in 2019 in order to encourage exploration of the intersection of arts and technology through experimental and emerging mediums in the arts. The 3D Studio at the University of Texas at Dallas was brought on as the inaugural recipient of a grant from the Eisemann Edge Endowment because of its existing and continued work in the exploration of technology and art.
The 3D Studio was invited to create a second project through the Eisemann Edge Endowment after the great success of the inaugural Eisemann Edge Endowment project “MOTHERBOARD,” a large-scale sculpture that celebrates Richardson’s rich history in technology, specifically through the important role that Richardson played in the creation and production of computer chips through companies such as Texas Instruments.
This year, the Eisemann Center celebrated its 20th anniversary. The Eisemann Center has been a staple of the Richardson community for the last 20 years, elevating not just the art that happens within its doors, but serving as a catalyst for the arts community of both the Richardson and greater North Texas area.
The 3D Studio was asked to create an immersive experience that celebrates the rich and unique history of the Eisemann Center, giving the community the opportunity to learn about and connect with the venue.
The primary goal of this project was to communicate the rich 20 years of history that the Eisemann Center has had. With nearly 22 years of content to use, due to the planning and construction era of the center, it was decided that the minimum amount of time needed to convey that lengthy history was at least 20 minutes.
Role + Team
Professor Andrew Scott and Professor Roxanne Minnish, the two lead professors on the project, brought me in to operate as both a student ambassador and marketing lead, working with both the executive and marketing teams from the Eisemann Center. I joined their bi-weekly meetings in April of 2022, continuing through the end of the project at the end of September. These meetings served several purposes, primarily as a way to give updates on the deliverables of the project, get feedback on creative content, and help coordinate resources for both the production and marketing of the project.
Throughout the 6 months that I was directly involved in the project, there was much collaboration between the 3D Studio marketing team and the team at the Eisemann Center. Primarily we worked with Marketing and Development manager Sarah Wagner, who has been with the center since it opened, and Kasha Watts, the former Marketing Coordinator.
Branding
With our team ready to go, we needed a name and logo for the show. The 3D Studio and Eisemann Center team came up with the title, 20 Years in 20 Minutes. My colleagues and I from the 3D Studio quickly began to ideate potential logo ideas, attempting to convey both the visual identity of the project, while also keeping the integrity of the Eisemann Center’s brand.
We ideated internally with a few options, ultimately deciding on the logo below.
The client ultimately thought that the logo was too trendy, and didn’t convey the Eisemann Center brand as well as it could have. Our team returned to the drawing board, making the logo a bit more corporate style, and adding the Eisemann logo mark to link the two brands together.
Planning, Mobilization, and Marketing
Our planning started early, recognizing the importance of this project and the role it plays within the greater 20-year celebration, we knew we had to knock the marketing out of the park. Our team at the 3D Studio put together our initial marketing plan to help take some of the legwork off of the busy folks at the Eisemann Center. We looked at other projection-mapped shows such as the infamous Immersive Van Gogh exhibit and other experiential exhibits and collectives such as Meow Wolf.
One thing we noticed is that much of the marketing for all of these exhibits rely on high-quality content to show the experience that the potential visitor gets with the purchase of a ticket. We also found that much of their marketing dollars went toward digital campaigns via social media, display ads, and YouTube. Our plan focused on two main pillars, community mobilization, and digital awareness.
Community Mobilization
The Eisemann Center is an incredible asset to the community, and one that has a lot of support from not just Richardson, but the greater North Texas area. Residents see the center as a sort of de-facto town square and gathering place. Capitalizing on this reputation, and the already large list of past visitors to the Eisemann Center was a great start for our strategy. On the other hand, since this project was put on by one of AHT’s labs, we found it important to mobilize both the School of Arts, Humanities and Technology community as well as the greater University of Texas at Dallas community at large.
These ideas manifested in an organic campaign of both media and email lists in order to activate the community and spread awareness of the event. We also used social media to let people know of the event via both the Eisemann Center’s social media and AHT’s social media.
AHT, UTD, and the Eisemann Center all sent emails to their email lists, resulting in many ticket purchases from community stakeholders. Another huge win for the exhibit was the media hype of the event, overall the exhibit was featured in:
Tapping into both the City of Richardson, The Eisemann Center and UTD’s media contacts and email lists allowed us to have an immense impact on low and no-cost marketing, spreading awareness of the exhibit. Through the email lists of each of these organizations, we were able to reach 30,000+ people with free advertising for the event.
Digital Awareness
In addition to our traditional media campaigns, we planned to use extensive digital media campaigns in order to build open the community awareness pillars above. Both The Eisemann Center and The School of Arts, Humanities and Technology utilized their organic social media platforms in order to hit another touchpoint of awareness in their existing pool of contacts to garner awareness.’
Our original plan had also intended to use paid social media and other digital ad platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels in order to boost awareness to new eyes that had not yet seen either AHT or The Eisemann Center in order to bring in new potential stakeholders to each organization. Visually appealing content was paramount to executing this strategy in order to capture the attention of anyone scrolling through the massive amounts of content on these platforms. We utilized a number of different strategies, including mocking up the experience digitally, as well as taking photos and videos during the initial setup of the experience in order to promote it.
However, this part of the strategy hit a major snag due to both budgetary and executory issues for both AHT and The Eisemann Center. Both institutions are arms of government entities that frown upon spending money via digital platforms to promote events. In addition, we found that the ticketing site that The Eisemann Center uses is unable to support UTM parameters, little bits of code that go into a URL to understand what ads perform best, and therefore we would be unable to effectively understand what strategies would work best and adapt as needed in order to bring in further ticket revenue.
Partnership
In order to supplement what was lost in the inability of us to be able to run digital ads, we sought out other potential partners in order to reach other diverse parts of our community and to bring in new potential stakeholders for both AHT and The Eisemann Center. Leveraging a relationship with Professor Andrew Scott, we were able to bring on AURORA, Dallas’ premiere organization for interactive art with a specialization in light and projection mapping. AURORA helped by promoting student artist profiles, as well as general content for the immersive experience.
Artistic Content
20 Years in 20 Minutes focused on the entire journey of the Eisemann Center through the lens of its key stakeholders and the incredible events that have happened both in its walls and in the community as an extension of the center. The LightSquad team sifted through nearly 25 years of footage in order to gain a deep and rich understanding of the center, its events, the people that made it happen, as well as the building itself. Through that process came 5 prevailing themes to explore through the immersive exhibit.
The Structure
This pillar focuses on the planning and building of the actual structure. It seeks to build a general understanding of the need for the center, the planning process, architectural philosophies, and the role it played as an anchor in the Galatyn Park development.
Community & Culture
This pillar provides a visual story of the Eisemann Center’s impact on the cultural fabric of the City of Richardson and the greater North Texas community through its programming and development. It seeks to build an understanding of the purpose of The Eisemann Center.
Pivotal Performances
Through this pillar, the audience is able to gain a sense of some of The Eisemann Center’s biggest performances including performances by big broadway stars such as Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin.
Community Stakeholders
This segment features interviews with many influential individuals in the project from the namesake of the center to city planners, mayors, donors, and arts advocates in the community. This section is the meat of the experience, allowing the 3D Studio to put an archival stake in the ground and capture much of the Eisemann Center’s 20-year history.
Signature Events
This section of the exhibit features some of the signature events and milestones of The Eisemann Center such as the ribbon cutting, opening nights, and 10-year anniversary. This section gives the viewer a look into past important moments in the rich history of the Eisemann Center.
Once these pillars were established, the team began to sift through the archives to create a cohesive story through the lens of each theme. Each editor worked on their own each week to create a new piece for the segment, followed by a deep critique of each piece at the end of the week. This resulted in well over 200 minutes of footage, and nearly 750 GB of storage used for the final piece.
The final piece was woven together through an intensive feedback process that ensured smooth transitions between themes, a lack of duplicate content in any of the experience, and a consistent color and audio portfolio.
Implementation
Once the final bit of artistic content was wrapped up, we began physical implementation in the event space. Professor Scott led the implementation effort with heavy student involvement. The team worked closely over about a 10-day period to set up equipment alongside vendor Lightware Labs, integrate the artistic content via projection mapping onto the walls, and ensure the custom soundscape was well-engineered.
Once the projections were mostly implemented, we were able to capture some great content for social media to better represent the experience that a person would have while in the exhibit. This content was used throughout the month that the exhibit was live to promote the event.
Successes and Failures
Overall this project was well received by the community. The opening night of the immersive experience was well attended by key stakeholders in the community such as Chuck and Ann Eisemann, much of the City Council, and City Manager’s Office, and other major donors and arts organizers in the area. The content served as an anchor point in The Eisemann Center’s 20-year history, as a point of reflection, and forward-thinking for the future of the Center.
With that said, the experience did lean towards being hard to market due to its very niche and specific topic set. While the history of The Eisemann Center is rich, the content is hard to relate to unless you already are invested in the center. In addition, we were inhibited by many of the restrictions on where funds could be spent to get the word out about the exhibit, limiting our reach into the community that may not already be involved with The Eisemann Center.
Overall, however, I think this project was a great exercise in large-scale creative practice. This project took a mountain of work that was created bit by bit, pebble by pebble. The team that worked on this project worked tirelessly to create a piece that would make all stakeholders proud, and I believe that it did that.
Special Acknowledgements
A special thank you to Professor Andrew Scott for his continued support throughout my 4.5 years at The University of Texas at Dallas. My very first class at UT Dallas was with Professor Scott, and I am grateful to be ending it with him through this project.
To Professor Roxanne Minnish, thank you for your guidance throughout my tenure at UT Dallas from my Design I class, all the way through my introduction to the 3D Studio and LightSquad, and throughout this project.
To Bruce MacPherson, Sarah Wagner, Kasha Watts, and the rest of the staff at The Eisemann Center thank you for your support and collaboration throughout this project. It was a great honor to work with individuals that care so much about the arts in our community.
