Project

Semester Project Overview: Pennsylvania Ballet ( http://www.paballet.org/)

(A PDF of the brief is available here: MIS 3504 PA Ballet project brief )

Your semester project is for Pennsylvania Ballet (PAB), one of the premier ballet companies in the United States. Like many cultural institutions, PAB is challenged with engaging new audiences and growing their base of subscribers and donors. They have difficulty communicating the experience of attending a performance and remaining culturally relevant. In the words of David Gray, the Executive Director, “We are offering a 19^th Century product to a 21^st Century consumer.”

PAB has a website but it is not as interactive as they would like and does not effectively convey the content of their programming. They also use social media extensively and they are increasingly shifting their marketing to online channels. They generate significant data through ticket sales, but they are not actively analyzing or using that data.

This semester, we will be working with them to use technology to improve their customer experience and increase engagement.

Three project areas of focus are as follows:

Developing a Digital Customer Experience
1. Improving their web experience
2. Increasing the range of content available
3. Creating a more interactive site to better convey their programming and improve performance selection and ticket sales.
Developing an App to serve as a Digital Companion to attending performances
1. Creating a digital “Playbill”
2. Providing a new channel for customers to engage performance materials and related content
3. Creating end-to-end infrastructure to manage the experience from ticket purchase to planning events before, during and after the performance
Improving their digital marketing strategy and process
1. Implementing online marketing
2. Integrating social media
3. Capturing and analyzing online data to improve organizational learning and to better understand audience needs and preferences
4. Streamlining the management and maintenance of digital marketing channels