My work for Teatro Colón

For over a year and a half, I was the Digital Strategist of Colón Theater of Bogotá, Colombia’s only national theater, meaning that it is State managed. It is also the biggest production center for arts and music in the country.

During my time, I was in charge of over 45 different campaigns for shows as diverse as opera, classical music, ballet, contemporary dance, theater, and even a dramaturgy championship that included live wrestling on stage. Likewise, I was in charge of promoting the Theater as such, inviting the audience to guided tours and to the Theater’s own artistic programs that included concerts, workshops, talks, and more.

My job was to create a campaign that would give each show a particular identity and language for its promotion, based on the ideas that the director and the creative team of each one already had and the materials they provided for the communications teams.

With the campaign idea and together with the designers and the videographer, we developed promotional content to be delivered through our social media channels and our website, which I also managed and worked with as a community manager.

Here are some of my favorite campaigns and posts:

• Campaign for El Crimen del Siglo (Crime of the Century):

This play is about a historical event in Colombia known as ‘El Bogotazo’, a period of violent civil unrest that followed the murder of the liberal leader and presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948. The play was premiered 70 years after the real events happened.

Taking advantage of the fact that it was a historical event, I reached out to Bogotá’s Archive and some museums to find pictures and audiovisual material from the time. The whole campaign revolved around reconstructing the life and mood of the city in the 1940s, inviting the audience on a trip to the past and as a setup for what people would see on stage. The campaign inspired a lot of nostalgia in the audience and it resulted in the show being sold out and opening new dates due to high demand.

Here you can find a photo album published on the exact date of ‘El Bogotazo’ along with some facts about the tragic events that occurred (taken from Teatro Colón’s official Facebook).

• Meme style posting:

Given that the Theater audience was greatly in the 25 to 34 years old segment, I created meme-style posts and also took advantage of internet-related celebrations.

For the show Poesía erótica para ser compartida (Erotic poetry to be shared), a poetry recital in which all poems had erotic content, I seized the opportunity of celebrating ‘World Emoji Day’ and created this piece (taken from Teatro Colón’s Facebook): a highly flirtatious Whatsapp conversation between the two actors of the recital that included a small excerpt of one of the poems.

Likewise for Zaperoco, a musical and dance show from the eastern plains of Colombia, we created this dance tutorial that intended to expose how complicated the dance of these typical rhythms is and how skilled the dancers were, inviting the audience to the show.

• ‘We hear our audience’ style of posting:

Besides being the digital strategist, I was also the community manager in charge of all audience interactions with the Theater’s different social networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Being able to be in contact with the audience helped me create insights for the communication campaigns and I learned it was important for our followers to feel heard.

Therefore, I created posts in which I compiled comments from our audience related to our different shows and shared when they liked a certain play or concert or if they were demanding the opening of new dates, etc.

In this piece (taken from Teatro Colón’s Facebook) for Shakespeare Enamorado (Shakespeare In Love) I asked followers if they wanted the comeback of this play, given that we were planning a new season of presentations after the play’s premiere on the last year. The new season was a total success in sales.