COAL + ICE at the Kennedy Center

In 2022, Two Tigers Production was hired by Asia Society to lead the communications campaign for the COAL + ICE exhibition and events series at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. We built a team of five graphic designers, a social media lead, and two local marketing experts to provide a multi-pronged promotional strategy including traditional and digital advertising, creative marketing tactics, and a robust social media campaign.

The following are samples from our campaign.

Traditional Ads

The COAL + ICE traditional marketing plan ranged from Out of Home placements to radio ads, and even old school pavement pounding with postcard distribution.

One of the issues this project has regularly faced is communicating that it is both an immersive exhibition and a series of events. In DC we addressed this by utilizing the city’s digital ad boards located in bus shelters and the Metro. We created a uniform template that worked for both, and the programming flexibility allowed us to feature a rotating selection of images of the exhibition, as well as highlight specific events. With over 20 iterations, this was no small feat for our team of graphic designers, but with just a few edits, the event ads could also serve as Instagram stories, and work as signage on the Kennedy Center campus. The focus on public transit in our ad placement also aligned with the message of the exhibition.

Social Media & Digital/Online Ads

COAL + ICE takes place once every few years, so one of the first tasks for Two Tigers was to reinvigorate the exhibition’s long-dormant social media account. We worked with our social media lead and team of graphic designers to create a more visually cohesive online presence, and diversify the type of content being posted. Most of the account’s followers were located in the Bay Area due to the location of the previous exhibition, so we began building a local D.C.-based following, while also understanding that much of our reach would require reposts from the organizing entities (Asia Society and the Kennedy Center), partnerships with accounts with larger followings (both organic and sponsored), and boosted posts.

We also worked with Hyperallergic and the Washington Post to create digital ad packages for the exhibition, and targeted the Washington, D.C. audience through sponsored posts with hyperlocal websites and social posts.

Creative Marketing

Climate Posterator

Two Tigers facilitated the development and dissemination of the Climate Posterator, a tool and platform giving audiences both in the exhibition and online the ability to create posters about the climate crisis using a selection of photographs from the exhibition. Completed posters were displayed on a rotating projection inside the exhibition at the Kennedy Center. We loved how this participatory element brought new voices directly into the exhibition space. We worked with the exhibition photographers to ensure their comfortability with the tool, and then focused on building outreach partnerships to make sure the Posterator was shared far and wide. Toward this end, we partnered with Amplifier Art to co-present the Posterator and a related poster design prize, supported by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. We also engaged influencers active in the art, social justice, and youth climate spheres, including Alex Albadree, Johanna Turuno, and Alexandria Villaseñor. We received over 1000 submissions from 37 countries. The online gallery is on view here.

The Climate Posterator was designed by Raoul Gottschling.

Washington, D.C. Community Partners

In collaboration with Exactly Agency, we built a network of partnerships with a wide range of artistic, environmental, and service organizations. While COAL + ICE was on view at the Kennedy Center, these organizations concurrently presented climate-related programs across all eight wards and the broader DMV region. Partnerships were activated with the goal of building awareness of COAL + ICE through mutual amplification. We distributed a map (printed and digital) and a social media toolkit to facilitate cross promotion.

Learn more about our partnership building efforts in San Francisco and New York here.

#ReframeClimate

Two Tigers and Exactly Agency collaborated to facilitate #ReframeClimate in partnership with Dysturb, Magnum Foundation, and the Georgetown Business Improvement District. The #ReframeClimate campaign involves installing large-scale wheat-pasted murals featuring documentary photography of climate change across the globe on high-visibility public facades around Georgetown, bringing the climate conversation out of the tent and into the streets. More on ReframeClimate is available here.