The goal was to sell out a new Broadway-style run of La Bohème for the San Francisco Opera. The challenges were huge: The run was three weeks instead of three days, and the venue was the Orpheum Theatre, which had twice as many seats as the War Memorial Opera House.

This meant that in order to fill seats, we needed to reach a broader, younger audience—without alienating loyal opera-goers. The campaign did so with headlines that piqued interest in the plot and a visual style that was true to the opera’s opulent history. And the humor helped intimidated newcomers see that opera was not as stuffy as they thought.

Not only was La Bohème a sellout, 67 percent of the attendees had never been to an opera before. The average age of the audience dropped from 55 to 35. The success was so dramatic, it was reported nationally in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and on NPR.