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  • Brand Strategy
  • campaign management
  • digital marketing
  • eCommerce Development
  • graphic design
  • Rebranding

Con
cept

Rebranding The Gate Theatre

The Gate Theatre has been at the forefront of Irish Theatre entertainment for almost a century and has gained an international reputation for works produced at home and toured internationally. From a brand perspective however the Gate had a range of logos in operation, multiple design styles and no consistency across its various forms of communication.

This was causing an issue for the Gate in communicating to their audience and brand recognition as over the years so many variants of the brand existed in every nook and cranny of the Theatre. They needed a cohesive new brand to represent this new direction.

Discovery Process

The first step in any piece of work is fully understanding our client and looking at things from their point of view. As part of the Brand discovery programme we uncover the history of our clients, how they currently communicate and what they want to communicate on in the future. The findings from the Brand Discovery Programme we conducted help guide and inform us on the direction for all future pieces of communication for the Gate Theatre. The rich history of the Gate also gave us a great starting point to investigate and ultimately lead us to a final solution for the new brand and direction for the Gate.

The solution for the new brand came from looking to the past. A variety of initial ideas were tabled to figure out the new direction but the end result was chosen from taking inspiration from the historical background of the Gate. When the Gate theatre was founded in 1928 there was a spirit of innovation and experimentation which offered Dublin audiences an introduction to the world of European and American theatre.

The Red Shoes - Rebranding the Gate Theatre

Visual Language

We aimed to recapture that history and craft a new brand that reference the rebirth in that spirit of innovation and experimentation. The new brand is literally the stacked characters of the Gate with the new letterforms breaking out from the other characters.

Gal
lery.

The new re-crafted brand of the Gate Theatre represented all its historical elements and the spirit of the establishment. We achieved our project objectives, overwhelmed our clients and exceeded their expectations. The new rebrand showed cohesiveness and elegance across all communication pieces only fitting for such an internationally renowned Irish theatre.

For each production included in the 2017-18 calendar, izest worked closely with the team at The Gate to create fresh and exciting visuals to promote the shows. This involved coming up with concepts for the show, directing photoshoot for productions, creating a visual style for each show, creating adverts, designing and printing posters, programmes, flyers, signage, updates to the website as well as many other design and communication related items. The Gate had it’s first sell out show in years with The Great Gatsby. izest created a full brand experience within the theatre with signage and visual elements to add to the 1920’s nostalgia.

The new Gate Theatre brand and programme was unveiled at a launch party in the Gate. izest Marketing was deeply involved in this Brand Activation, from the layout of the room, visuals and atmospherics to copies of ‘The Great Gatsby’ to celebrate the first production on the new calendar. The night was a huge success with the new brand and design very warmly welcomed, and the new productions causing quite a stir.

The new Gate website was created to allow audiences to browse the new season and give an insight into the gate and the new productions. The website offers users a much improved user journey through the productions landing page and onto a new full integrated booking system and purchase. The website styling has been created to flow from the brand visual language, and creates consistency across the brand.

The Paid Search Strategy

izest Marketing also took control of the Gate’s Google Ads account as part of the dedicated post launch support. The Search Marketing team at izest restructured their PPC Strategy with a new and more targeted campaign that had an objective to increase paid website traffic. Almost immediately there was a significant jump in online bookings from Google Ad click throughs. Within one month the results were impressive, with a substantial surge in online booking revenue due to a 15% increase in Google Ad traffic.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past…"

The new direction of the Gate theatre, backed by a new identity has seen a significant surge in audience numbers, with the first sell out production of the Gate in decades with ‘The Great Gatsby’, followed by the one of the later shows in the season, ‘The Snapper’ which ran from June to September of 2018.

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