WQXR
Campaigns

Agency: eyeball
Role: Executive Creative Director

At Eyeball I worked with WQXR on marketing to attract a younger, more diverse audience to classical radio. Our irreverent multi-year campaigns helped them become the leading classical radio station in the U.S.

The first campaign celebrated "Beethoven Awareness Month" by flipping expectations and recasting the composer as a modern cultural icon.

Playing counter to stodgy perceptions of classical music, the campaign began with wild postings featuring an image inspired by Shepard Fairey's iconic style and the words OBEY-THOVEN. Shepard had designed a poster for my company Expansion Team and he gave a magnanimous nod of approval to our campaign, remarking to the New York Times, "of course I support classical music, and this homage to my work made me smile." The campaign pushed WQXR to the #1 ratings slot for classical radio and New York Magazine’s positioned the campaign at the apex of “Highbrow / Brilliant” in their Approval Matrix.

Two years later, we flipped the campaign and covered OBEYTHOVEN art with Mozart graffiti. Once it got attention, we replaced the posters with "I AM A DEUS."

The I AM A DEUS campaign captured the composer's rebellious spirit while delivering a bold message for WQXR. Along with wild postings, wall murals, digital banners, and a TV spot, we developed and managed an extensive social media campaign and launched a “Life with Wolfie” Tumblr—a fictional parenting blog penned by little Wolfgang's overbearing stage dad Leopold. Once again, WQXR received praise from The New York Times and New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix.

We then reimagined J.S. Bach as a psychedelic rock god, underscoring the mind-expanding nature of his music.

The campaign promoted a 30-day celebration of the father of western music, culminating in a 24-hour live performance of his complete organ works. Our striking key art was filled with hidden details and references. and became the basis for our wild postings, print signage, street art, digital ads, sticker sheets, and a TV spot.

To evoke the transformative power of classical music, we created a series of audio spots to transform everyday sounds into recognizable classics, literally "auto-tuning" the city.

I called on my friend Flip Baber to bring our concepts to life. Flip has many musical talents and a deep love of classical music, but it's his rare combination of synesthesia and perfect pitch that gives him an advantage over almost every other human I know for a project like this. His attention to detail shows in pieces like "Jogging," which we wanted to take place in springtime Central Park. Flip spent days researching bird migration to make sure that our educated audience wouldn't call us out on using the wrong songbirds to recreate Vivaldi's melody.

One of the last projects I led for WQXR at Eyeball was to create a campaign for the station’s musical instruments drive.

I worked with my wife, Tatiana Arocha, to make an animated spot and poster that was displayed around the city and at brand partner Sam Ash Music. The campaign was covered by The New York Times and was very successful, collecting over 6000 instrument donations from 2014-2015.