Gene Yraola

#IntoTheGarden Photo Series

- Over 300 million social impressions since inception in 2015

- MSG's most engaged social media content series

- Amplified across official artist/athlete channels, sports leagues, and media accounts

Surprisingly, for the World's Most Famous Arena, there was a severe lack of in-venue branding and aesthetics for distinguishing the arena from its competition on social media.  Inspired in part by what I was able to achieve with MSG's smaller sister venue, The Beacon Theatre, I chose MSG's freight elevator to be the venue's signifying trademark on social media. 

For this project I would coordinate talent, arrange the photographers (sometimes handling the shoots myself), publishing the images on MSG's social platforms, and later working to garner social shares from related properties (ie. official artist accounts, sports leagues, record labels, etc).

I orchestrated the start of the series on November 2015, first with popular NBA and WWE superstars to initially gain the buy-in from the non-stop influx of celebrities walking "Into The Garden." 

Amongst the talent to partake in this series included artists such as Beyonce, Kobe Bryant, Adele, Cardi B, Little Mix, Cee Lo Green, Maren Morris, WWE Superstars, internationally known boxers and MMA fighters such as Connor McGregor and Georges St-Pierre, and social media influencers across Twitch and Instagram.

The #IntoTheGarden photo series would go on to become MSG' most seen and engaged posts across all of its social media platforms all-time and become an established tradition for athletes and talent making their way to MSG, far extending the brand’s reach into social media-celebrity culture.

#UpAtTheBeacon Photo Series

- OVER 100 MILLION SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS SINCE INCEPTION IN 2014

- DROVE CHANNEL’S GROWTH BY 16x

- AMPLIFIED ACROSS OFFICIAL ARTIST CHANNELS, RECORD LABELS, AND INFLUENCER/MEDIA ACCOUNTS

The Beacon Theatre is one of MSG's most historic properties but in 2014 the venue was fledgling in online sales due to the lack of an online/social media identity to compete with other venues of similar size for referral traffic and in some cases leverage for booking.

In an effort to modernize the Beacon Theatre's digital presence, particularly on social, I turned to one of the venue's most iconic features - its vintage backstage elevator and positioned it as a "digital photo booth."  Images and video from inside the elevator would help distinguish the vaudeville theatre from its competitors and become the venue's signifying social trademark. Since conceiving the #UpAtTheBeacon photo series in November 2014, I've overseen the coordination of photographers (at times photographing talent myself), securing of talent, the distribution of assets on social media, and soliciting social shares from influencer accounts.

The series has gone on to feature marquee talent such as Will Smith, Bruce Springsteen, P Diddy, and countless more.

The series would also become the venue's most engaged content on social media, averaging 500% higher engagements and impressions over other content on the same channel.  The series would also spearhead the growth of the venue's social channels by 16x.  Furthermore, content from the photo series has later been repurposed as marketing collateral for future visits by those artists.

Most importantly, the spike in social media attention for the venue lead to a 40% YoY bump in online-attributable ticket sales directly identifiable from traffic driven from the Beacon Theatres’ reinvigorated social channels.

- OVER 2000 SUBMISSIONS

- CORRELATED TO OVER 3000 PRE-ORDERS AND #1 CHART POSITION ON SOUNDSCAN

In 2013, I empowered the artistic community of Tumblr and fans of Icelandic post-classical composer Olafur Arnalds to play a part in his major label debut album "For Now I Am Winter."  As part of a special partnership with Tumblr, I orchestrated the submission of user-generated content inspired by the album tracklist to be turned into a physical book provided to those who pre-ordered the album.  Working together with Olafur Arnalds, a number of incredible art pieces were curated for the book, which would later be repurposed on social media for additional content in support of the album.

The digital UGC-to-physical program helped the album reach #1 on the classical Soundscan charts.

2013 Mercury Classics / Universal Music Group

(USA) Packaging and Creative Direction / Layout: Gene Yraola (Universal)

Production: Rafaela Hernandez (Universal)

Designed the “4 Play” mixtape album packaging for up and coming hip-hop artist G4$HI (now known as GASHI).

Cover was later repurposed for various promo materials for his first North American tour in 2014.

Additional assets based on the album packaging were produced for social media on sites such as NOISY, Complex, and Spotify.