The Social Crew
Creative Project Manager for The Social Crew, Madison O’Nions, used Humanitix to host a sold-out 6-month immersive art exhibition.
Madison was looking for a user-friendly ticketing platform with a sessional calendar that could handle huge volumes of traffic and bookings for the high-profile artist, Rone. Find out how she and her team went about pulling together this exhibition from start to finish, and how she used Humanitix to sell out her event.
“When we were looking for a ticketing platform for Rone, Humanitix stood out because it's a user-friendly platform, and as a social enterprise, it aligned with the values of The Social Crew as well as the artist. Because it was an Australian company with local account managers as well as in-house developers, it was a no-brainer to work together for that responsive support.”
Madison O'Nions
The Social Crew
How Madison O'Nions uses Humanitix
Tixel integration
“We had over 22,000 people on the waitlist and we resold about 3,900 tickets. It was one of the highest selling events Tixel has had on their platform within the last 12 months. Humanitix’s Tixel integration was amazing - it all worked so smoothly and took away the need for manual work. We're really pleased with these results!”
01/03
How Madison O'Nions uses Humanitix
Ticket swapping
“Our biggest concern from the previous Empire exhibition was ticket swapping and the high volume of requests that were manually executed. Using Humanitix’s ticket swapping tool made the process super seamless, especially as we had such a high volume of requests. It only took us a few clicks to swap tickets to another session, and a new ticket was generated on the spot.”
02/03
How Madison O'Nions uses Humanitix
Human support
“One of the major deciding factors in switching to Humanitix was that it’s an Australian company. Because you’re local, you're there for us when we need help on something. Humanitix has been super responsive which we've absolutely appreciated throughout the whole period of working with the team.”
03/03
Q&A with Madison O'Nions
Tell us about TIME - Rone’s latest immersive exhibition.
Rone is an artist from Melbourne - probably one of the most renowned mural artists in Australia. His work has progressed from the streets in early 2000s to ‘mural meets installation’ exhibition work. Nostalgia and the fleeting nature of the works disappearing over time is at the core of Rone’s work.
The TIME exhibition was presented within the long-abandoned third-floor of Flinders Street Station. Each room transformed into a vignette of post-WWII Melbourne, inspired by the working-class immigrants of the 1950s. Eleven rooms were adorned with Rone’s haunting signature murals and captured the spirit of the city’s industrious past while offering glimpses of the station’s role as a once-glorious hub of work, learning and social life.
What was the role of The Social Crew in this exhibition?
Our Creative Director, Belinda Collins, had worked closely with Rone for 5 years as lead producer on his major exhibitions to elevate the scale of his immersive exhibitions for a broader audience. Before we started the project, we established financial feasibility and secured the location for Rone. We worked closely with the Rone and a team of builders, and set dressers, and scenic painters to provide the support they needed when creating the concepts. Additionally, we managed the entire project end-to-end including creative and technical production, operations, marketing, comms, ticketing and visitor experience. We had the pleasure of leading a team of 200+ people, across all areas of the show.
“In this day and age when many are looking for ways to give back, it’s awesome to be able to say that our event was able to generate donations to charities. We absolutely love working with Humanitix and hope to do so again in the future. From a public facing perspective, it's good for branding and value-alignment with our audience.”
Madison O'Nions
The Social Crew
What was the timeframe for this project?
Presenting an exhibition of this style and scale in a heritage building required a colossal amount of planning across almost 4 years. From securing the venue to production, lighting, sound, scenic design to set decoration, with added COVID delays, it was a beautiful test of patience and defiance. Then add fun things like the space being unused for over 30 years, bump-in across a 40m platform, fire codes, weight restrictions, narrow doorways, an active train station… the bump-in itself took about three months total. The exhibition was open to the public for six months - with sessions over 6-7 days a week. After the show finished, we bumped out of the location in 12 days and then started to wrap up the financials and reporting for another 6-8 weeks. It was a huge project, especially as there were just four of us at The Social Crew!
Now that you have wrapped up the event, how do you feel?
We couldn't have asked for a better result. The TIME exhibition was a sell-out success. The Social Crew are all about producing meaningful projects and events that have maximum impact. In turn that becomes someone’s unforgettable memory - the attendees are always going to remember that one time when Rone popped up in Flinders Street and they caught the ephemeral installation. We were a part of making that happen and these impactful memories that people will keep forever is at the core of what we want to help deliver.
What is your advice to event hosts on marketing their events?
Employing people that are experts in event marketing, and putting resources behind delivering a detailed marketing strategy, is 100% worth it. That’s why our marketing campaign for Rone was so successful - we went big and we sold out 6 weeks before the end of the show. We extended our opening hours from 6 to 7 days a week for those final weeks. Everyone I spoke to had heard of the exhibition on social media, billboards, and articles or their mates had told them. It was our second sell-out production for Rone, with hundreds of thousands of people traveling across Australia and from 37 different countries.
On top of this, creating solid relationships with stakeholders is key. For example, being supported by Tourism Australia and Visit Victoria helped bring an international presence into the campaign.
Finally, trust the experts. We manage a lot of things in-house but we contract out things like our social marketing strategy and hire the best people to help us implement the campaign. These are people we trust, and are experts in their fields. It's definitely important to lean into their expertise.
