For two decades, Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) and Hickok Cole have partnered to host Art Night, an annual exhibition and fundraiser that’s raised over $1.6 million in support of WPA’s mission and the local arts community. The events of 2020 resulted in the addition of a month-long social media campaign, allowing us to drastically expand our audience, promote the fundraiser, and increase awareness around WPA and the featured artists.

Our goal for this year was to simply streamline content. Previous feedback suggested the campaign took up too much vertical real estate and was cumbersome to navigate while insights indicated our followers were most interested in the artists and their works. A final consideration was data demonstrating a change in user behavior to prefer stories over posts.

With these criteria in mind, our strategy shifted to prioritize stories to promote artists, their backgrounds, and processes, and for timely information about the buying process. Efficiently designed post templates allowed us to plug and play based on a variety of qualitative factors while offering a cohesive identity and narrative for standard historical information about the event. A puzzle-style design breaks away from our typical posts to mark Art Night’s presence on our feed. We maximized the artwork displayed through carousels categorized by medium, allowing patrons to preview works on sale before the week-long virtual gallery launched.

Art Night 2022 resulted in its highest levels of engagement yet, made even more noteworthy with a record-breaking $156.9k raised for WPA and DC artists.