Marketing on coffee cups works for local performing arts venue

A marketing twist that literally puts the message in your hands is delivering results for a local performance venue.

Hancher Auditorium has promoted various events on the sleeves that adorn coffee cups at Java House locations in Iowa City for more than six years. Right now, the sleeves touts the Working Group Theatre's “The Broken Chord,” a play by Jennifer Fawcett, which opens April 12.

Rob Cline, who leads marketing and communications efforts for Hancher, said the coffee cup sleeves debuted before any other part of the promotional campaign.

“I don't want to say it set the world on fire in terms of ticket sales, but it certainly started the ticket sales engine,” Cline said. “We started to see an uptick in nightly sales for Broken Chord as soon as those hit.”

Cline said he initially was skeptical of the idea when an intern brought it up back in 2006, wondering about the costs involved. But Hancher approached Tara Cronbaugh, the owner of Java House, who supported the idea.

The decision to go ahead made sense, Cline recalled, because Java House was not facing an extra charge to print designs on the sleeves and, in turn, would not bill Hancher for them.

Hancher initially used the sleeves to promote mostly Broadway shows, such as "Rent" and "My Fair Lady." The strategy changed when the 2008 flood ruined the venue.

“When the flood upended our world, we started doing less Broadway shows … so we had to think of new ways to make those sleeves useful for us,” Cline said. “We did them for the Boston Pops, and one year we just used them as a supporting piece for our general season announcement.”

The coffee cup sleeves are found only at Java House locations, Cline noted, and the coffee shop does not use the sleeves to advertise for other organizations or businesses.

“In the cluttered media landscape, where we know people don't necessarily want to hear from us as much as we'd like to talk to them, this seems like a non-obtrusive way to reach people that people think is clever and engaging,” he said.