Expanding Audience Reach with Creative Strategy for Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

The Challenge:A Strong Team That Needed Scale

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO) already had a high-performing internal marketing team with a clear voice and strong organic presence, so they didn’t need to build a creative strategy from scratch.

With a steady cadence of concerts and shifting campaign priorities, the team needed:

• More content to support paid media
• Earlier production timelines
• Additional creative perspective that fit their brand

The goal was scale, as opposed to a reinvention or replacement of the creative strategy.

The Approach:Embed, Collaborate, Execute

This partnership was designed to work inside PSO’s process, rather than feeling like a disconnected add-on.

Capacity integrated directly into the team’s workflow:

• Joined bi-weekly marketing meetings
• Contributed to weekly content brainstorms
• Supported both execution and creative development

The structure stayed flexible. Work shifted based on need:

• Campaign-specific paid social assets
• Evergreen video content
• Strategic input and ideation

Capacity helped move ideas into execution, and provided a consistent, valuable outside perspective during ideation.

Translating Brandinto Paid Performance

PSO had already built a distinct organic style—fast-paced, platform-native, and designed to connect with younger audiences. Capacity translated that style into paid media.

This work included:

• Adapting organic concepts into campaign-ready assets
• Producing creative for campaigns earlier in the marketing cycle
• Testing Capacity-created variations alongside PSO-developed content

The result was a blended model, in which Capacity developed 1–2 assets to serve alongside PSO’s 4–5 assets within many campaigns. This created an overall stronger, more flexible creative mix.

Creative Strategy: Outside-In Meets Inside-Out

The partnership worked because the creative approaches were different—and complementary.

An independent analysis of a season’s worth of content (40 campaigns and 150+ ads analyzed) showed that Capacity-created content focused on the audience:

• Cultural references and familiar entry points
• Emotion-driven hooks
• Native social formats

Examples included text-message-style ads and lo-fi formats, and pop culture comparisons that made classical programming more accessible (“Before there was heavy metal, there was Stravinsky”).

PSO-created content focused on authority:

• Deep program knowledge
• Soloist storytelling
• Institutional voice and credibility

Together, the work covered the full funnel. Capacity content brought in new audiences, while PSO content built trust and drove conversion. This balance developed naturally through collaboration.

From Ideas to Execution—Faster

Weekly content meetings became a turning point: PSO brought ideas, Capacity helped move them forward.

That included:

• Identifying gaps in messaging 
• Turning concepts into clear deliverables
• Aligning timelines and asset needs

This meant fewer idea-heavy conversations, more execution-ready plans.

Capacity also created a consistent feedback loop:

• Surfacing audience comments and engagement trends
• Reinforcing what was working
• Feeding performance insights back into creative decisions

A Standout Moment:Bridging New Audiences

One campaign captured the partnership at its best.

A Capacity-led concept connected Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to heavy metal.

The idea:

• Met new audiences where they already were
• Resonated with classical insiders
• Sparked strong engagement and conversation

Audience response validated the approach and built internal confidence in bolder creative.

Evolving Beyond Paid Campaign Support

As the partnership matured, the scope remained flexible.

Capacity began supporting:

• Evergreen video concepts (like Pops branding)
• Broader storytelling initiatives
• Flexible creative needs across the season

The model adapted as PSO’s needs evolved.

The Takeaway

This partnership shows what content support looks like when it’s fully integrated.

It’s not just about producing more assets; it’s about extending your team with embedded expertise and bringing new creative perspectives into the process. It’s about turning ideas into execution, consistently.

For PSO, that meant scaling output, expanding reach, and strengthening the link between creative and performance.

If you’re looking to expand your team’s capacity without losing your voice, Capacity can help. From digital advertising and creative strategy to AI strategy, email, SEO, and analytics, we build partnerships that move your work forward.