Ural Opera Ballet are the innovators of the Russian ballet scene. After the COVID-19 pandemic outburst, they needed money to carry out the concept of their new experimental ballet ‘Humpbacked Horse’.The theatre needed to collect $80K for all stage props and costumes production. The ballet is a classical performance dating back to 1912, but modernized with a sprinkle of local vibe, gopniks and rappers. Gopniks are a local subcultural phenomenon, the youth of the industrial working class. Ekaterinburg’s (the theatre’s home city) suburban districts are famous for their gopniks communities.

To support their theatre’s crowdfunding campaign, they needed a new approach to engaging new audiences.

The idea was to win over a new audience and to attract their attention to the theatre’s activity. The new approach was to create an extraordinary collaboration that would bring traditional theatre art and a wide audience closer.

By doing so, we would make sure that the crowdfunding campaign would have a new lease of life, and that wider audiences would come to Ural Opera Ballet.

Traditionally, ballet is an elite art form, usually associated with such liquors as champagne, brandy, cognac, etc. To highlight the idea that Ural Opera Ballet represents modern and accessible art, we chose a more mainstream and mass alcohol option. Beer is a more universal and popular drink for our target audience (young people 20-45 y.o.).

Together with Jaws, a famous local brewery, we released Humpbacked Horse brand beer. The limited batch of 56K bottles was distributed across all popular bars and beer spots of the Ural region of Russia.

A part of Jaws’ profit was donated to the theatre. Additionally, the QR code on each bottle of beer gave people the opportunity to donate an optional sum of money to the props and costumes production.

The crowdfunding campaign got rolling, and after two months the necessary money was collected.

Mass audience loved the packaging. When the beer was released, there was a huge inflow of UGC on the Internet: people started a spontaneous flash mob when they took photos of how the three-striped pattern on their sport suits matched the one on the beer bottles packaging. It provoked additional interest towards the crowdfunding campaign.

$80K were collected in the course of 2 months.

The Humpbacked Horse ballet premiere took place in July 2021 and was a success.

All tickets sold out for the whole season.