USC Thornton School of Music: Smarter Musicians

Situation

The USC Thornton School of Music published a viewbook like just about every other school. However, they were searching for a way to make their viewbook “stickier” so that students would hang on to it longer, keeping the school name and logo in front of them.

Solution

In addition the traditional viewbook with important information about the school, we created a supplemental piece that contained exclusively valuable music information in lieu of any information about the school. The goal was to create a piece that was so full of music reference tools, the kinds of information that musicians wanted always to keep handy, that they would be completely unable to discard it.

This elegant piece was essentially an insert, and thus it had a home “baked in” to its format: It was 3-hole punched so it could go straight to a music binder, and we used heavy cardstock to ensure that it was also durable. We included tools that students likely already knew (such as the iconic circle of fifths), tools that were extremely convenient to keep on hand (such as an instrumental range and transposition chart), and tools that students would likely be growing into (such as the harmonic series).

Success

We printed 25,000 for a 3-year run, and we were thrilled when we gave out over half of that run during the first fall semester alone. The demand for that theory chart continues today, over 10 years later.

Additionally, we had so many pieces left over, other musical tools that we were not able to fit into the insert, that because of the success of the piece we fashioned into two additional theory charts over the ensuing years.