We didn’t say it, but Gene Marks of The Washington Post did. This holiday season, PriceWeber wanted to create a unique way to showcase our festive spirit while driving awareness for our client Louisville Ballet. So we constructed a 39-foot, 6-inch nutcracker. The result is “cracking a few nuts” from its position just off Shelbyville Road. And yes, it can actually crack a nut.
PriceWeber has long wanted to repurpose the decommissioned bell tower in front of our headquarters into something more enjoyable to look at. The idea to convert the structure into a functioning nutcracker was born, and our creative directors embraced the opportunity to provide some holiday cheer to passing traffic while promoting Louisville Ballet’s annual performances of “The Brown-Forman Nutcracker.”
Louisville Ballet has been a pro bono client of PriceWeber’s for the last 12 years. Like many organizations, it has a limited marketing budget, so we’re always looking for unique ways to increase top-of-mind awareness and encourage area residents to buy tickets to see “The Brown-Forman Nutcracker.” Because our headquarters sits along one of the most high-traffic roads in the area (as in, some 23,500 cars pass by us daily), we knew that converting the bell tower into an out-of-home, outside-the-box marketing opportunity could be a slam-dunk for our client.
Once the nutcracker was installed, PriceWeber hosted an unveiling event for the community, and anyone who attended and donated an unwrapped toy to Toys for Tots® was entered into a drawing for ballet tickets.
The project has gained local and national media attention, securing coverage from the local NBC and FOX television affiliates, Insider Louisville and The Voice Tribune. The coverage caught the attention of Marks, who wrote about the project for his Washington Post blog, On Small Business. Marks praised us for promoting our client, showcasing our hometown, tying the structure back to the community with a public event and showing “just how innovative” we can be.
We call that a slam-dunk. But we aren’t stopping there. The current honor for the world’s largest nutcracker, according to The Guinness Book of World Records, belongs to a structure in Neuhausen, Germany. PriceWeber plans to bring that honor back to America, and has formally submitted an application for our nutcracker to The Guinness Book of World Records. We should know the results in a few weeks. Until then, we’re enjoying the view.
