The New Tkts Brand Experience is Brilliant

I love Times Square but I also hate it.

It's a spectacular place to visit, especially after dark when the visual impact is most powerful, but I always feel as if something is fundamentally missing. I mean, what kind of a public square is it if you can't even appreciate it because there's no place to sit down, look around and absorb it's magnitude...well at least not until now.

The discount box office booth for Broadway shows - aka: Tkts, has turned the Time Square experience on its head, forever. The iconic red staircase is now the place where you can sit down, relax your fatigued legs and enjoy a nice cup of coffee surrounded with a 360 degree view of the crossroads of the world. Who could ask for more?

This is  a great example of a fantastic brand experience.

Think about it, Tkts is all about getting you seats to the best shows in New York and now its new retail presence reflects exactly that, the best seats in town - for free. But it goes beyond just communicating the core of the brand, what the people over at Perkins Eastman, the designers of this new spectacular glass installation, achieved is to solve a real problem that people had when visiting Times Square and they did it with style. That is truly great design and another classic case for how brands can benefit from giving something valuable to people.

Tkts may have been an icon of New York with its long lines of tourists waiting to get last minute tickets at a good price. But now, whether the theater development fund realizes it or not, they have become a global brand overnight. They have not only made it impossible for a tourist in the city to avoid it, it's also impossible not to take a picture of it, so you do the math. I am certain the Tkts staircase  will become one of the most popular, well-known meeting spots in the world. I can't wait to see how it shows up in films, TV, music videos (it's right next door to the MTV studios..) etc.

So, I personally thank the Theater Development Fund, the Times Square Alliance and the Coalition for Father Duffy for developing this extraordinary new public space and the designers for creating it is such a clever and innovative fashion. And Mayor Bloomberg also deserves credit for picking up a big chunk of the check. thanks for making Times Square accessible and visitor friendly.

Read more about it in the New York Times

Comments

[Lior K]

That's definitely interesting observation although I miss one major point - how design serves, on this case,revenue ? aren't the accessibility and visitor friendly principles are side effects of a profounder idea focused of 'how to make more money' out of it ?

[Michael Melnick]

Hi Lior,
The way I see it, Design is a tool for creating relationships. The purpose of design is to reinforce interaction between customer and product. This can be achieved by visual communication, product interface and packaging, furniture and interior design and in the this case, environmental design. Good design usually adds value in more than one way. The First, by establishing an emotional bond with the customer, it goes further to solving actual business and operational problems. But the most important role of design is simply to make people's lives better and the underlying consequence is a positive return on the investment. I believe that by solving a public space problem in Times Square, TKTS did a service to the public and created a very positive experience for visitors. This will translate into $$$ in more ways than one. Just think how The brand will become so familiar and awareness will significantly grow without any need to spend on advertising.