Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical
Taking a British hit to Broadway
Responsibilities:
Graphics · Campaign design · Identity · Key art · Print · OOH · Digital · Social · Motion
Market:
West End/London > Broadway / United States
The Mission:
As Operation Mincemeat grew from a small but electric production into a genuine West End and Broadway phenomenon, the creative challenge was uniquely self-referential: how do you market a show built on secrecy, without giving the mission away?
The work had to compete with long-running juggernauts across both New York and London on social and out-of-home while revealing just enough to put audiences in seats. No more, no less. Classified by design.
The Challenge:
Developing, designing and adapting campaign assets for the American market, maintaining a consistent visual identity across formats and placements.
This collection spans my work on campaigns across the West End and Broadway, each translating a distinct set of brand guidelines and design principles through bold key art, minimal design, coded messaging and visual puzzles, maintaining strict historical accuracy and staying firmly within the world of the show, and yes... A lot of yellow.
Scope:
Notable placements included:
The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and Hard Rock Cafe.
+86M Total Impressions. +1.8M Engagements. 5.8% Av. CTR 9.3% Av. CVR 235% Average ROAS
Primary campaign artwork OOH 4-Sheet Posters.
Achievements:
A Playbill first! Selected as primary designer for the back cover of Playbill, as part of the New York Times campaign, securing a first-ever placement for a Broadway production and a new milestone in theatrical marketing.
Operation Mincemeat Playbill print design - full cover wrap.
Operation Mincemeat New Yorker and Rolling Stone back page print.
Application:
Making an impact beyond the stage.
With Broadway’s competitive neon landscape, the challenge was to translate Operation Mincemeat’s distinctive identity into high-impact outdoor advertising.
For the US market, we shifted the coded-creative emphasis towards the musical’s comedy, pairing an alternative cast version of the key art with carefully selected review quotes that championed its distinctly British humour. The approach allowed us to be playful and visually aggressive in our advertising.
From large Times Square billboards to taxi tops, digital screens and subway placements, we leaned into the show’s indie roots to challenge Broadway’s established visual language. Rather than rely on production photography, we led with our key art, bold blocks of colour and graffiti-style handwritten messaging.
Deliberately crossing out, scribbling over and outdating our own creative, we turned the campaign into the visual narrative of a show growing faster than its advertising could keep up. Always backing up our creative with statistics and reviews, building trust and chatter, we let the reviews speak for themselves.
The Result:
We develop a brand that built its own momentum. By disrupting Broadway’s visual conventions, we created noise, built recognition and transformed the show’s underdog status into a distinctive identity that established Operation Mincemeat on Broadway.
I was solely responsible for adapting the pre established portrait key art for landscape formats across billboards and other out-of-home placements, reworking the composition to maximise impact at scale. By cropping in and cutting off the photography, the intension was to bring the comedy to the forefront, using unexpected framing and, in selected formats, separating the characters from their bodies to reveal dangling feet as a playful visual motif.
To maintain clarity across placements, I also reworked the logo lock-up, introducing black rip dividers and inverting the brand colours to strengthen contrast and preserve legibility.
Above: Out of home Ad Rails on display at Paddington Station as part of our national campaign promoting both the West End and Tour markets. Below: Seasonal assets and digi ads.
Above Left: Designs for Bus T-Sides spotted in West London. Above Right: Operation Mincemeat Broadway full wraps as part of our NYT campaign boost in NYC.
Above: Sizzle Reel Storyboards. Below: Operation Mincemeat Sizzle Reel. Directed by Max Mena. Edited by Ben Drayton.
Creative Lead: Dulcie Boote
Creative Design: Max Mena
Production Company: Avalon Entertainment
Credit: Operation Mincemeat Live
