How Behavioural Economy Helped the Bayerische Staatsoper Reach New Global Audiences and Achieve 200% ROI with Audiense
"The campaign worked like a charm. It was the ideal combination: deep audience insights from Audiense, and precise execution via StackAdapt.”
Thomas Hirschmann, CEO of CoreCortex & Behavioural Economy
The Challenge: The Bayerische Staatsoper, one of the world’s most renowned opera houses, had a clear mission: provide cultural value to all members of society—not just the elite few. But in practice, their audience base was overwhelmingly narrow: older, affluent, and highly educated.
Despite strong brand equity and ambitious programming, their outreach methods—email campaigns, out-of-home placements, and magazine ads—were no longer effective at reaching broader or younger audiences.
“The current clientele is rather old, rich, and educated. That stands in contrast to the opera’s public cultural mandate to add value for people of all sorts and walks of life.” —Thomas Hirschmann
The opera’s marketing team, working with Behavioural Economy, realized their insights weren’t translating into meaningful change. They knew there were untapped audiences out there but they lacked the tools to find and connect with them.
The Outcome: Using Audiense, Behavioural Economy helped the opera identify and build rich, psychographic audience segments based on interests, motivations, and digital behaviors. These segments were then activated through StackAdapt, allowing for highly personalized programmatic campaigns aligned with individual opera performances.
As a result:
- Bayerische Staatsoper expanded its reach internationally, attracting new ticket-buyers from France and the UK
- Campaigns during their prestigious 150th anniversary festival achieved 200% ROI
- Audiense’s audience insights directly translated into faster, more efficient customer conversion
“We could translate deep audience insights into global programmatic campaigns—targeting the right segments with the right creative. That had never been possible before.”—Thomas Hirschmann
The Strategic Gap
The Bayerische Staatsoper is one of the world’s most iconic opera houses, known for its historic legacy, cultural significance, and artistic excellence. But the audience it regularly attracted no longer reflected the full diversity of modern society.
“The current clientele is rather old, rich, and educated. That stands in contrast to the opera’s public cultural mandate to add value for people of all sorts and walks of life.” —Thomas Hirschmann
Behavioural Economy, a Munich-based research and insights consultancy, was brought in to help shift that dynamic. The team quickly realized that while the opera had used traditional tactics (email, print, and out-of-home) the results weren’t moving the needle. The audience remained largely the same.
The problem wasn’t strategy. It was activation.
Without a data-driven, psychographic understanding of who else might be interested in opera and why it was impossible to craft marketing that resonated beyond the traditional base.
The Bridge from Strategy to Action
Behavioural Economy turned to Audiense to solve this challenge. They needed segmentation that went beyond demographics and delivered meaningful, actionable insights about interests, motivations, and digital behaviors.
“We needed to understand not just who we were speaking to, but why they engage with classical music. What drives them? What inspires them?” —Thomas Hirschmann
Thomas had worked with Audiense before and was confident in its ability to build rich, meaningful segments. The only concern was around activation: Would the segments translate into real-world campaign performance?
That question was quickly answered when the team integrated Audiense’s segmentation with StackAdapt to launch personalised, data-driven campaigns across multiple regions.
“Understanding is always a matter of applied empathy. Audiense enables that.” —Thomas Hirschmann
Measurable Results
The collaboration resulted in a powerful shift from one-size-fits-all promotion to highly targeted international campaigns each tailored to specific opera performances.
Key outcomes included:
- 200% ROI during the opera house’s 150th anniversary
- Successful audience conversion in France and the UK
- Faster speed-to-conversion using behavioural targeting
- Personalised creatives and ad sequencing by performance
- Cross-platform synergy with StackAdapt for programmatic execution
“We could translate deep audience insights into global programmatic campaigns—targeting the right segments with the right creative. That had never been possible before.” —Thomas Hirschmann
Audiense Plays A Critical Role For Insight-Led Campaigns
Today, Audiense is an embedded part of Behavioural Economy’s strategic planning workflow. While it’s not used daily, it plays a critical role in preparing for audience-first, insight-led campaigns.
The tool has helped unlock:
- Customer-centricity across internal and client teams
- Campaign innovation, driven by insights
- Cross-departmental collaboration (marketing, product, comms, and insights)
“The platform has enabled our clients to work more empathetically, more creatively, and ultimately—more effectively.” —Thomas Hirschmann
As Behavioural Economy builds toward a more integrated tech stack—including Graphext, social listening, and programmatic media—Audiense remains the cornerstone of its segmentation and audience discovery process.
Advice for Others
For agencies or organizations struggling to move from theory to action, Thomas offers simple advice:
“Use it or lose your customer centricity. But also remember: customer-centricity isn’t about tools alone. It’s a mindset.” —Thomas Hirschmann
Behavioural Economy’s experience with Audiense shows what’s possible when you blend the art of storytelling with the science of segmentation proving that even the most traditional institutions can innovate when they start with the audience.
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