Arts Council England (ACE) define marketing as – “the process of communicating the value of your work to potential audiences, visitors and participants” (Arts Council England, 2016, 3). ACE provide segments which help organisations to understand the target audiences so that they can develop their communications for their audience’s needs.

“It can help any organisation working to increase arts engagement to identify target segments and develop tailored engagement strategies and marketing campaigns” (ACE, 2011, 5).

We performed Record ’97 on 24^th May 2017 and despite us having a reasonable sized audience, I have learnt that some marketing strategies are more successful than others. I have learnt that the strongest communication for potential audiences is Facebook. By studying the statistics of the post engagements on Facebook, it is clear that this was the most successful marketing tool in gaining audience interaction.  Looking forward with social media, I would develop using more social media platforms such as Snapchat. We made an account but it was used to its full potential.

Record ’97 featured an elaborate set, however if Kick A Pigeon Theatre were to take this production on tour, I would use some of the same marketing strategies which I have used whilst in Lincoln. I would focus more on posting sponsored posts as these have a higher success rate. I would also look into what kind of theatre is hosted at the touring cities and decipher how to target the audience’s specific for our production. Due to the success in Lincoln I would also urge going out in to the city and advertising our production through face to face contact with the public whilst handing out flyers.

The feedback we received from our production showed that people of all ages enjoyed our show, not just the young 16 – 30 age range we targeted at. With this being said, I would look into more marketing techniques so that a wider age range can be targeted. For older members of the public, social media may not be as successful.

Works Cited

Arts Council England. (2011) Arts audiences: Insight. London.

Arts Council England (2016) Audience development and marketing, and Grants for the Arts. London.

As Tuten and Solomon state, “today the Internet is the backbone of our society” (Tuten and Solomon, 2012, 4). It was clear that social media would be our main source of promoting our material and with all the cast falling into our target audience age range, it was a prime opportunity to use the internet to our advantage.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017a)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017b)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017c)

These screenshots are some examples of the activities which took place on the Facebook page. Through the stats we were able to identify the successes of each post and learn from what attracts more audience interaction. Some of the most successful posts included:

The video I made which related to the Frosted Tips campaign when we hit 300 likes:

Name Reveal: I created a video to reveal that Record 97 was going to be the name of our debut production:

And the individual cast introduction boomerang videos:

After gaining a successful amount of audience interaction with our posts, I decided to go that bit further and promoted Kick a Pigeon Theatre on Facebook groups. By targeting Facebook groups specifically for members who are interested in 90s nostalgia, it provided a gateway for me to promote our show and get more interest with how we were involving the 90s in Record ’97.

Twitter and Instagram:

As previously mentioned, Twitter proved difficult to keep up with, especially with the challenge of there being a character restriction which did not able us to promote our show as well as we could. Nevertheless, we used Twitter to tweet and retweets things relevant to our show and used this platform to support fellow theatre companies. Next time, to make Twitter more successful, there could be more than one member controlling the account and we could look into sponsoring a tweet which will promote the information more. Sponsoring or ‘boosting’ a post proved very successful with our Facebook page, so this success can be used on other platforms.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017d)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017e)

With Record ’97 being a very visually pleased show with an elaborate set, it was prime opportunity to use image dependant social media like Instagram. Throughout the promoting process, this platform was very successful in reaching out to the target audience by using appropriate images and carefully selected hashtags.

Works Cited

Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R. (2012) Social Media Marketing. 2^nd Edition. London, California, New Delhi and Singapore: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017a) FB Stats Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017b) FB Stats Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017c) FB Stats Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017d) Instagram Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017e) Twitter Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

It is just over 2 weeks until show day!

We have received the print for our show. In regards to where the posters and flyers are being distributed, we targeted shops which fit in with the themes of Record ’97.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017a)

With it being set in a record store, posters were handed out to record stores in the city centre. In keeping with them themes of nostalgia and retro we also targeted vintage clothing shops where some of the cast’s costumes were purchased. With the print being very vibrant and unique, it proved successful to have the posters placed in shop display windows. The posters needed to be placed in prime locations in order to boost ticket sales. The flyers had to be distributed in prime locations therefore I split the company into pairs and scaled the high street and up Steep Hill. People were keen to take the flyers and put up posters. Our posters were also placed around the university campus.

Below are the alternate options for the poster which marketing designed. They ranged from keeping everything stripped back and simple to full garish rave-esque poster (which was the chosen one). I took inspiration form 90s band poster and recreated the feel of those posters by adding a group image to it. In the end the rave poster was the winner and the colour scheme is going to be used to create rave posters for the performance.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017b)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017c)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017d)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017e)

Works Cited

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017a) Print. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017b) Purple Poster. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017c) 90s band style Print. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017d) Final Print. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017e) Stripped back Print. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

It is crucial to monitor what is posted on the social media websites as “social media (can be viewed) as a performance space” (Lonergan, 2016, 34). It was important to decipher what kind of social media posts would suit the theme and essence of the theatre company as a whole. We wanted to reach out to new audiences, we achieved this by releasing previews of our performance and promoted our Kickstarter page which helped raise money for our performance.

So how was Kick a Pigeon Theatre promoted?

Facebook

Out of all the social media websites that was set up by Marketing, Facebook is by far our most successful. We have high audience interaction and used this platform to advertise all our fundraising events and our main marketing campaign and fun ‘face in the hole’ images were uploaded. This allowed us to promote that our show was to be set in the 90s as we took famous 90s films and music artists and replaced their faces with cast members.

One cast member agreed to dye their hair into a style fit for the 90s, in order for this to take place, a campaign was set up on social media. The terms were; when our Facebook page hits 300 likes, the hair dying will take place LIVE. This campaign was chosen to be sponsored, therefore it had more of an audience outreach. By spending £9, in enabled our company to be more widespread advertised resulting in us hitting our desired 300 likes.

Many images and videos were posted onto Facebook, the most popular marketing source was the boomerangs which were uploaded. Boomerangs are four second videos which make an image appear to go backwards and forwards – this was a great application to use in order to give our audiences previews of our work.

We used Facebook to introduce the cast members one by one. Giving the audience and insight into their lives by adding 90s related question and answers along with an image of the cast member. Our posts were targeted to be posted at around 17:00 – 18:00, peak hours for when Facebook users were returning from work.

Facebook was used to promote our two fundraiser events which were our quiz – ‘Quizzing in the Name of’ and a film night where we showed Jurassic Park in the Platform Bar.

Facebook will be the host of our 7 day countdown to our show Record ’97.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017a)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017b)

Twitter

Our Twitter page is proving difficult to establish a large following, this could be due to the mass of tweets which are posted daily from other users making it possible for our tweets to get lost. Next time, in order to overcome this, the Twitter page should be advertised more widely on our more successful social media platforms.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017c)

Instagram

Despite far less users being on Instagram than Facebook, it has proven to be a popular marketing tool for us. We were able to use hashtags which worked in getting more widespread attention from other users who used the same hashtags as us an example being #internationalwomensday where the female members of the cast recreated a Spice Girls famous pose, which linked in to our 90s nostalgia theme.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017d)

With Instagram being a visual social media platform, it proved easy for us to give people insights into our rehearsals.

Snapchat

A snapchat account was created, however was not used to its full potential. We advertised certain ‘takeovers’ where in one writing session, the writers gave the snapchat users a preview of the work they were creating. Compared to other platforms, it isn’t as successful as Facebook.

Works Cited

Lonergan, P. (2015) Theatre and Social Media. London: Palgrave.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017a) Film Night Event. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017b) Quiz Night Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017c) Twitter Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017d) Spice Girls Instagram Image. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

With our chosen company name being ‘Kick a Pigeon Theatre’ it opened up opportunities to create a quirky and tongue in cheek logo. With the name being unique it was a prime opportunity to create something special to advertise our company.

“In marketing, the brand name is a major selling tool and one important component of the product offer”  (Ramaswamy, 2013, 342).

Numerous sketches were made for the logo of our company. I pitched the potential ideas to the group and the ideas were narrowed down to a select few. The initial process of designing the logos was a method of trial and error.

The final logo idea was then created on Photoshop, it took a substantial amount of time to create the logo due to testing out different effects and colouring which would best reflect the company.

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017b)

(Kick A Pigeon Theatre, 2017c)

We decided to select the logo to have a black background and white image and text, this is due to it being bolder and distinct. The comical play on the ‘Kicking K’ paralleled our intended humour as a company.

Works Cited

Ramaswamy. (2013) Marketing Management. India: Mc Graw Hill.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017a) Logos. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017b) Logo – Black. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre. (2017c) Logo – White. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick A Pigeon Theatre.