Finding and communicating with target markets
'With marketing for children's shows on tour, we have found that you have to focus very heavily on the play itself and the people involved in it, as your target audiences may not have heard of your organisation or any of your previous work. We also have to be extremely clear about the subject and content of the show and which age groups it's suitable for. If people aren't familiar with our name, or the title of the show, then we need to work hard to convince them to come and see it, and so the publicity material has to be both innovative and reassuring, and it's a fine balance between the two. When we worked on our co-production with Graea of Diary of an Action Man, we focused on the fact that the show was coming from London, as this seems give it further credibility with people in the rest of the country, as well as giving some idea of the creative history of the companies involved in the show through quotes from national press about previous productions.
We always try to make contact with the receiving venue and their marketing department as far in advance as we can, and to work as closely with them as possible - they know their local area far better than we could in the short time we have. With Diary of an Action Man, we were talking to venues in September 2002 for a show that wouldn't reach them until February 2003. We felt it was very important to discuss how the venues felt the show should best be marketed, which tactics worked best, and which audience groups would need more encouragement than others, as the emphasis can shift from place to place. However, this didn't change our central approach, which was to promote the show as an exciting and humorous adventure story, as much for boys as for girls, which was fully accessible for blind, deaf and visually-impaired children.
We create a marketing pack for each venue, with information on each member of the cast and creative team, and write short articles about any of these who are originally from a particular area so that they can send these out to the local press. We also highlight any newsworthy features about the production and the team, and suggest ways in which these could be used. For public performances, it was crucial for us to be in the local press as much as possible, in order to reach the parents who would be buying the tickets. Listings were sent out to national and local listings agencies two months in advance, and press releases were sent to national and local press well in advance of the production. These were followed up at regular intervals in order to maintain awareness. We made use of advertising in the national press in the week before half term, in order to catch the 'what are we going to do with the kids?' panics from parents, and also in various local papers where the show would be going. We also used competitions in local papers (first one out of a hat gets four free tickets to the show) in order to raise the profile further and generate some word-of-mouth coverage.
The marketing pack also included posters and flyers for distribution around the area, with individual venue-specific information for each theatre, and a box office brief about the play so that venue staff could talk knowledgably about the show if asked. The print was designed with the idea of humour and adventure in mind, and we decided that a photo of the main character surrounded by cartoon images conveyed the right mix of fun and excitement, and would appeal to parents, children and schools. The flyers had information on how to reach the venue from a central point, as well as emphasising the access issues, such as BSL use, audio-description, guide dogs welcome and suitable for wheelchairs. We also suggested places to which these could be sent - community centres, local businesses, etc Diary of an Action was specifically created to involve children who are blind or deaf, and so we emphasised the need to approach Partial Hearing Units in schools, local clubs for families with deaf or blind children (and parents!), as well as getting information to national organisations such as the National Deaf Children's Society and the Royal National Institute for the Blind. We also included a letter which could be amended by each venue for use in direct mailings to their marketing list, and an eflyer was created and emailed round to all lists.
For the London venues, we sent out flyers and posters through a mailing house to child-friendly places and attractions throughout the capital, and also had exit leafleting at other London shows for children. We also had leaflets posted through letterboxes in family housing in the areas around the theatres, and handed out leaflets in shopping centres in the days leading up to the public performances. Posters were put up in local shops and cafes, and pasted up in shopping centres. Local schools were specifically targeted, as were local community groups and workforces through a combination of telemarketing and direct mail.
Many receiving venues are unused to working with children's shows which fall outside the Disney or TV programme spin-off genre, and so do need a lot of support when it comes to marketing to schools, which usually make up fifty percent of Unicorn's audience during the run of a show. We have a dedicated member of staff who deals specifically with schools, and so they liaise with the venue's marketing staff to advise on how to interest teachers in the show. Generally we produce print specifically for schools for each show, and send these out to teachers as far in advance of the show as possible - schools need quite some time to schedule trips, especially for younger children.
The schools print uses the same image as the public print, but the information included on the flyer is quite different. It needs to be very clear and easy to understand, as teachers don't have the time to wade through vast amounts of text or work out confusing information. We also always include information on how the production links in with the national curriculum, as it has become increasingly difficult for teachers to take children to events which aren't specifically educative unless they can prove their educational value in the terms set out by the national curriculum. We try to make life as easy as possible for the teacher, and so once they've received a flyer we'll follow it up with a phone call during their break or lunch-time to see if they're interested in coming to the show. We find that phoning schools is very important, and for Diary of An Action Man we felt this was even more so, and spent three months on the phone to teachers on a daily basis.
Once the teachers book tickets we can very often arrange travel to and from the venue for them and sort out ice creams for the interval. We also provide them with a resource pack, which includes lesson plan and practical ideas that they can use in the classroom once the children have seen the show, and we find that emphasising our 'one-stop shop' approach in our marketing works very well with schools, wherever they are in the country.'