Agenda for a campaign-planning meeting

'We work closely with our venues to ensure the largest possible audience for our production. This includes, wherever possible, face-to-face meetings. We regard this is an important element in developing or consolidating a relationship and it provides our venue with a greater understanding of the show and the company.

We also monitor ticket sales before and during a visit. This allows us to identify when things are going well or when they're not. If there are potential problems, we again work with the venue to try and find ways of addressing them. This ticket sales profile is extremely useful on a return visit when it enables earlier identification of success or potential failure.

Shortly after a run, we seek the venue's feedback on all aspects of the visit, highlighting the good and bad points from everybody's perspective. This is an extremely useful exercise as it ensures that we continue to develop and improve the marketing products and services our venues receive from us.

We use this agenda to structure all our campaign planning meetings. We first came across this idea when we worked with the freelance marketer, Katie Manuel, on our national tour of Death of a Salesman and while we've adapted it and continue to refine it to our needs, we have used it ever since. This is the version for The Winter's Tale:

• date of meeting
• personnel
  • venue - marketing staff and their telephone numbers
  • Compass Theatre Company
• venue details
  • budget (contra/no contra)
  • gross potential for run
  • current sales
    • - sales as at date are [gpb]... net ([gpb]... gross)
    • - ... tickets sold with ... on reserve (potentially ...)
    • - deal is [gpb]... against ...%
    • - what is their target?
  • prices and discounts
  • theatre brochure
    • - how many and when?
• company print
• the show
• target audiences
  • your regular drama audience (age 12 and above)
  • newcomers to Shakespeare and drama (the combination of the world's best known playwright and the clarity and accessibility of our production should be of great help)
  • past Compass Theatre Company attenders
  • secondary schools and sixth form colleges
  • education professionals
  • university students, particularly drama and literature students and members of theatre groups
  • workshop participants
  • amateur theatre groups
  • The audience for other companies such as - Shared Experience, Oxford Stage Company, RSC, RNT, English Touring Theatre, Hull Truck, Pilot Theatre Company
  • David Essex fans (bearing in mind one of his classic hits was It Was Only A Winter's Tale)
• venue mailings
  • direct mail
  • when, how many?
  • nearby venues
  • agencies
  • schools
  • when, how many, what type of schools, where, what about deals?
  • groups
• print distribution
  • leaflets
  • foot soldiers
  • exit leafleting
  • pay slips?
• advertising
  • national
  • local papers
  • ladder ads and solus, when and how many?
  • others (their in-house programmes)
• media
  • interviews with local press, TV or radio
  • photographs
  • stories about Curtain Music and Stuffed Bear
• displays
  • foyer
  • local bookshops
• education
• other publicity ideas
  • signed and audio described performances, touch tours
  • seeing it in advance
  • programme slipping
  • website
• our tour programme'

Craig Dronfield, General Manager, Compass Theatre Company