London Calling

London Calling’s Katie Moritz is inspired by a visit to the Design Museum’s Sustainable Futures exhibiton:

Quick – you have a few more days to catch the ‘Sustainable Futures’ exhibition at the Design Museum, which we are proud to support.

I was lucky enough to check it out this week. It is a fantastic exhibition, which filled me with ideas, hope and a healthy feeling of challenge. The show is split into a number of themes: cities, energy and economies, food, materiality and the creative citizen.

Here are some projects that inspired me:

-       An enormous subterranean Californian science museum within a grassy hill created by Renzo Piano

-       A beautiful radio made from mango wood by  Singgih Skartono

-       A fantastic ‘Solar Shuttle’ boat  by Solar Lab; being trialled across the Serpentine lake

-       ‘Digital Rainbow’ – by Christopher Raeburn  – fantastic clothes made out of discarded parachute fabric

-       Stunning, fresh and sustainable packaging from Puma

-       A fascinating and bizarre ‘Local River’ by Mathieu Lehanneur – a fish tank that grows vegetables.

These are my top picks – I’m sure you’ll have your own. Check out some additional photos on our Flickr pool.

Nobody wants funding cuts. Not the makers of work, not the supporting organisations, and not us.

This much is a given, but still apparently news to some:

Right now organisations like the Arts Marketing Association and Arts Quarter are mobilising the sector and gathering vital feedback and information on exactly how the impending cuts will affect our cultural sector and beyond.

If any member of our government wants to know just how extraordinarily efficient and budget-conscious the sector is already though, please just ask an agency like us. After all, we’re the ones whose job it is to ask our Arts clients just how much (ok, how little) budget they have available to engage audiences, sell tickets and make amazing work.

The Arts is bigger than just the subsidised sector, and the proposed funding cuts will surely have broader-reaching implications across multiple industries, both commercial and not-for-profit. There’s a big supporting business ecology out there.

All of us at London Calling are as concerned as our clients about what the short and longer term future might hold for us all.

We know that whatever happens, whichever side of 50% the axe falls, there are dark and turbulent times ahead.

We still remember the last recession, and how important it was to work in close partnership with our clients, no matter the challenges.

We want you to know we’re not just there for the good times, and as budgets tighten and plans change please do pick up the phone and talk to us. We want to help, so let us know what you need.

Right now though, please add your voice to the AMA’s crowd-sourcing initiative on marketing and anticipated arts funding here.

The big story post conference season was definitely the proliferation of the social media back channel. London Calling’s Digital Account Manager, Katie Moritz explains why much of her working day now involves finding out what people on the internet had for lunch…

I love Twitter. I signed up when I was job searching. My friend told me to use the ‘#whaticando’ hashtag before key successes so employers who are recruiting can find you. She runs a small web design company short of the Guardian budget so she has used Twitter to find and employ over five excellent members of staff.

I discovered other ways to utilise Twitter, such as following tweet streams at events and gain new followers, who I actually met at my first ‘Tweet up‘. This was a new and different social interaction,  I like following my favourite TV show as I watch it live, or at an event or a gig to connect with others.

I went to the Arts Marketing Association conference in July. I followed the stream during key speeches, breakout sessions, at lunch and late night socials (no Twit-pics posted from them)! I became utterly absorbed following Twitter, in particular the backchannel stream during talks. It would have been fascinating (and a little like car-crash TV) to have had the live tweet feed on view.

Re-tweets around the #AMA10 hashtag sent wise words from key speakers to marketers around the world. Tweeters critiqued the speakers and sparked debates. Events and programmes were promoted. All this Twitter activity created the very thing we were being taught about – marketing where the consumers create the buzz themselves.

AMA speaker Christian Payne lives and breathes Twitter. He demonstrated, through a dramatic story about a ropey car accident in the wilderness, how your Twitter network can literally be life saving. He showed us loads of applications that work with Twitter –  Audioboo, Foursquare, Posterous, Flickr and many more. He also celebrated the ‘What I had for lunch’ tweets; we will have these conversations with the our actual colleagues, so why not on Twitter? They add personality to your organisation.

Key learning points?

• Be an organisation with stories to tell that people connect with.
• Have something interesting to say, don’t just ’sell stuff’.
• Create interesting network lists that other can access.
• Think of creative ways to use Twitter and share them.
• Help followers and re-tweet.
• Use your Twitter friends to find an answer instead of Googling.

So, don’t just say it, tweet it!

London Calling dispatched intrepid accounts man Tom Butler on a sightseeing trip into the future of collaborative and interactive arts at the Shift Happens conference, and this is what he brought back…

Over the last couple of years, the questions within the Arts industry have been ‘What is social media?’ What is this technology?’ and then swiftly followed by the sweeping statement of ‘I don’t think it’s for us’. Well thankfully, as Bob Dylan had the foresight to predict…‘the times, they are a changing’.

York was the setting for the fantastic, third annual Shift Happens conference last week, and amongst this beautiful, castle walled, cobbled street city it seemed oddly appropriate to attend an event that was embracing the future and had new media and technologies at its core.

No longer was the question ‘What is this technology?’ but ‘How best can we use it?’ ‘How best can we engage with and develop new audiences?’ The speakers talked with passion and knowledge and the delegates lapped it up and posed questions via twitter. Everyone came away enthused as to the possibilities within their grasp.

Such is the potential to reach huge audiences via social media these days that within 48 hours of the conference ending, the shifthappens hashtag had made 2.7 million impressions with over 3,000 tweets made by 410 tweeters over 2 days. My boss even knew I’d had quiche for lunch!

And what makes it even better is that because it’s new there’s a feeling that everyone’s learning from each other. There’s a willingness to share ideas and see the great collaborations coming together. Check out this great video by Sour which had a massive on-line presence in Asia and has since won loads of awards.

Within the arts industry and across all sectors there are new approaches to marketing and audience development taking place and a genuine excitement attached to each campaign to see the results. So lets, talk, blog, tweet, facebook and share what we know and find out.

I want to go to next year’s conference and hear about the amazing, intuitive, creative campaigns we’ve all undertaken and be equally inspired by each other. So thank you Shift Happens, and yes Mr Dylan, the time’s are indeed a changing!

The latest issue of JAM, the Journal of Arts Marketing, is now available, and includes our regular thoughts on sustainable marketing and business practise along with a range of thought pieces on the idea of leadership.

Great reading and food for thought as always, and here’s our own small contribution in full…

All too often in meetings, conversations and at conferences I’m finding that the idea of sustainability is something that sounds nice to businesses in theory but is doomed to sit forever in that someday/maybe file of things to do once every other pressing box has been ticked off.

Proof read the new brochure, debug the website, figure out that whole social media minefield etc etc.

In other words time is just as precious and finite a commodity as paper stocks or power, so why shouldn’t it be included in any audit of available resources?

Sustainable thinking is all about forward planning, maximising on existing resources as well as conserving them, and taking the long-term view – all safe and commonsense business attitudes when you come right down to it, right?

I’d argue that adopting a sustainable approach doesn’t have to be a choice between whether its better to gain social benefits or save precious financial resources. In fact a sustainable thought process is often the key to unlocking new innovation and creativity within a company.

Let me give you an example from our own business to illustrate.

As a business London Calling offers plenty of different things, but a lot of what we do, day in, day out, is use fossil fuels in one form or another to drive dead tree stock around town.

That’s the majority of our carbon footprint in a nutshell, and considering we recently figured out we’d driven the equivalent of perhaps seven times around the equator in a year, you can surmise both that:

A – We’re pretty good at what we do because we’ve gone a long, long way for a lot of different people over the years.

B – That whole mileage thing would probably be a good place to start if we were serious about addressing our business from a ‘how do we lessen our environmental impact?’ point of view.

As you probably guessed, that’s exactly what we did, reducing our real-world mileage and fuel consumption by 15% in the last year with no drop in volumes of print delivery and in fact increasing the overall geographic area we cover.

The trick, such as it is, is all in investing staff time and resources in desk research and figuring out how, for instance, to best combine our delivery routes to minimise the distances one of our vans will need to travel in any given day.

This real-world mileage reduction also means an equally real-world reduction in our fuel expenditure, so if we’re delivering the same volume of work with a 15% reduction in associated costs that’s obviously a great saving and one we can use to help keep our prices steady during this belt-tightening budget year.

That’s just one example from a long list of business-benefitting initiatives we’ve been inspired to take thanks to that first step of thinking green.The real point here though is that if we can do it, so can you. Or, to put it another way, maybe there’s more mileage in embracing a sustainable business stance than you might think.

So, July is conference season (did we say that already?) and the London Calling team will be out, about and generally plugged in to the best of the best of the arts & cultural keynote and conversational scene over the coming weeks.

Hopefully we’ll see you there, and here’s just a few of the spaces where we’re be hanging out over the next few weeks…

Communicating the Museum: Tomorrow we’ll be boarding flights for Vienna and Agenda’s #CTM10 international Museums and Galleries marketing conference (note the hashtag by the way).

Previous years have seen the conference making its home in Madrid, Venice and Malaga, and while the locales may sound glam all on their own, we have to say its the quality of the content that keeps us heading back for more. On a personal note, some of the best friends I’ve made have been within the coffee breaks of this conference, which just goes to show how friendly everyone is in this sector I think – lucky us, eh?

Change does happen though, and so, apparently, does Shift, so this year we’re also venturing out to the highly regarded Shift Happens conference in York.

This is a first time visit for us, so we’re really looking forward to this one. The emphasis here seems to be much more on technological applications within the arts rather than a focus on marketing, and perhaps the most exciting angle here is the way our sector has a way of  finding its own uses for the dominant technologies of the time. Exciting stuff basically.

Last, but by no means least, the Summer conference season wouldn’t be complete without the sector’s main cultural gathering that is the annual Arts Marketing Association conference.

This year the theme is Pulling Power (something you’re trying to tell us AMA?) and I have to say, looking at the line up of speakers this year, I’m definitely pulled.

I’m especially looking forward to the keynote speeches from Mark Earls and Emanuel Rosen who respectively wrote the books on the new theory of marketing to our crowd / group mentality and the increasing prevalence of word of mouth influence across every channel of the marketing mix.

I’ve read them both more than once, would recommend them both as great speakers to everyone, and even have signed copies of both books on show in the office.

Suffice to day then that July is shaping up to be a very interesting month indeed.

See you there…

While the week may be coming to a close, the office is still very much a-buzz as we look ahead to July and start thinking about our favourite kinds of Pulling Power

That’s the headline theme for this year’s Arts Marketing Association conference, by the way, which aims to explore the ongoing revolution in social marketing and promises to be all kinds of awesome.

In fact we’re looking forward to it so much we decided not to wait and this week went to see Mark Earls, author of Herd (one of my favourite reads of the year) and keynote presenter at the conference talking about social learning and the latest trends in understanding human nature.

Spoiler Alert: If you’re going to the conference this keynote is likely to unpick many of your closest held assumptions about the value we often place on influencers, early adopters and the individual when planning our marketing strategies and tactics.

On the plus side you’ll also likely walk away with some new ideas on how our jobs as marketers are changing towards a model that helps audiences to grow themselves, if that makes sense. And if it doesn’t make sense, then I guarantee you’ll still have lots to talk about. After all,  conversation is one of the key ingredients of any social campaign, right?

In other news, we’ve been very busy indeed on the home front too, with new Account Manager Nina joining the team in the last few weeks, and even newer Account Manager Jason and Digital Account Manager Katie poised to join us shortly.

So, lots of new faces, lots to learn and lots and lots of Social with a capital ‘S’ to look forward to in the weeks to come.

I stumbled across the idea of weeknotes recently as part of my digital marketing research (ok, reading Wired on my lunch break) and thought they seemed an interesting idea, and especially useful for company and organisational blogs to make sure you’re keeping as open and conversational as possible. Endlessly fascinating as it is we can’t write about print marketing all the time now can we.

Also, I was especially pleased to see the guys who apparently kickstarted the whole idea are based just down the road near Silicon Roundabout, or has that little bit of impromptu street branding become uncool again already? Anyway, if it’s good enough for the neighbours I definitely think it’s worth a try, so thank you Berg and here we go, Weeknote No: 1

Best day of the week had to be Tuesday, when we spent the day in a digital seminar led by our own internet marketing specialist Damon Segal.

A fantastic and highly productive day all round, but what I really want to rave about here is the building where we held the event. A couple of weeks ago I popped down Kingsland Road a little ways from our office for a general chat on all things social media and tour of the new and award-nominated building for Graeae Theatre. This is a great building and I’ve been eager to nose around inside since the build first started and I could see the work being done from my bus to work every morning. Their meeting room facilities really are great, and they couldn’t be more helpful, so if you are looking to hire meeting or training room space, I’d definitely recommend them as a place to check out.

I’ve been talking a lot of different shades of social media with clients these past few months, but the one I’ve been enjoying most recently is some of the project and consultancy work I’ve been involved in surrounding the forthcoming seriess of new pilot TV episodes screening in a new season on BBC3. I won’t go into too much detail of what we’ve been up to here, but suffice to say I’d definitely recommend at least one of the different shows over all of the others – and recommendations are what it’s all about, as a big part of whether any of the shows will get picked up is down to the online buzz they might generate.

Finally, and still thinking finger on the Pulse (ahem) you could hardly have failed to notice the launch of the iPad.

I’ve been spending a good part of my week tracking all of the online chatter and tweetery about this potentially game-changing piece of lovely shiny new tech.

No matter whether you’re traditionally a Mac or a PC, I think these are going to be a real boon to the Arts & Cultural sector, and with brilliant apps like the Museum of London’s new Street Museum already storming the iPhone, I can’t wait to see what the creative types can conjure up for a bigger browsing screen.

Right now though I’m through deciding whether I want one or not for myself (I’m already sold) and have now skipped on to thinking about which kind of iPad case best defines me as an individual…

We’re often asked what format and size of print are the most popular with different audiences and venues, so here’s what we found out.

Tom Butler investigates:

An interesting document arrived on my desk yesterday, it detailed every single piece of print that we’d taken out over the past 12 months. Initially I thought nothing of it, but once immersed in the facts it soon became clear of an emergent trend. We had more pieces of A5 print on display last year than all other sizes put together (DL, A6, etc). And we were looking at over 80 different sizes of print!

Now this is not to say there is a more effective size over the rest however. The sheer number and varieties of print we have successfully taken to market over the past year are mind blowing! If each piece of print was designed and coloured in the same way it would become mundane. So it’s this variety that keeps people interested.

But what does this variety mean!?! I hear you ask. Well I got to thinking, and in one sense it’s about familiarity and comfort. When a medium of marketing has worked so consistently well throughout the ages why would anyone veer away from it?

And yet in another sense, when a bold piece of print goes to market it creates that spark of recognition, that sense of excitement amongst an audience who know already they’re going to be entertained, fascinated and educated all at the same time.

Is this why print has become so endearingly popular? Is it because it’s visible? Is it because people think they’re getting a free guide when they should have paid? Is it because you can pick it up and put it in your bag? Is it because your going to mention it to your friends when you next see them? Well, amazingly, it’s all of the above.

So who is it that creates this raft of print in all shapes and sizes? Well research would suggest that it’s the traditional organisations, galleries and museums who produce the A5 print, film companies and contemporary organisations think up a postcard or something not seen before whilst the theatre world corners the market in concertina glitzy DL leaflets.

And in that sense, it’s also partly about brand recognition. Organisations are looking to develop a series of consistently designed pieces of print with the long term goal being for audiences to recognise the style and production of a leaflet in connection with the venue, exhibition or show.

So whilst the advent of Social Media has brought about a whole new raft of ways in which to reach your audience it brings a lovely sense of familiarity to see the multi-sized flyer defying the trends. In short, it’s become a core of organisations campaigns that shows no signs of slowing down for the foreseeable future.

Viva Print!

As we enter the last phase of our latest Social Media research project, Georgina Turner examines the ongoing blend between online and offline marketing…

By now you are riding a wave of Social Media and the water’s great, isn’t it? What’s even greater is that I have started to notice my personal favourite social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, appearing on print campaigns for venues such as The Royal Institution and the V&A – a practice we’ve been big advocates for.

This got me to thinking, three years ago I carried out research for London Calling into the use of Print Media and how audiences respond to it,  and now in collaboration with students from the University of Northampton we are conducting research into the use of Social Media. So wasn’t it high time the two had a face-off? Was there a clear winner when communicating to your audiences?

The research highlights that it is a balancing act when getting the content of your print right. Selecting information and designing layouts can be a challenging task especially when one of your objectives is to reach new audiences who you don’t necessarily have a profile for. But once sitting proudly on display (in a London Calling Leaflet Rack, naturally) it would be nice to know why your print becomes that pocket takeaway.

Our results showed that 57% of visitors to our display racks are searching for offers, discounts and incentives. They pick up print for information on locations of venues and contact details including website addresses. But not just this, they want something to take home to show the folks like a form of memorabilia.

For Social Media, other than being extremely credible when delivered properly, when content is current you have the opportunity for two-way real-time conversations that are both sustainable and engaging. On Facebook, there are even tools enabling the audience to decide which conversations they view or follow – the fans or the ones belonging to an organisation. The brand can hear exactly what is being said about them, all while they are still in the room, and audiences can opt-in to listen and engage.

So, with round two and three in its mitts, Social Media shows that both B2C and B2B organisations can benefit from being active in Social Networks that give them added access to key audiences within their sector.

So, I thought I was onto my winner! “Ding, Ding!” However, going full circle to the beginning of my argument, it’s clear that Social Media has got to be considered as part of a well thought out and integrated marketing plan, and so we’re back to the rest of the mix again. And, crucially, remembering it really is a mix, not a simple silo of individual strategies and tactics.

“Marketplaces are conversations” is one of the key mantras of web marketing. What we’re learning is that physical print can play a crucial role in reaching new potential audiences and converting them into followers, fans and budding conversationalists.

Call it a draw? Call it what you like, I still love them both!