London Calling

Climate change has become the pressing issue of our time, and so it’s entirely right that the artistic world would have a varied and provocative response to the issue.

Taking the idea of how recent debate on the subject has shifted away from the possibility and more towards the certainty and speed within which climate change could take place, the Royal Academy of Arts second GSK Contemporary exhibition has been curated to connect ‘issue’ and ‘art’ and present works that are beautiful, powerful and thought-provoking.

At London Calling we’re proud to be one of the chosen supporters for this exhibition as another step on our own mission to promote sustainability within the arts, and we would strongly urge you to make time to see the show which runs until 31st January 2010.

We wouldn’t just want you to take our recommendation for it though, so here’s some links to other positive and thoughtful comment online from the Guardian, Evening Standard and The Arts Desk.

Been to see it already, then why not leave us a comment and let us know what you thought too?

With the Arts Council publishing their criteria for regular funding and Arts & Business chief executive Colin Tweedy calling for government created incentive schemes for private donors who sponsor cultural organisations, it seemed fitting that I also sit down to review London Calling’s own recent sponsorship and support.

What first got me thinking along this track was the forthcoming Culture Business conference,  a one day event in Paris organised by Agenda, the people behind the Communicating the Museum conference.

Aimed at fundraising and development teams, the programme covers everything from new themes of social solidarity and positioning culture to practical skills on pitching and negotiation.

Following this line of thought, it occurred to me that a view from the other side of the company fence could be useful in any potential negotiation. So, what useful information might we be able to share with Agenda’s delegates that would help them come up with more tailored pitches and packages?

Looking at our own recent approach to sponsorship there’s no one distinct strategy for choosing when to get involved with a particular project or organisation, although there are lots of distinct reasons why we’d choose not to. For instance I’ve increasingly found myself explaining that  getting our logo slapped onto things is rarely the motivating factor for us in any of our sponsorship conversations these days.

Instead what I’ve found is that our choices most often echo our company’s collective values and shared interests in some way. These aren’t just the values you’ll find listed out in our brand manual (although we do have one just in case) and are more commonly drawn from an initial shared idea or personal connection that’s sparked at the right moment.

Here, then, are some more specific examples that have lead to our own most recent partnerships:

Participation

Right now our most obvious level of sponsorship is the AMA’s upcoming Digital Marketing Day. It makes perfect sense to us given that we first launched our specialist London Calling Digital service at their main conference back in 2006. This latest event is selling very well apparently, and our logo is pretty much everywhere on their promotional material, but that’s not the reason we’re doing it.

The reason we’re keen to offer our support is because we already get a lot of value from the AMA. Their conferences, training days and networking events are our first port of call for learning and participation. Sharing experience and practice is key to the future of our sector, and if we can help pay the knowledge forward then all the better. It also brings me neatly to my next point.

Knowledge

We know why organisations most often seek sponsorship from us – monetary or in kind service support basically – but what should we ask for in return? One of the obvious answers is knowledge. A new marketing connection or insight into a different audience group can be highly valuable to us. For instance our recent support of the Raindance Film Festival wasn’t just an altruistic gesture based on their last minute loss of major banking funds (thank the credit crunch for that one), but also a great opportunity for us to get behind the scenes and learn more about how to market a festival with international reach on a bus fare budget.

Partnerships

Sometimes an initial contact can lead to an going relationship. This is exactly how we came to be partnered with Arcola Theatre and developed a reciprocal relationship on sustainable marketing initiatives that’s benefited both organisations over the long term and even set us out on the road conducting networking events to share what we’ve learned.

The point here is that it’s worth looking to the future of a possible relationship right from the point of first contact. A quick technique is to picture not just the immediate benefits as you step up to pitch, but also consider where your two organisations might be in a year from now. Working backwards, can you follow the steps that would have led to this potential future? If so, voila, instant strategy.

And Finally, Fun

Or, to put it another way, it’s good to do something new sometimes just because you can. Brands and companies are people too, and not every sponsorship decision is based purely on a direct strategic gain or return on investment. Some things are simply fun to do. The recent Treehouse Gallery Project would fall under that category. Our support was relatively small and most of the benefits to us were strictly internal – it seemed like an intriguing project and our Green Committee were keen for us to help out, which often is all the motivation required. And yet, every connection, no matter how small can lead on to bigger things, inspire colleagues or bring new and unexpected knowledge into an organisation.

Companies like Google have popularised the working practise of 20% Innovation Time as a key part of their business development. I’d argue that the new creative opportunities a modern company can gain from sponsorship fall within this concept of an innovation space.

Markets are conversations, as the Cluetrain Manifesto made clear back in 1999, and I’d argue that first and foremost a great sponsoring partnership is a fantastic way for a company to spark new and interesting exchanges at every level.

Culture Business 2009 takes place on Thursday 10th December in Paris, and full details of the event can be found here.

Last night saw us down at the Apollo Cinema for the opening night gala of the Raindance Film Festival.

London Calling has been working regularly with the Festival, distributing their print and poster publicity, but this is our first year supporting the event as an official media partner and we’re thrilled to be involved.

Speaking of print publicity, the full Festival catalogue can be downloaded from their site here. Counting in at a whopping 160+ printed pages it’s a little bit big for one of our display racks – I’d estimate we could fit maybe three of these in any one display point – and they’ve even divided up the digital version into four discreet sections to make it more manageable.

We’ve solved this by distributing both a single A5 leaflet and a smaller  “minilogue” highlighting specially selected events and the film cafe alongside a fold-out programme listing and screening pass promotion. It’s the perfect fit for us, and a cost-effective way of raising early awareness and directing traffic to their information-rich website.

Being partners with Raindance is not only a great opportunity to support the best in independent film and see some great new movies, it’s also the ideal opportunity for us to gain a greater understanding of new ways to engage with different audiences and the unique demands this can create when planning a campaign.

Festivals move quickly and then they’re gone for a year, so one of the biggest challenges was to be sure we were targeting a broad spread of potential new audiences and announcing the festival London-wide. The combination of different pieces of print meant we were able to generate advance awareness even while the festival programme was still being finalised with an initial burst of high visibility flyers.

Meanwhile the decision to use of the smaller minilogue rather than attempt to work with a full-sized brochure on display meant that we were not only able to follow up with more detailed information as the opening night approached, but we were also able to help the Raindance team keep a better control on their overall printing budgets. This put enough aside to make the full catalogue not only a great piece of print but a great piece of festival memorabilia in its own right.

Raindance 2009 runs until Sunday 11th October and will screen over 14,000 minutes of independent short films, features and documentaries across 12 days.

The Guardian recommends it, and so do we.

I spent the weekend at the Tree House Gallery in Regent’s Park doing some reading and invigilating in the Spherical Reading Gallery. The Tree House Gallery has been set up by a group of people who have brought together their skills, knowledge and time to produce this amazing project. Everyone who has worked on this project has done so on a voluntary basis and all materials and labour have been found / donated. London Calling have helped by donating wooden palettes for the tree houses and will hopefully be helping with their marketing.

Check out the pictures that I took over Saturday and Sunday. It was really fun and there were lots of people around on both days, especially kids on Sunday! If you have a chance to go, do as it’s quite amazing what they have achieved; they have some really good talks, workshops and performances too.

All the details can be found on their website and if you want to get involved then contact Claudia or Steph via thetreehousegallery at googlemail dotcom

Anita

I always saw myself as someone who was very aware of the responsibility of living with consideration for my fellow man. I would have said I cared a lot for the environment, without giving it much thought. Then I watched Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” and a lot changed for me. Suddenly I realised I was sleepwalking through life unaware of impending disaster. It is easy to be a busy fool, fiddling while Rome burns or is it Los Angeles or the outskirts of Sydney. It was a huge wake up call for me.

Images started to come into my mind about global warming. I remembered when I climbed Kilimanjaro how small the glaciers looked versus the traditional image shown of the mountain. If you had asked me five years before whether the environment was important I would have said very much so. And yet there I was driving around in a Range Rover because it was safe for the kids!!

A Prius has replaced the Range Rover. Taxis have been dropped for an Oyster card. Everything at home that can be recycled is recycled. All those measures are not enough when your company is running 22 vans through London and the South-East five days a week.

At London Calling we tend not to do things by half. When we embrace an idea we go for it. By the end of next year we intend to have all our vans either LPG (Liquid Paraffin Gas) or electric. By the end of this year we will be three quarters of the way to achieving that target. We recycle all of the remaining print and we know exactly where it is going and what it will be next. We have become more efficient in distributing and displaying print as we are covering fewer miles as our routing of journeys becomes more and more sophisticated.

We are embracing sustainability throughout the company. We have a green committee that has representatives from each department. We had a sustainability audit with Global Action Plan and now are working towards a Government accreditation.

Sustainability has become a genuine focus and every step along the way to hitting our environmental policy objectives and carbon footprint targets is met with as much enthusiasm as hitting our sales and profitability target.

I believe that the sustainability issue is going to grow in importance over the next few years as we are all forced to wake up and be more aware. Whatever you read and whenever you turn on the news, climate change and sustainability is not far from the surface. Obama, as President, I believe creates a new chapter and new momentum to the progress and even the financial crisis has failed to push the issue off the agenda. With the 2012 Olympics approaching at a frightening speed the ‘One Planet” objectives increases the awareness of the change and places London as a centre of excellence for sustainability.

I recognise that this is not a quick fix but from now on a way of life. At London Calling we are all prepared to take responsibility and our staff show a heartening enthusiasm to embrace the challenge.

By 2012 we will have a fleet of LPG and electric vehicles. We will have reduced our energy consumption to a minimum level and may well have invested in ways of generating our own energy. We want to explore more and more ways of making a difference, exploring zero emission hydrogen fuel cells and ways of reducing our total energy consumption further. We owe a huge thank you to Dr Ben Todd at Arcola Theatre for pointing us in the right direction and providing added enthusiasm and motivation for us to go further. We will have established a best practice for our industry and put forward recommendations as to how others can follow. Sustainability is something to share with everyone.

I took my kids to get a haircut last month and while Charlie was being “done” Larry (7 years old) was given an apple to eat. Where do I put the core? He asked. In the kitchen he was told. He returned with the core still in his hand saying he couldn’t find the compost bin!!

That’s the future when it becomes an unquestionable habit for everyone to embrace. I believe as a company we can inspire our clients as well as our peers to concentrate on reducing the damage we are doing to the planet. Our sponsorship of JAM, the AMA quarterly publication, is helping us get our message over to our clients and we will continue to pursue these goals. Then and only then can we talk about sustainability as something real rather than just a pale aspiration?

Andrew Moir – Managing Director

London Calling sponsors Green JAM

“At the heart of (our) sustainability initiative lies the need to successfully deliver environmentally friendly marketing campaigns. We believe this is a commitment we share with our clients.”

This statement is part of a longer article that’s running in the latest issue of JAM, the Journal of Arts Marketing and can be found by registering with the AMA:

http://www.a-m-a.org.uk/publications_detail.asp?id=157

(Full disclosure. This article is part of an advertorial running on the back page of the current issue. In other words I’ve paid for that position.)

In point of fact the ad itself was technically free and what I’ve really paid for is the entire print run of the issue, with London Calling taking on the sponsorship for this excellent publication across 2009 (so expect more articles from me in future issues).

In days gone by I’d have probably used this handy advertising space to promote a range of London Calling’s latest services – our thriving South East service perhaps, or maybe our latest experiences with new digital marketing initiatives.

However, given that one of the priority conditions of the sponsorship was that the journal itself be printed to the highest possible environmentally friendly standards, it seemed the perfect venue for us to share our own experiences of grappling with green marketing and to showcase some of the strides that our sustainability partners the Arcola Theatre are making in this area.

As I said, we believe the commitment to sustainable forms of marketing is one we share with our clients. Well, with a readership of almost exclusively arts marketers, this seemed like a great way to extend that dialogue and find out if that’s really true.

One of the most obvious questions I’ve been asked recently is about the costs and benefits of green printing.

I’ll come back to the benefits of green printing in a later post as there’s plenty of good material there and it’s worth covering the topic in depth.

Right now though one of the most immediate benefits to anyone considering greening their print production is that the once worthy but prohibitive costs have come right down the levels you’d expect to see from any quality printing service.
The latest issue of JAM has been produced by the friendly team at Greenhouse Print, and you can find out more about their services and the full range of ethical clients they work with here:

www.greenhouseprint.co.uk

Tom