London Calling

I spend a lot of time thinking about print in one form or another and, whether it’s meetings with clients, planning campaigns, researching different audience segments or just sitting in a bar with friends and watching how people approach our racks, one thought comes through loud and clear.

People love print.

Note, I didn’t necessarily say financial directors, front of house staff or even marketers, just people. Oh, and before this starts to come across as a digital marketing versus trad marketing screed of some kind, let me also say I love my iPhone, am hooked on Twitter and buy a load of stuff online (including tickets) like everyone else.

And none of this means that print, and our relationships to it, isn’t changing.

Because I’m fascinated by evolution, I like to talk a lot about how the marketing mix functions as an ecosystem and how, like everything else, print evolves.

Evolution is slow, difficult to spot in the field and, crucially, not a conscious process, so adaptations that might seem entirely sensible to intelligent designers are often lost in favour of seemingly counter-intuitive but highly efficient solutions that work just fine in the real world.

For example, given the flexibility of modern websites to create new pages and update content in real time versus the predetermined size, page count and word limits of brochures, it would make sense that marketers would shift to a quicker, cheaper and more efficient flyer or postcard format with a simple call to action. The obvious tactic being to nimbly attract people’s interest then encourage them online as swiftly as possible so they land where all the good stuff is.

It makes sense in a tactical kind of way, and there’s likely all kinds of efficiencies involved, however looking at the print display campaigns we manage, and the trends over time, I’m starting to recognise the beginnings of a different pattern.

In simple terms, I’ve started to think of this emergent trend as a shift towards what I’ve called prestige format print.

Prestige print is an approach to design and content that eschews the lowest cost to highest content ratio of many brochures in favour of investing in a deliberately high quality product that enhances the reading experience.

Quick examples of prestige print would include an investment in higher quality print stocks, value-added copy such as Q&A’s with artists, and a design process that favours open white spaces mixed in with text and often devotes whole pages to single unadorned images.

The aim is to deliver an artifact with lasting value. A piece of print that wouldn’t look out of place on a coffee table, serves as a direct statement of your own interest in innovative arts culture and encourages repeat readings over a simple short-term browse and bin.

Now that the web is the default destination for information on demand, perhaps print is changing to meet a different set of audience expectations and satisfying a need for a more lasting and tangible engagement with modern venues. One that runs in parallel with the way we engage with our audiences online.

Today is the three week countdown to the Arts Marketing Association’s Digital Marketing Day, for which London Calling is the proud headline sponsor.

Following on from the theme of sponsorship in my last post, and given the fact some may note a slight incongruity in a digital marketing event being sponsored by a company best known as a provider of print display, it seemed highly timely to offer some insight into exactly why we think there’s such a big connection between our work taking print out on the road and the new opportunities to be found on the good old information superhighway.

The first time I really started thinking about the effect of digital media on the modern marketing mix was back in the last millennium – 1999 BB (Before Broadband) to be precise – and I was working  box office and communications at The Junction in Cambridge.

I’m paraphrasing slightly, but the basic tide of popular opinion back then went something like this:

“In a couple of years time we won’t need to print any more season brochures because people will simply go online and print them off themselves at home.”

Now, I’ll add a big caveat here and say this wasn’t necessarily the opinion from the marketing team, but it was certainly a trending topic of the day and the first time I encountered the so-called Death-Of-Print concept. And, as something that I’ve been encountering on and off ever since, it seemed a suitable topic for discussion here.

London Calling is  a company built with print marketing at its heart, so you can see how we might think it a good idea to take this kind of talk seriously. The thing is though the predicted trends aren’t bearing out. In fact with the internet breaking, mutating and re-paradigming established business models all over the place, any kind of long distance prognostication is proving a tad hard for people.

Instead let’s focus on what we do know. Change is definitely happening. Conversation has toppled content as online king, and the way we consume and share information is radically shifting our traditional marketing models; or, as some prefer, giving us a more insightful understanding into how those same models actually worked all along.

The question for us is where does a company like London Calling fit within this realignment of priorities? Do we want to stay at the centre of the mix, or are there new perspectives to be gained from experimenting on the edges?

The answer is most likely a combination of the two, but it’s the details of that potential mix that most fascinate us and have led us to trialling new digital products of our own and, ultimately, investing in conference events like this in support of both our own development and that of our clients.

The prediction about everyone home-printing their own brochures may have failed to materialise – hardly surprising given the cost of printer ink compared to pretty much everything else – and in fact London Calling has seen volumes increase year on year, which can be a different kind of concern, and one of the reasons that’s lead to all of our recent sustainability initiatives. However the shared world of marketing, communications and advertising can be a highly sensitive ecosystem, and we’ve all heard that story about what happens when even a single butterfly flaps its wings.

In anticipation of the Digital Marketing Day it seemed fitting to use this blog space in the coming weeks to explore the recent work we have done under the banner of London Calling Digital. Sharing our own learning experiences – the good, the bad, and the error 404s – and offer our own two-cents on the ways print, digital and now locative media may begin to interact in the future.

In my humble opinion it’s a fascinating time to be a marketer, and the levels of expertise, initiative and enthusiasm we’re seeing across the arts to engage meaningfully with their audiences suggests the need to experiment and share our knowledge has never been so timely.

*I was originally going to put ‘Before Google,’ but they first launched in 1998 (to no fanfare whatsoever, which just goes to show how people fail to pay attention to the really important things).

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.

A good conference should resonate long after you’ve handed out your final business card, drained your last networking drink and returned home to tame the wilds of your inbox – And so it is with Communicating The Museum 2009.

Last week we caught up with Rosalind Bherer from the organising team at Agenda, who kindly traveled all the way over from Paris to hand deliver our copies of the final analysis after the vagaries of British fail mail lost the originals in the post (thanks Rosalind).

This got me thinking back over everything we’d heard and all those scrawled notes I’d saved for later, and a stock check of what we’d learned and what we’d done since seemed entirely timely.

If the 2008 conference in Venice was about the tools of online social media, then this year was primarily about the talent and how far and fast things have moved on.

As the analysis clearly states “Social Media is not about Marketing, it’s about Conversation” and this year was all about practical examples from marketing agencies like 1000heads and SUMO and internationally recognised venues like the Brooklyn Museum, Bozar and the Barbican – all of whom are putting their social media money where their word of mouth is. Although I think it’s equally fair to say there were plenty more experts in the audience as well.

If you missed it there’s now a full synthesis available for purchase here. In the meantime, and in time-honoured blawg tradition, here’s a list of some of my favourite learnings:

Who is your social media presence really for?

Markets are conversations, so it’s great to be an active adopter of these conversational tools (early or not) but it’s equally important to consider who you want to be speaking with.

Are you looking to talk with new audiences, existing visitors, specialists in the field or all of the above and more? Sometimes it can pay dividends to listen and find out what people are already keen to talk about. And if they’re talking about you already all the better – good news and bad, you can learn from both.

The tools may be free, but time ain’t cheap

If there was one theme I heard repeated more than any other it was the issue of time as a barrier to adoption. With mounting pressure but no clear direction often coming from your powers-that-be to get on the band wagon and get it done cheap – take a pic, do a blog – it’s important to take a step back and think about what practical measurement criteria best suits you for gauging success.

Is your aim to promote shows and sell tickets, allow audiences a peek behind the curtain or maybe give them exclusive access to special offers and exclusive events? A clear set of performance indicators, no matter how simple and changeable, can make all the difference between being hailed as your venue’s social media evangelist or pilloried as that staffer who just hangs about online following Stephen Fry and looking at lolcat blogs all day.

Evolve. Let the chips fall where they may.

In some ways the binary opposite to my second point, this one can best be summed up as try things out, make mistakes, learn from them (quickly), try again and, perhaps most important of all, remember to enjoy yourself along the way.

It’s this ethos that most directly informed our own decision to jump in and switch our old company website over to a more dynamic, evolving and semi-permanent beta format using freely available Wordpress software. There’s a whole other blog post on what we’ve already learned in the weeks since version one of this site went live but in the meantime here’s one final thought on making the most of the connected world.

And finally

Look beyond the tech.

Seriously.

At heart, and whatever your current platform of choice, social media and Web 2.0 tools are simply another means of taking your message out to those places where your audience already are and finding ways to initiate conversations with them.

I’m reminded of this every time I step into a gallery, theatre or bar and see people picking out print from one of our display racks to share with friends. Brochures and flyers are communications tools too after all, just ones we already understand intuitively.

It wasn’t so long ago that companies were seriously debating banning email in the office as a potential timesink, but now it’s just another accepted part of the communications mix and pretty impossible to imagine working without. In ten years or so real-time services like Twitter, or whichever new start-up ultimately accelerates past them, will almost certainly be as acceptable and intuitive to us as an email broadcast, direct mail or well-placed poster is today.

And so the marketing mix marches on. Here’s looking forward to conference time 2010.

There’s never been a greater demand for clear and practical information on the best ways we can all help London’s theatres go green. That’s why I’m especially delighted to have been invited to represent London Calling as a green theatre supplier at the forthcoming Greening Your Theatre workshop at Arcola Theatre Friday 23rd October, 10am to 12.30pm.

The event is designed to introduce the latest schemes and subsidies, offers networking opportunities with expert advisors and green theatre suppliers and should see you coming away with a clear picture of of what next steps are right for you and the best ways to get the support you need.

Better yet, it’s completely free to attend. You still need to register though and you can do that by emailing Janie Neumann to reserve a space – london@green-business.co.uk or 0845 863 0770

Speakers are:

• Mhora Samuel of the Theatres Trust on their new ECOVENUE initiative
• Jon Proctor, Technical Director of LDA-sponsored Green Tourism for London
• Ben Todd, Executive Director of Arcola Theatre and Arcola Energy
• Alison Tickell of Julie’s Bicycle, on Greening Theatres and how all of the greening support programmes fit together

The workshop is supported by the London Development Agency, Arcola Theatre, The Theatres Trust and the Society of London Theatre.

Planning your journey to Arcola Theatre can be checked here: Traveling to Arcola Theatre

Whatever happened to the good old text message, huh?

That’s the question Sarah O’Hanlon and I were challenged to answer in the latest issue of JAM, the quarterly Journal of Arts Marketing from the Arts Marketing Association.

We were especially drawn to the reasons why mobile has yet to reach a critical tipping point in the arts marketing mix – an unwillingness to risk an accidental tarring with the scuzzball brush? – and suggested that perhaps one of the main barriers to adoption was a tendency to think in terms of large and relatively consistent mailing lists rather than embracing the niche opportunities that can exist in a faster opt in / opt out conversation.

You can download the whole issue here.

To save you looking we’re near the back on pages 21 & 22.

You want to encourage new student audiences. Everyone wants to reach student audiences, and every year there’s a perfect opportunity in the form of the ever popular Freshers Fair. But you also need to cut through the chatter, because there’s a lot of different social options being promoted out there so how do you do it?

One of the immediate answers is collaboration. After all, first and foremost you’re promoting the arts experience and encouraging an audience often unfamiliar with the city to take their first steps out further than the union bar; and it’s often those first, formative visits that can build continued loyalty and resonate for years to come. A shared message – there’s a wealth of art in London – can also create a greater sense of cultural value. You’re not just visiting a venue you’re participating in a rich cultural and contemporary heritage.

Last week London Calling went back to university as part of a shared promotional effort by some of the capital’s finest Galleries and Museums, all keen to engage new student audiences at the start of their first term.

We were originally approached by the Art in London group to coordinate the creation of their bespoke information packs, handle the logistics of delivery and, most importantly, manage the assembly of multiple pieces of promotional print into one simple package that could easily be handed out all in one go.

As a little extra bonus we also made sure that all of the packs were made from 100% recycled paper stock and printed using sustainable vegetable inks while still coming in on budget. Another small step on the path to showing that green print needn’t cost the Earth.

The packs were distributed to students from the Art in London tables at Freshers Fairs taking place at Goldsmiths, UCL, the University of the Arts and University of London with gallery reps on hand to answer questions and sign students up to a shared emailing list.

While we had originally planned to go back and collect any remaining supplies, the teams did so well each day that there wasn’t a single pack left over by the end of the campaign.

What did we learn? Clearly there’s as big a demand for arts information amongst student audiences as ever, and perhaps the real trick to engaging with them successfully is in taking the extra time to consider the context of the message you want to present.

By teaming up the Art in London group were able to create a simple but powerful proposition that combined messages from 17 different cultural venues into a single call to action that added value way beyond the sum of its collective parts.

Here’s  a rare picture of a stocked up and ready to roll table, crush of art-loving students just out of shot…

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.

When you think about it, it makes sense that there ought to be a connection between our Arts & Cultural audiences and the sustainability movement.

The parallels are there – a value on the unique, live experience over commodities, socially active and often community-minded, a broad cultural awareness and a slight political lean towards the Left, at least when it comes to the environment (I’m basing this last point on the number of client briefs I receive suggesting a preference for targeting Guardian readers).

It follows that arts organisations could benefit directly from engaging with their audiences on these issues, highlighting their own commitments and initiatives and using the issues as spring board to encourage further conversation around their brands as well as feeding directly into artistic projects.

It’s ideas like these that lie at the heart of our own Sustainable Communication drive, and we’re far from alone as the latest  issue of Arts Professional happily illustrates. A welcome special edition focusing on Arts and Climate Change, the issue features articles from arts and business experts in the field including  a piece on green audience segmentation by our own Andrew Moir.

I’ve posted the full article below and you can download a pdf copy of the issue here

“For most arts organisations chasing the green pound should have some relevance. In the past it has been hard to prove either way. But now we finally have some evidence that would suggest that there is a link between cultural audiences and a positive pre-disposition towards sustainability and green issues.  London Calling has had a contract to supply the Mosaic audience segmentation analysis produced by Experian for a number of years. Therefore our understanding of who attends which types of events is very sophisticated and we can map out, to individual postcodes, the types of people who attend arts events throughout London. Now Experian have created a new segmentation analysis called “Green Aware” that segments the population by virtue of their behaviour and attitude towards green issues and even monitors individual household carbon footprints. We have contracted with Experian to sell this research to the Arts, Leisure and Tourist industry.  As public consciousness of global warming has increased, so has the complexity of the issues surrounding the key drivers that influence people’s behaviour. This research identifies the drivers and barriers of current household behaviours including consumer’s understanding of green initiatives, sense of risk, accountability and an understanding of the terminology associated with carbon footprints and organisation’s claims to be green.

“Green Aware enables you to identify and target households in relation to their attitudes towards environmental issues. This means that we can identify environmental attitudes of Mosaic groups as part of our existing strategy for segmenting customer behaviour. Initial analysis has shown that there are patterns that suggest that those who are well educated, affluent and are generally switched on are more likely to take on an environmental focus in their daily lives. It would appear that “Symbols of Success” and “Urban Intelligence”, the two most prevalent Mosaic segmentations at arts venues and cultural events, have a high correlation with “Eco-evangelists” and “Convinced Consumers” the two most environmentally aware and actively supporting groups within the population.

“”Eco-evangelists” have the greenest attitudes of all and are major consumers of green products. They are trying to cut down on buying “stuff” and are mistrustful of companies. They tend to use public transport and many cycle, but on the negative side they tend to be frequent flyers and are not good at saving energy in the home.

“”Convinced Consumers” are highly aware of green issues and are very concerned to improve their behaviour. They are worried about other people not doing their bit and support Government compulsion.  They have cut down on car use and some have even bought hybrid cars but they do fly often.

“The other types are “Green But Doubtful”, “Confused but Well Behaved”, “Doing Their Best”, “Sceptical Libertarians”, “Too Busy to Change”,  “Why Should I Bother”,  “Constrained by Price”, and finally “Wasteful and Unconvinced”

“Understanding the attitude of your audiences towards these issues can help you tailor the messages you give them as well as identify similar segments of the population who currently don’t attend your performances or events.

“Taking simple steps to “green” your marketing could have a significantly positive effect of the empathy and support you receive.  Recycled paper, vegetable-based inks and environmentally friendly messages like “Please recycle this leaflet when you have finished with it”, can help organisations to contribute to improving sustainability and at the same time enhance the relationship with your audiences/visitors.”

An away day from the office isn’t what it used to be.

So, for instance, not so long ago a day’s training at the Ecademy learning about Social Media for Business with self-described Silicon Valley tech geek, blogger and early adopter Louis Gray would have been just that. A day away from the office and all the associated desk-bound projects left there under the watchful eye of an out-of-office message, and maybe a quick and conscientious check-up call over lunch.

Not so now. In a room of perhaps 80 people the vast majority were skilled smartphone ninjas, even the ones still finding themselves baffled over the difference between feedburner and friendfeed (friendburner?), and I was far from the only one checking a few incoming work emails, facebook statuses and bookmarking names of other sources to go check out. On the back row others were enthusiastically tweeting quotes and questions live to Louis and wider the world – Gone are the days when they ask you to switch off your phone before booting up the powerpoint. I’m still trying to decide between the echofon and tweetdeck apps at the moment, having previously preferred easier former option but now being swayed back to the more all-in tweetdeck on recommendation from Louis, one of its first adopters and early evangelists, and having now seen the scale of new tweets I can expect from following him I suspect I’ll be glad of an app that can handle some heavy social media lifting.

All of this certainly helped highlight one of Louis’ central points about how we handle information and overload in the modern working day. That this has fundamentally shifted seemed readily apparent to everyone in the room, and Louis summarised this neatly as a conceptual shift from jobs where people worked full time to jobs that now happened in real time. If the place where you work won’t let you engage with these tools, says Louis, you need to find a new company.

A few days later, and I’m still processing some of the deeper implications of this pattern shift in my working topography and doing a little social media stock-taking. I wouldn’t even pretend to be as fully immersed as Louis so clearly is, but it seems the first signs of a residency in cyberspace are there for all to see. Quickly totaling my own main social media sites and information channels, it seems I’m regularly plugged in to three distinct email accounts and seven social media ecosystems (with multiple accounts in more than one), while connection with this online life shuttles back and forward across a couple of different laptops and a smartphone with its own discreet contact list of phone numbers and text messages. This doesn’t include all of those sites like Amazon where I simply maintain an account rather than participate or post content, or those blogs and bulletin boards (remember those?) I might visit and comment on as part of my broader online browsing and grazing.

Louis likened the buzz we see surrounding services like Twitter today to ten or so years ago when email as a marketing channel for business was really starting to ramp up. To summarize quickly, you likely wouldn’t attend a day’s presentation on Email for Business today, it’s just part of the landscape, and likewise ten years from now Real Time will simply be Time once again.

In the meantime, and again courtesy of Louis, here’s a link to the Online Marketing Blog with some handy hints for those who’ve optimized their social media presence and are now seeking to optimize the way the amount of time they stay immersed.

Tom