London Calling

Audience segmentation for the next decade is the theme of the latest issue of the Journal of Arts Marketing, the quarterly publication from the Arts Marketing Association.

My latest piece argues for an approach to sustainability that moves past the simple eco-checklist approach to putting your house in order, and rather returns to the core brand values of an organisation. In this way sustainability becomes a strand of programming in its own right and another way to think about and  talk to our audiences.

The implications for understanding how an audience’s attitudes to green issues and sustainability might integrate with our more traditional segmentation strategies are still being uncovered, but it’s clear to me that failing to include this line of thinking in our planning is a failure to grasp new opportunities for building relations with our target markets in the decade to come.

Here’s the article in full:

Like a latter day Johnson and Boswell, Dr Ben Todd of Arcola Theatre and I have been out on the road performing a green marketing double act at AMA Networking events and other choice locations across London and the South East.

The idea has been to inspire discussion on the different ways a green marketing mix can benefit broader audience engagement and, as Ben pointed out, take advantage of the biggest and best networked marketing team we possibly can to help test out our theories.

One of the main questions we’ve been posing is whether a venue’s marketing team should be the ones taking the lead on green initiatives.

Unfortunately there is no one size fits all simple solution to the problem of sustainability.

Rather there’s a need to navigate any number of different positions. You’ll want to encourage investment in meaningful change, avoid the slippery greenwashed slopes of a quick carbon neutral cop-out, seek out new lines of communication and explain what you’ve learnt so that others can follow in your footsteps.

During our mini-tour one theme has become increasingly apparent – if you really want to position sustainability as a central part of your venue, it needs to be embedded right through the corporate identity. In other words we’re back to brand – the natural home of the modern marketing team.

Talking about the Arcola’s own experience, Ben outlined how evolving their own sustainable strategy has been a long, slow burn in direct contrast to the quicker promotional ‘splash and dab’ of selling theatre tickets.

The first lesson they learned after deciding ‘We’re all going to be sustainable – Yeah cool!’ was to start asking what that really meant to them as an organisation.

The answer was to go right back to Arcola’s corporate branding and mission statement, so the place where long term work on building company identity and relationships with stake holders, funders and audiences becomes the home for sustainability as well.

As Ben explains it, there are two divergent approaches to adoption. Treat sustainability in the same way you would Health & Safety (forms and tick boxes basically) or position it directly as a strand of your core programming. For Arcola their three main strands of programming – Professional Productions, Youth & Community Work and Sustainability – are now all intrinsically linked, cross-pollinating creative ideas and creating new and exciting ways to engage with Arcola’s audiences.

As Ben explains it ‘we’re identifying a whole new way of engaging audiences, building loyalty and accessing new markets.’

We think you’ll agree that rather than just viewing this as adding another task to the teetering pile of to-dos, the opportunity to engage with new ideas and talk to our audiences in new ways is precisely why we became marketers in the first place.

At it’s best arts marketing is about capturing people’s imagination and inspiring them to try new experiences. It’s exactly this kind of engagement we need to encourage a cultural shift towards more sustainable practises, and this is precisely where the arts are in a prime position to reach people and help create real change for the better.

Full Disclosure:

London Calling is the current sponsor of JAM, supporting the Arts Marketing Association and working in partnership with our recommended printer, Greenhouse Print, to ensure each issue is printed to the highest possible standards of environmental management.

We’ve chosen to use the promotional space that comes in kind as part of our supporting package to create a series of advertorial articles highlighting issues of sustainability within the arts and cultural sector.

We rather like writing these, and all comment and feedback is always greatly appreciated.

This last week I’ve been reading through Arts Council England’s public consultation Achieving Great Art For Everyone and pondering the multiple questions it raises: What are the challenges and opportunities for us as Arts Marketers in the decade to come, and how best can we respond to the evolving arts landscape both as individuals and organisations, to name just a few.

Clearly the first step is to get involved and make sure to register and complete the survey. I’m still finishing mine, but then I’m a wordy kind of guy and it’s the kind of big picture stuff that requires some serious thought.

The future’s not set, but Liz Forgan, Chair, Arts Council England has some thoughts on the fate we’ve already made for ourselves, and the major trends the Arts Council can see unfolding, to get us started.

What will the world look like in 2021? Some things we know: a generation of digital natives will dominate the creative arts; climate change will be central to all our thinking; the demographic composition of Britain – its artists and its audiences – will continue evolving; and the fallout from the recession of 2009 will still be felt in both private and public sectors. Life – and art – will be different.

For me, I’m naturally inclined to think about this from a marketing perspective, and how vital it is that proper funding consideration is given to promoting and communicating Great Art, not just achieving it.

The Arts have a proud history of grand ambition and shoestring budgets but – in my humble opinion at least – there’s a pressing need to support our sector’s excellent efforts at communication as much as there is a need for director or curatorial excellence, and I’ll likely be saying something similar in my survey answers as soon as I’ve thought them through.

The deadline’s not until 14th April, but there’s no reason not to start sending those thoughts in now, and the more the better.

It’s a whole half-decade since Mosaic audience profiling first made its mark on the arts marketing world, and now in 2010 the landscape is changing again.

Back in 2005, London Calling was something of a pioneer in the sector when we first introduced the profiling software as part of our support for the Africa 05 celebrations. Then the main brief was to correlate traditional arts audience information with residential and ethnic-origin datasets, so we could segment up London and look for areas of maximum crossover between the two.

At the time I thought this was possibly one of the most exciting toys for grown ups I’d ever got to play with and now Experian, the people behind the product, have raised their game again and introduced a whole new version of their software, complete with brand new classifications that best reflect the social changes now happening in contemporary Britain.

In the short term this means that all of us who’ve spent the last few years thinking of our audiences as members of groups like Urban Intelligence or Symbols of Success have some re-learning to do, but the potential benefits of the reclassification far outweigh this immediate need to rethink our terminology.

For a start this isn’t simply a casual rebrand to update the same old groups and types with shiny new buzzwords. Life in Britain has changed considerably since the last major iteration of this software in 2003, and as well as providing more distinction in terms of the individual personality profiles, this latest version also takes a number of increasingly significant social trends into account, for instance…

An Ageing Society: The new classifications recognise the increasingly active and varied nature of our early retirement years and the opportunities this can create for engaging with potential new audiences. Combine this with an increased trend towards their favouring historical and cultural inland towns over the more traditional south coast retirement towns, and suddenly there’s a significant need to rethink our geographic approaches to targeting these groups.

Migration: The new Mosaic now better reflects the diverse and increasingly multicultural nature of contemporary Britain, and identifies both mono-cultural enclaves (for instance Asian Identities) and neighbourhoods which have increasingly embraced multi-culture through assimilation and integration (for instance Terraced Melting Pot and Global Fusion).

The Network Society: The UK has grown from 10% to almost 70% adoption of broadband coverage since 2003, and this massive transformation has unlocked a whole range of new social behaviours. The digital groundswell continues to revolutionise our understanding of and approach to audience engagement, and the new Mosaic works to identify how different social types use the Internet for shopping, sourcing information and social networking.

Impact Of Recession: Many of these new types have been directly affected by the current recession, for instance the group Active Retirement have seen their saving and investments seriously eroded, and the Professional Rewards type are finding themselves under increasing pressure to provide financial support for their grown-up children. Both of these types will factor heavily in the audience make up of  many arts organisations, and Mosaic can help in the creation of new campaigns that directly reflect their current social and financial realities and potentially offer new ways for audiences to experience their offers and events even in the midst of a trend towards more considered leisure spends.

It’s clear that the demand for popular and increasingly sophisticated arts experiences is still increasing, and the ability of these new Mosaic profiles to offer further focus on the different constituents of our audiences can only be a good thing in a time when budgets are tight and the need to spend wisely will be one of the key priorities for the year ahead.

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?

photo credit: www.alicepeperell.com

It’s exciting times for London Calling’s sustainability partners Arcola Theatre, who recently unveiled their plans to create a brand new eco-theatre in East London.

Following a feasibility study funded by the London Development Agency the project will be the UK’s first major arts venue to place environmental sustainability at the core of all stages of construction, operations and programming.

Executive Director at Arcola, Dr Ben Todd, described the vision as an aim “to create a place Da Vinci might call home where creative people across multiple disciplines drive innovation for a sustainable and equitable future.”

The expanded Arcola Theatre will include:

• A main house theatre seating 350 (500 standing), suitable for mid-scale theatre and opera productions
• 150 and 80 seat black-box studio theatres, similar to those Arcola already run
• An extensive foyer, spilling out on to the public realm, with bar/cafe/restaurant and informal meeting spaces
• Incubator units for scientists and engineers developing sustainable technologies
• A Bike Hub with storage and change facilities, close to public transport nodes
• Public garden and growing spaces

The architecture and engineering design for Future Arcola will be coordinated by Arup Associates, whose iconic projects include Sydney Opera House and the Birds Nest and Water Cube stadiums for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Following up on our sponsorship of the AMA’s digital marketing day last week, Georgina Turner shares her personal highlights from this year’s social media sell out event.

The day opened with keynote presenter DK, founder of MediaSnackers, starting the day by challenging delegates to reposition the way they use these highly conversational tools as part of their communications mix.

Social Media is “not a mountain to climb but a wave to catch” he claimed, and how right he is. The whole point of catching a wave is if you miss one, there’ll be another along in just a minute, so it’s not like Social Media is an all or nothing effort, and if you’re not ready for the big surf you can always dip a toe in the shallows. Come on in folks, the water’s fine.

Still, multitasking your way through a digital landscape can leave anyone with a brand new raft of questions to answer. For instance we all know the main sites now, but now venues and brand are increasingly getting on board what are their relative pros and cons, and how do you know which is the one your audience will respond most positively to? Perhaps the most important question for people on the day was how do you use these tools to portray your brand or organisation correctly?

The key point to remember is, Social Media is all about people.

Some might consider it corny, or even dangerous, to talk about putting individuals in front of  brands, but as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos famously noted, “A brand is what people say about you when you are out of the room.

Individuals are at the heart of these communication tools, and when they give our organisations permission to enter their world and interact in their personal space, we have to remember we’re in the room by invitation only.

However, once you’re there you have a great opportunity to tell your networks what is happening with you right now. Given the emphasis on real-time interaction and organic growth (just think of the way the retweet standard on Twitter grew entirely from users) it’s worth remembering that everyone else is experimenting with these tools as much as you are and strategies such as Do, don’t plan and Direct your message, don’t spread it, can often yield quick results which you can then keep modifying and learning from as you go.

So it was very much in this spirit that Rebecca from Pilot Theatre introduced me to AudioBoo, a sound sharing application on my iPhone that can be linked to your Twitter and Facebook sites. There, over our mushroom stroganoff, we recorded a conversation and posted this to the Pilot Theatres Facebook page and there I was having a conversation about SM, posting this to a SM host, and sharing our personal conversation about this latest emergent SM trend as part of the wider discussion.

An appealing factor about the wider Social Media discussion is that it’s measurable. Keynote Jim Richardson, Managing Director of SUMO and author of the excellent Museum Marketing blog introduced me to my new favourite measurement tool which focuses on the level of involvement of audiences and categorises the different types of Social Media users.

From this, if I could offer you any advice it’s catch the wave with your audiences, take the journey to find out what they are doing with your brand and then it’s up to you how far out you go and how long each wave lasts.

The best news is you’re already halfway there. We work in a creative and inspiring sector whose audiences are already actively talking about our shows, events and exhibitions. At heart Social Media tools simply expose the word of mouth that is already going on all around us and give us a new way to meaningfully join in with and learn from the conversation.

With London Calling being headline sponsor for yesterday’s Changing Mix, Changing Strategy digital marketing conference, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to introduce London Calling’s own Internet Marketing Specialist, Damon Segal.

Damon Segal

Damon’s first role for us was a presentation on the Three Stages of Social Media Optimisation (SMO) – create, implement, manage – and an introduction to this latest part of London Calling’s digital offer.

If the sold-out digital marketing day is any indication, social media looks set to remain a hot-button topic for arts marketers for some time to come, and we’d encourage everyone still trying to get their heads around the technology to remember two things:

Go where the conversation is. In exactly the same way you wouldn’t rely solely on displaying brochures in your own front of house, it makes sense to to go out and engage with people where they’re already socialising, where it’s their local bar or their favorite online sites.

The conversation was happening all along. Conversation and sharing are hardly new inventions, and social media sites have simply amplified and linked up conversations that were happening anyway. While the proliferation of new channels and deluge of talk can seem daunting at first, what social sites like Facebook and Twitter give us as arts marketers are tools for being able to see the conversations that were happening around us for the first time – and once you know there’s a conversation happening it’s much easier to join in and be a part of it.

Following someone on Twitter or keeping up with the Facebook posts is all well and good. But it’s still not the same as making reaching out and making a real connection. The virtual equivalent of a quick call or stopping by for a cup of coffee.

With your patrons, there are well-established regular touch points – when they come in to see a show they interact with staff and feel welcome; when they receive an email offering them preview tickets at a discount they feel special and wanted. But how else can your social networking help to solidify that communication? With so many followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook it can feel impossible to make your contact personal. But here are some ideas on how you can move from a transactional to a constant relationship with your patrons.

Make it easy: Most of us are using many different types of social engagement, but not all will have the same technical abilities. Make it easy for people to find you, get started and keep interacting.

Make it engaging: President Obama widened the spread of his message from live speeches, debates and interviews into the social sphere, providing supporters multiple ways to spread the message for him. Rather than just passively consuming content, people became engaged and active participants in his campaign.

Keep it interesting: the more often you add content, post new blogs or reply to comments, the more engaged your patrons will be.

Look at the individuals: Understand your audience and tailor the experience to them. Take advantage of log-in info and user preferences, modify content for younger audiences.

Measure your metrics: Facebook has shown how much people like to follow their own stats. Create measurements for user polls, competitions etc.

Share: Let people share content, see what everyone else is doing and spread the message far and wide.

User-generated content: Take the burden off yourself sometimes. Let your users add their own images as well as posts.

Be consistent: Create reasons to stay in touch. Follow-up on survey results, reply to messages and show that you’re listening to what people have to say.

Create a long-term strategy: Social networking is about more than just setting up a Facebook page and hoping people become fans.  True engagement means full engagement in the channels where you choose to invest. If you’re resource-constrained, it’s better to be consistent and participate in fewer outlets than to spread yourself too thin.

Get your team on board: Any successful social media strategy requires all of your organization’s staff to be on board, from the Finance Director who ok’s the budget to the summer intern. Make it part of everyone’s job to get involved – a few minutes spent regularly every week, enriches your social networking point of view and adds up to a wealth of customer touch points.

Appreciate Your Friends: People who lend you their time, by following your posts, passing on your emails or blogging about a play, they all deserve a thank you. Everyone likes to feel noticed and appreciated.

This post is by London Calling’s guest blogger Sarah O’Hanlon

In anticipation of the AMA’s Digital Marketing Day next week, I’ve been getting to grips with the practicalities of internet marketing and its associated acronyms: SEM, SEO and SMO to name a few of my personal favourites, i.e. Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media Optimisation respectively.

This got me thinking about something a lot of us marketers take for granted – the basics of print design.

Sure, there may be best practise guidelines and plenty of examples to hand (just check our racks if you need some new ideas) but what interests me here is how we can use these new digital lessons to revisit our other communications mediums and, for instance, re-imagine our approach to print within this broadening context.

Here then are some of my own thoughts on new approaches to print and how to optimise it’s affect as a vibrant part of a 21st century audience engagement strategy that includes digital, mobile and the whole marketing mix.

Include more than just your URL

It used to be enough to include a simple www.myvenuename.com URL on your print, but now  I’d argue that simply listing your URL is almost counterproductive. Audiences expect you to have a decent website, after all they all have one via facebook, twitter or even personally branded sites, so how much value does simply listing this really add?

Print display is an ideal way to reach new audiences, so we should be thinking of how best to add calls to action that will encourage people to jump online to where all the added value content is,whether it’s curatorial blogs, video trailers for forthcoming productions or even just foregrounding the 3 clicks & You’re Booked benefits of a new online box office system.

Sell the experience

If online is trackable down to the last pay-per-click, then is modern print shifting to a more experiential model? Now that people are as likely to find you via search, land where they like on your site then navigate around by themselves, there can be real value in reconsidering how you want people to engage differently with your printed material.

Returning to the idea of Prestige Format print, what are the added advantages of being able to directly influence the journey people take as they browse your brochure? Are there ways you can look to make your content more immersive? What can we learn from the ways people browse magazines, newspaper or even books. Does your print have a throughline, something that foregrounds the wider experience of your venue or production? What stories can you tell that go beyond the usual mix of production copy, pull-quotes and how to find us information.

Offer multiple ways to engage

Our research shows that offering new ways for people to engage with you can help foster a more modern & up to date impression in the eyes of both new and existing audiences. For instance including SMS short codes on posters and print has been popular for a number of years and is increasingly catching on in our sector. However there’s still a need to tailor the offer to your audience.

Downloadable mobile wallpaper and similar content might be great for fans of blockbuster movies, and I’d count myself in that demographic, but I’m still looking for more from my friendly neighbourhood arts venue. Instead, are there vouchers I can text in for and use at the bar, can I sign up to controlled text message alerts that update me on the added programme around a main exhibition or even for the price of my original text message (perhaps tailored to a one-off premium charge) can I sign up to a new cheaper but more flexible mobile membership scheme with your venue?

Think about sustainability

Audiences are demanding, and we’re seeing mounting evidence that arts audiences are also highly likely to be engaged with broader cultural concerns like climate change. If you’ve not greened your print yet, then the costs of doing so are now highly competitive as more printers are appreciating the added business benefits of using vegetable inks and sustainable paper stocks. If your print is as sustainable as you can make it, is there more you could do to highlight this to audiences and communicate other green initiatives your organisation is working on?

Could you include especially selected pre-show dinner offers with sustainable restaurants, highlight the new selection of organic drinks and snacks in your bar or restaurant or, given that one of the largest parts of our sector’s carbon footprint comes from travel to and from a venue, partner with a friendly carbon-neutral taxi company?