Public Relations and Direct Marketing
“Make them know you, make them understand you, make them like you […] make them feel the same way about the things you choose to present” (Diggle, 1994, 163).
Throughout the rehearsal process of our performance, we were constantly thinking of new ways that we could reach new audiences. Chris Lord suggests with relation to publicity that: “While acknowledging that most artists want to reach as many as many people as possible, there is always a core or ideal audience for any work” (2001, 250). Whilst we agreed that a large percentage of our audience would be constructed of Lincoln School of Fine & Performing Arts students, we wanted to challenge ourselves into reaching as many people from the Lincoln public as possible.
PinPoint’s Pub quiz!
Our first event was hosted at Walkabout Lincoln on the 7th March. We decided to host this as our earliest event to gain recognition as a company and to make the initial start on raising money for our performance. This event attracted a wide range of customers enabling us to raise a considerable amount of money for the show, whilst promoting the performance.
(PinPoint Theatre, 2016a)
Campus Giveaway!
We held this marketing event on the University of Lincoln campus on the 4th May. We set up on campus with music, free cake, lots of flyers and a large PinPoint pin board. The aim of the day was to promote ‘How I Got To The Moon And Back’ to our target audience, students! To catch their attention, we chose to offer out free cakes and entered them into a Facebook prize draw. The prize draw was a hamper consisting of free meal vouchers and other perks that attract the target audience. This naturally attracted attention as people became curious and interested with our performance, proving to be a key chance to engage with a broad range of students from different areas of the university.
(PinPoint Theatre, 2016b)
Flyering in the city and poster distribution
After reaching a majority of our target audience, the marketing team decided to try and reach a larger scale of potential audiences within Lincoln city centre. We first decided to distribute our posters in as many local businesses and companies as possible allowing us to be recognised by more locals. Placing our flyers and posters around the city was a successful strategy as it built up a lot of interest within the performance as many of the retailers were highly intrigued and curious through the face-to-face interaction they received.
Flyering in the city centre at first proved slightly challenging as most people were uninterested due to them only visiting the area for the weekend. After making this acknowledgement, we tried this task on a weekday to aim at reaching the locals of the city. As a result of avoiding the weekend rush in Lincoln, the outcome was positive and it raised a lot of interest, specifically from the age range of 30+. The effectiveness of these strategies really emerged from the direct communication that the public had received. As suggested by Diggle: “The purpose is to motivate; to make people want something so much that they will perform the unnatural act of going to the inconvenience of actually buying a ticket and parting with hard-earned and highly taxed money.” (1994, 181). The ability to directly communicate with the public enabled us to encourage them to buy tickets and promote the performance in the most positive yet honest light.
(PinPoint Theatre, 2016c)
Works Cited:
Diggle, K. (1994) Arts Marketing. Surrey: Perfectaprint.
Lord, C. (2001) Section 5: Documentation & Marketing:Chris Lord, Marketing & PR. In: L. Hill and H. Paris (eds.) The Guerilla Guide To Performance Art: How To Make A Living As An Artist.London and New York: Continuum, 249-256.
PinPoint Theatre (2016a) Pub quiz. [Image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: PinPoint Theatre.
PinPoint Theatre (2016b) Campus Giveaway. [Image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: PinPoint Theatre.
PinPoint Theatre (2016c) Flyer at Hotel. [Image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: PinPoint Theatre.