AMA Blog

A new home for great arts marketing resources

On 23 April, over 800 arts and cultural professionals joined us to celebrate the launch of CultureHive, a new website to discover and share best practice in cultural marketing. Developed in partnership with The Audience Agency and supported by Arts Council England, the site gives you access to free content and tools on good practice in arts marketing and audience development.

You can watch the intro video below - we'll be posting a video of the keynotes and discussion from the launch event shortly, too.

CultureHive is now live, and packed with over 600 resources - and we'll be adding more all the time. Don't forget you can also submit your own resources and help this hub of sector knowledge to grow. We'll be developing the site further over the coming years, so if you have any feedback or questions, please let us know by email or on Twitter.

Outsourcing social media management

In this special two-part blog post from two creative digital agencies, Sarah Morris, Marketing Manager at Sequence, makes the case for arts organisations to outsource their social media management, while Tom Beardshaw, Partner at Native HQ, says organisations can only retain their voice by keeping social media in-house.

Photo used under Creative Commons from marriedwithluggage

Why consider outsourcing your organisation's social media management?

When you want to grow or when social media is eating up too much time: The size of your arts organisation is a key factor when considering your online strategy and whether you want to keep online communications internal or external. If you have a large company with many strands to your digital strategy, it may well need a number of people on the campaign at specific, busy times - for example, during the launch of a new show or after a big announcement. Alternatively, keeping up with the constant distraction of having to check all your social media platforms and responding in a timely way can be particularly difficult for a small team who are already maxed-out with work.

When you need to formalise the process: This brings us to the major drawback with regards to keeping social media in house. It’s on a par with your own website. Client and essential production work takes precedence every time over spending time representing yourself online. Social media gets relegated to the bottom of the pile for too long; it gets neglected. If you commit to a contract with external support providers, it raises the level of respect for the task. You are also committing to providing the credentials they need to do the job properly and on time - otherwise it’s your own money you're wasting.

When you need specialised knowledge and advice: Another benefit to outsourcing your social media is that you have a team of trained professionals at your disposal. From strategy, through to analysis of your analytics: it all needs to be considered and monitored if you are going to use social media in a business capacity. It can be hard to find a member of staff internally who has this expertise on top of their normal day job, just as it may be expensive to hire a full-time member of staff in possession of this range of skills. And, of course, it would have to be full-time - or even more than that - because, as we all know, social media is not a 9-5 activity.

Your voice: It's essential that your organisation’s online voice is consistent with your overall marketing strategy and identity. As long as you can spend some time with the people you will be entrusting with this (pretty big!) responsibility and you find people you click with and who ‘get you’, then running your social media externally can be a really practical and productive choice.

Sarah Morris (@iamburley) is Marketing Manager at Sequence, a creative digital agency. Sequence are currently seeking arts organisations to help trial their new social media management service; drop Sarah a line to find out more.

 

Giving your voice away is never a good idea

Arts organisations are currently trying to adapt to the socially networked media environment. One key issue for many is exactly what type of work should be outsourced. Asking a third party agency to speak on your behalf is a sure fire method of guaranteeing a failure to adapt in the long term.

Social media have the potential to transform not only marketing, but working practices, collaboration and the relationships between artists, audiences and organisations. It is communications on steroids ­ conversations that are happening in real time, in public, in multiple media ­ much more than simple outbound marketing messaging such as website content. It can host live customer service, facilitating collaborative working, new ways of working together, and even part of productions or shows.

One of the reasons social media has taken off is the usability of the platforms and the ease with which they can be learnt and used effectively by anyone. It’s easy for staff to use social platforms for networking effectively in their own role, and organisational voices to share insights and messages from across the team. Much harder for third party agency to fully understand your organisation, its politics, its creative philosophy and unique insights, and then conduct all of your communications on the social web. Much, much harder for an agency to match the creative potential that sits within arts organisations.

Outsourcing social media conversations makes little sense, and organisations succeeding with social understand this. They are enabling staff to engage with colleagues inside and outside the organisation and this new technical environment is changing the way that communications work happens within organisations, the role of communications professionals, and organisation’s relationships with the public.

Whether on a corporate or individual account, authenticity of voice is important, relationships are both personal and professional, and learning is something you have to do yourself. Outsourcing social media conversations is a little like paying someone to go to the gym for you, or represent you at meetings. The job may get done, but you don’t feel the benefit, and just delay the point at which you get involved with your networks.

Most organisations we work with are pressured for time to do social media communications regularly ­ many have not properly assessed the demands of the work or indeed it’s value. But even the busiest chief executives and artistic directors are seeing it’s importance and set aside time for listening, responding, blogging and engaging with the people who matter to their organisation. It is partly a matter of priorities. Giving someone else the job will simply make it easier to forget about it and mistakenly believe that it’s being done.

It can be really useful to bring in external help to enable your organisation to work smarter with social media. When looking at strategic questions, it’s helpful to have people who understand the organisation and it’s art, know what’s possible on social platforms and can work with you to create a custom approach that ensures your activity on social media supports your goals.

It’s useful to bring in training that can support your strategy and help those who are unfamiliar or nervous about digital platforms to understand the potential benefits for their roles and become more effective atusing them. Organisations tell us that designing an approach to a campaign, production, show or event with experienced and knowledgeable people who understand their organisation is helpful. And some may need to bring people into the organisation to manage social media for a time limited campaign. Our clients value being able to set up meaningful metrics and interpret data and have regular conversations about their performance and priorities. Sometimes there is a demand to outsource the production of digital assets; infographics, videos, images and the like. And it can be useful to have people who can interpret the value of new and emerging platforms to the work you can do.

But handing your voice, your relationships and your learning over to a third party? The Cluetrain Manifesto reminds us that “the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked”. If people start to outsource theirs, then the network itself would be at risk, with impersonators talking to imposters discussing mimics.

Your voice is your voice. Don’t hand it over to someone else.

Tom Beardshaw (@tombeardshaw) is a partner at Native HQ, a web and social media strategy agency.

 

Does your organisation outsource social media management, or would you consider it? Let us know in the comments below, or on Twitter.

Advertising ticket prices the right way

As of 6 April 2013, the ASA defines 'advertising' to include venue brochures, flyers, newsletters, websites and social media. Does the way you communicate ticket prices comply with legal requirements?

Leading ticketing consultant Roger Tomlinson explains the ins and outs of advertising ticket prices.

Photo used under Creative Commons from Fifth World Art

What price that ticket? Are we making sure we are advertising ticket prices to comply with UK law and codes of advertising practice?

The Theatrical Management Association has issued new guidance to its members in the UK on the advertising of ticket prices. Essentially, ticket prices when advertised must be inclusive of the booking fees and service charges imposed on the purchase. Advertising, in a common misunderstanding, extends to a venue or producer’s own print and posters, websites, social media and other distributed information and not just paid-for advertising.

The TMA has acted after the Ambassadors Theatre Group chain of theatres, the Old Vic in London and the Cheltenham Everyman Theatre were approached by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the Committee on Advertising Practice (CAP) following on many public complaints about imposed booking fees which cannot be avoided. There is considerable argument about the right way to present this, but Jonathan Brown of S.T.A.R. confirms: "If you advertise a ticket price, you have to be able to buy it for that price, somewhere."

The CAP and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) have published guidance and interpretations in relation to ticket prices and purchase Terms and Conditions, which have largely been ignored by many venues, since December 2001! These codes of practice supplement the law and the new ASA rulings are intended to set a benchmark for all adertising of tickets through all media across the ticketing sector.

In common with many other venues, it is easy to find examples: the Cambridge Arts Theatre advertises the ticket prices for performances, but imposes a booking fee of £2 per ticket on top of the advertised price, which has to be paid through all purchase channels. The CAP guidance is clear – the ticket prices are in fact £2 higher and must be advertised as such. Correctly, the current Michael Grandage Season in London’s West End advertises ticket prices inclusive of their booking fees, and only in the shopping cart are the ticket price and booking fee amounts revealed separately. ASA found that, in some cases, the actual total purchase price of tickets was 30% above the advertised ticket price, once all fees and charges were included, and this is ruled as unfair advertising.

This is fairly simple: you cannot advertise something using a price to attract attention and then for consumers not to be able to buy it for that price. Debbie Richards of Baker Richards points out that this will require detailed presentational changes for venues that have chosen 'per transaction' fees and charge different fees for different channels, but it will still be possible to comply if the information is given whenever prices are quoted.

Essential links:

• CAP code
• Help Note

The arts and entertainment industry needs a fair and healthy relationship with its customers, especially in a time of cuts to funding. Many venues, especially presenting theatres and concert halls, are introducing or increasing booking fees, which in a recession may itself upset some customers. Advertising the new “prices” in the right way is essential. There is an irony here: according to the OFT, consumers prefer inclusive prices, so advertising inclusive prices is likely to be viewed by ticket purchasers as a benefit.

In a similar way to the airlines, the various regulations and rulings now require that most charges are included in the advertised price, presented from the start of any advertising or on-line purchase process, and never added only at the shopping cart stage of an on-line purchase. While explaining the fees and charges up front is good practice, the advertised price has to be comprehensive of fees and charges if that is what the purchaser has to pay.

Of course this might be thought bad news by some ticketing system suppliers. In the competition in an over-crowded marketplace, it appears that some sales teams’ approaches to venues are using the venue’s current vulnerability to argue for pay-as-you-go charges which “can be easily recovered from customers in the booking fees”. Venues need to do the arithmetic and recognise that fees cannot be a hidden surprise to the ticket purchaser at the end of a transaction.

Double Jeopardy

Venues are at risk of prosecution in two ways around the same issue: booking fees and how they are applied and presented. Venues need to act immediately to change their practices. There is increasing evidence that consumers are willing to make formal complaints when they see arts and entertainment organisations flouting the Regulations, as evidenced by the volume of specific complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.

The UK Coalition Government rushed out the new guidance on the law on debit and credit card charges and surcharges very late before Easter, which came into force on 6 April 2013. This follows on the recent Advertising Standards Authority rulings about the misleading advertising of ticket prices.

If fees are described as covering payment methods in relation to debit and credit card processing charges, then the fee charged must reflect the average true cost of processing the transaction. The consumer protection group Which? has suggested this would be 20p for debit cards and 2% for credit cards. If a venue wants to continue making a surcharge for paying by cards then they will be restricted to these low actual averages and must stop charging more immediately.

This does not stop the charging of any fees but means venues must be clear about what their fees are for. Airlines have quickly moved to calling their fees "booking" or "administration" fees and not explaining them in relation to channels or payment methods.

Combined with the Advertising Standards Authority rulings on what constitutes misleading advertising in relation to ticket prices, this does mean that venues - and their ticketing system suppliers - will need to change their presentation of fees and charges immediately, especially on-line. But all advertising messages, including in brochures and on flyers, need to conform straight-away.

It has long been the law that you could not advertise a price unless you could actually buy the ticket for that price and no more. Most venues achieved this by not charging through certain channels, and then unwittingly started to apply charges through all their channels, or complied by not charging for cash transactions. Unfortunately, the latter made the charge related to a payment method which has now become unlawful. An unwitting side-effect of the law could be more venues applying their booking fees to every transaction.

Correctly, whenever a price is advertised today, it needs to be stated next to the price that booking fees or administration charges apply and the amount given, without any reference to payment method. The concept of advertising the prices in one place, and customers finding the details of the fees and charges somewhere else is wrong. For example, advertising on-line a price that can only be paid over the counter is wrong. So suddenly we are seeing prices listed with the actual booking fees "£25+£1.50 booking fee" whenever the price is listed. This is because "misleading advertising" can be prosecuted. This would be "£25+£1.50 per transaction booking fee" for a 'transaction' based fee.

View the UK coalition government guidance note (PDF)

This post originally appeared on The Ticketing Institute website.

What the shit is wrong with us?

Reacting to a recent debate on Twitter, AMA vice chair and Director of Communications at The Place Tim Wood considers some barriers to arts marketers feeling empowered at work, and what can be done to overcome them.

Porl Cooper wants to know what the shit is wrong with me. He's doubtless not the first to wonder this, and in fairness his question, posed in a tweet a couple of weeks ago, was not aimed at me directly, but at venues – like mine – that had yet to let their patrons know about the My Theatre Matters campaign, and specifically at people – like me – who do the marketing for these venues.

Too many individuals and not nearly enough VENUES endorsing #mytheatrematters. WHAT THE SHIT IS WRONG WITH YOU?????!!!

— Porl Cooper (@porlcooper) March 16, 2013

Now I could blow this off. It's only Twitter, where we all know haters gonna hate. When someone I don't know instinctively dislikes me, I tend to think – as has been said of predisposed antipathy towards some politicians – that they have saved themselves some time. But Porl Cooper is a colleague in my industry, liked and respected by people I like and respect. So maybe it is worthwhile to spend just a moment examining what, indeed, is the shit wrong with me.

Before that, a quick word on My Theatre Matters. However cynical your instincts may be or jaded your years of experience have led you to become, however much you despair that anything can change the direction of a Government that, politically blinkered, economically fatheaded and buttressed by regressive ideology, is systematically vandalising the foundations of our art and culture (and pretending that it isn't), if you care about the future of theatre in this country there is no earthly reason for you to not support My Theatre Matters, and to encourage anyone who feels the same to do the same.

That being the case, why did I and so many others not get our shit together, causing Porl's despair? He blames the marketing departments, but I don't think this can be the whole story. For one thing, there's a clear failure of leadership here, inasmuch as if our bosses had told us to post a link to the My Theatre Matters website on Facebook, sure as shit, that's what would have happened. Also, the groundwork by the organisers of My Theatre Matters was patchy at best. A week before its launch, someone closely involved with the campaign said that he could not talk to me about it. What's up with that shit?

But it's not good enough to abnegate responsibility. The people putting the campaign together did so with limited time and money, and rightly expect support, not complaint, from colleagues in the industry that they're trying to help. Our bosses are busy people with full inboxes and dizzying sets of priorities, and to wait for their order before we do anything will leave us hamstrung.

The latter point is problematic for lots of cultural organisations, where there are historically established hierarchies, need-to-know is the default position for communications, and decision-making is centralised and gravitates to the top. However suitable or not such structures may be for the 21st century world (and I’ve written here before about how some are modelling different set-ups), the reality for many of us marketing organisations of all sizes is that a decision to endorse a political campaign like My Theatre Matters feels above our pay grade.

That’s increasingly true for social media activity. There was a bygone, Wild West era where those with the passwords to cultural organisations' Facebook and Twitter accounts could post whatever they wanted. The beginning of the end of those days came in August 2010 when someone from our leading theatre accidentally posted something hilariously inappropriate about a mid-ranking Tory politician (I make no aspersion, but the deed was done at a time of day when some members of our profession have, on occasion, been known to be in drink). What was wrong (and right) with this shit is now in textbooks. The party was over for tweeting with impunity. Shit had just got real.

It would be a pity if that meant that our organisations’ marketing lost personality. Professionalism and strategic approaches have transformed arts marketing practice, but they can also appear antiseptic if their connection to the driving ideas and values of an organisation isn’t clear. Social media is ideally suited to making this link explicit, but not if we have to get sign-off before we tweet anything that isn’t about tickets being still available for tonight’s show.

The only solution for marketers is to build capital internally. If you feel disempowered and afflicted by stasis, the fact is that you’re probably not doing enough to impress your boss (which is not the same thing as simply being impressive).

I worked at one venue where it became clear to me that the poster displays around the building, in which we invested a fair bit of time and money, did very little to sell tickets. I got rid of lots of the poster sites. Interviewed for a promotion, I cited this as an example of my analytical and creative approach. I didn’t get the job. The person who did had said that she would put lots more posters up. She didn’t disagree with my analysis, but, she told me, 'If you’re not constantly proving to the people who care passionately about this work that you care just as much as they do, they’ll assume that you just don’t give a shit.'

Tim Wood (@timcwood) is Director of Communications at The Place and vice chair of the AMA.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below, or on Twitter at @amadigital.

New ideas and fresh thinking shared at AMA dinner party

Last month, the AMA hosted a dinner party to encourage people involved in innovative cultural marketing projects to share their experiences, and ultimately help produce a series of case studies for our upcoming CultureHive resource hub. Cath Hume, the AMA's Head of Programming, sets the scene.

On a chilly night at the end of February, the AMA brought together a group of cultural professionals at Whitechapel Gallery in London for an evening sharing ideas at a dinner party. The event aimed to share fresh ideas and case studies about marketing, culture, and audiences.

Guests arrived armed with case studies and ideas to discuss, which we will be making available on CultureHive, the new online resource for cultural marketers we are launching on April 23. In the meantime, here’s a taste of some of what was discussed.

Shipra Ogra shared London Bubble Theatre Company’s ‘crowd-funding meets co-creation model’, and explained how it involves audiences in the process of creating theatre. For the last two years, London Bubble’s summer production has been planned together with audience members. Guests explored how this affects the artist as creator, and what impact co-creation might have on how audiences view artistic work. Will audiences continue to engage at this level, or will they be looking for new levels of engagement year on year?

On a similar theme, Katie Elsan from Battersea Arts Centre talked about Scratchr.net, a website that brings artists and audiences together by enabling the former to post an ‘itch’ – an idea that they would like others to ‘scratch’ by providing feedback.

Sally Ann Lycett of De La Warr Pavilion and John Walker from English Touring Opera talked about building successful relationships with volunteers and ambassadors. At the De La Warr Pavilion, they have successfully engaged volunteers to help address the issue that the older local population feel that contemporary art is ‘not for them’. As well as effectively engaging audiences, this programme was successful in terms of the development of the volunteers, staff and organisation. In the near future, the same team of volunteers aged 60+ will be talking to visitors about skateboarding and BMXing!

John shared details of English Touring Opera’s ‘Networker’ ambassador scheme that encourages people to feel like part of the company by doing whatever they can to support the organisation. Touring companies face the huge challenge of communicating with a geographically diverse audience and currently John and his colleagues are encouraging a sense of community by asking Networkers from across the country to contribute to the ‘Opera that Moves’ blog.

Francesca Neumann from Hoxton Hall discussed how trying new activities can have a big impact on your day to day work.  With a number of ‘closed periods’ each year, Hoxton Hall decided to trial free tours of the venue during these times. Setting up these tours has changed how Hoxton Hall welcomes people into the building and has made the marketing team reassess the different audience and visitor types they have.

Laraine Penson shared Northern Ballet’s new ‘show, don’t tell’ approach to its communication activity. They are constantly exploring how to address the challenges facing touring organisations trying to engage audiences and in the recent past have taken a more national approach.

Laura Arends from Hofesh Shechter will be exploring how best CRM and audience engagement can be built when you don’t have a ticketing system. Making the most of being a content rich organisation, they have plan to use social media, a new website and engagement through films and podcasts to build audiences. 

Ami Aubrey from Junction Arts talked about Take Me With You, a project which saw photographs of long distance lorry drivers families displayed on the sides of their trailers. The project explored the distance between loved ones and the effect it has. The project brought together a broad range of partners including the artist, drivers and their families, schools and the general public who saw the lorries and interacted with the work by uploading photographs and their responses on the website.

Watch out for these new ideas among the case studies when we launch CultureHive on 23 April. If you have a great idea which you think would be of interest to the wider cultural marketing community, and could make a good case study, please get in touch with the AMA team.

Illustrations from the event by Scriberia, used with permission.

Who's online?

Ahead of his AMA workshops next month, digital engagement specialist Abhay Adhikari puts the case for arts organisations to re-define their digital identities.

As the use of social media becomes more widespread, arts organisations have to compete in a crowded and fragmented digital landscape to catch their audiences’ attention. The sector can get a much higher ROI by using social media with a value based communication focus rather than constant technological innovation. This transition requires a culture change of moving away from a vertical hierarchy to a flat structure with greater presence of staff on social networks. Institutions can use this opportunity to redefine their Digital Identities, become more accessible and engage new demographics.

Making the transition – from resource centres to vibrant hubs

The Digital Identities of arts and cultural organisations have long been defined by their fantastic collections of artefacts and archives that are available online. These include museum collections, multimedia content or digitised recordings of past performances. However, just offering these resources without access to specialists who work behind the scenes is a lost opportunity to create genuine engagement.

The alternative is to use social networks to create vibrant hubs that encourage an open exchange between specialists and audiences. This discussion can create new content as well as generate useful meta-data. For example, users can be asked to respond to a video on YouTube by posting their own video using the response function. Similarly, SoundCloud allows users to add comments and links directly onto the waveform of a recorded sound.

The Sh*t People Say meme is a great example of how this principle works. While it might come across as trivial, through a process of video responses on Youtube, the meme has transgressed cultural, social and class barriers to create humorous and uninhibited observations on stereotypes based on race, gender, sexual orientation, occupation and so on. Something that many digital storytelling projects aspire to achieve!

Getting buy-in from specialists within arts organisations

Using social media to create similar hubs where institutions aren’t the sole creators of content and experts exist alongside audiences presents interesting crowdsourcing opportunities. For example museums have started using Twitter to crowdsource exhibition themes. This approach requires effective curation and content managements strategies to work. So there is a strong case for social media to be decentralised and used by staff with specialist roles such as curators, archivists, producers, creative directors and so on.

Wild card night at the Nuffield

Tracey Cruickshank, Audience Development and Marketing Officer at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton, describes how they are giving audiences the chance to pay only what they think the artistic experience is worth.

The concept

Wild Card Night at The Nuffield is an initiative I set up in May 2010 to encourage our audiences to try something new, consider what theatre means to them, and what they think the experience is worth, both in monetary and less tangible terms. Payment could then be made at the end of the performance, based on what the audience member thought the experience was worth.

The idea first came about through speaking to Stephen Birch, Marketing Manager at The Theatre, Chipping Norton. He used to run ‘Wild Night’ in a bid to get his older more conservative audiences to give contemporary, ‘edgy’ work a chance. He said that, although it was a bit frightening to start with, it was largely doing well – both in terms of boosting audience numbers for more difficult work, and in terms of box office figures. It was also becoming something his patrons were looking out for each season.

The key is to choose something you are confident will appeal once experienced, and only to offer it for one night once a season. An added bonus is that, if the payments are given as donations, the theatre doesn’t have to pay tax, thus lowering some of the financial risk.

First try-out

First of all, we tried it on a low risk production – namely our own production of Anthony and Cleopatra – and called it ‘Pay what it’s worth’. Audience members were invited to attend this special performance where, instead of paying for their tickets in advance, our Artistic Director Patrick Sandford introduced them to the concept of ‘Pay what it’s worth’ before the beginning of the play. At the end, there was the opportunity to discuss the play with the Patrick and members of the cast in the bar, and to decide how much they would like to pay for their night out.

I produced a flyer which was given to audience members as they went into the auditorium, giving them facts and figures for the production in a ‘Did you know?’-type format. Examples included how many hours went into rehearsal, how many years of training for all the staff involved, interesting facts about the set, and how much it cost to put on.

We collected the money in buckets at all the doors as the audience exited, also keeping the box office open during the interval and after the show to allow people to pay by card, should they wish to.

Overall, it was a successful night, with some good feedback and engagement from the audience, good audience numbers and fairly good box office figures – numbers were higher, but the yield per ticket was slightly lower. Most people gave something, and quite a few gave at least the standard ticket price. Some had already decided what they were paying and paid before the performance!

Subsequent experiences

Having discussed the outcomes of the initial attempt, we decided to rebrand it as ‘Wild Card Night’, partly because it sounded more exciting, but also to avoid confusion with our ‘Pay what you can’ evenings during the season (some members of the audience were not grasping the difference between the two concepts).

We adopted the Joker playing card as a symbol, and had this in the brochure on the relevant show page; we put it on signs held by our ushers when they were collecting to make it easier for the audience to spot, and used it in all marketing such as advertising and emails.

We also decided that it really had to be attached to a piece that was high-quality, but that could be perceived as ‘difficult’ or ‘not for me’. So we used Maison Foo’s Memoirs of a Biscuit Tin in one season, and Gecko’s Missing in another. This season we are using it for Miss Nightingale – a Burlesque Musical, produced by Mr Bugg.

Each time we’ve attached it to a ‘Meet the cast’ night, so there’s added value for the audience, and I have all the facts and figures for the flyer from the company in advance. So far, the visiting companies involved have been very enthusiastic about the idea, and the ‘Meet the cast events’ after the show have been much fuller and elicited more engagement than usual. I’ve also been aware of quite a varied audience for each performance. In terms of audience numbers and money, the shows have continued to follow the pattern of a higher number attending with a slightly lower yield.

In each case it’s been a valuable opportunity for me to get feedback from audience members, as I’ve been in box office every time. More generally, I’ve also noticed that there seems to be much more discussion about what they have experienced, and a genuine buzz in the foyer. As far as I know, there hasn’t been any negative feedback, even if an audience member has decided the piece wasn’t really for them.

By being engaged on this level, and by being part of the pricing discussion and the less tangible ‘worth’ of theatre, together with the added value of the ‘Meet the cast’ event and the flyers, I believe that the majority of audiences have entered into the spirit of ‘Wild Card Night’ with enthusiasm, and have enjoyed taking a bit of a risk in order to experience something new and exciting.

If you would like more information please feel free to get in touch with Tracey. Have you tried a similar scheme? Would you?  Let us know over on Twitter or in the comments below.

Creating beautiful infographics for marketing the arts

Emilia Spitz and Linda Uruchurtu of digital arts marketing consultancy Lume Labs share their thoughts and tips on planning, commissioning and producing your own data charts and infographics.

We love infographics. They’re a catchy and effective way to convey a visual message, with an added narrative flow. With web tools speeding up the production and dissemination of content, data visualisation has come a long way since the days of black and white print. Thanks to publications like Wired and Wallpaper, and social sharing sites like Visual.ly, infographics have become an interesting example of the intersection of medium and message.

Infographics can be downloaded, shared across social networks like Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and even printed out as posters. First, let’s take a look at how arts organisations can use them. An infographic could be used:

• To highlight a season, performance or event
• To give background information or context to an interesting topic
• To break down data about the organisation at public and board presentations

We were recently asked by the Royal Opera House (ROH) to produce a graphic to illustrate upcoming work in their 2012/13 season. The brief was to condense, in one image, data for both the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet, keeping a balance between the ROH’s traditional visual identity and a modern look.

Our first step was to identify the key messages, and to think about how these could be understood visually. There are many factors to consider here, including design, clarity and visual appeal.

With the surplus of visual information on the internet, a well-thought-out infographic should be able to convey a number of messages whilst looking attractive and clean. The ROH is a large organisation, and there was an incredible amount of data at our disposal. Our job was to navigate this data and select only a subset of stories. With our client’s input, we focused on:

• Productions
• Live cinema screenings
• Popular composers and choreographers
• Premieres
• Pricing (40% of tickets under £40)
• Regular artists and visiting companies
• Social networks

Once we had decided on each section, the next step was to think about the design. At this stage we always find it helpful to sketch out some ideas. In order to strike the right balance between dance and opera, we opted for a beautifully-lit picture of the house itself as a background (pictured above).

Illustration and typefaces set the tone of an infographic, so it's very important that they resonate with your target audience. Here, for instance, it made sense to adopt the same typeface routinely used by the ROH in their marketing campaigns (pictured right).

Simplicity is always best when organising and presenting data. Pie charts, bar charts, Venn diagrams, Tables, Word clouds are all fine, but they shouldn't be thrown together in the same chart. Pick just a few that work - you can see which styles are most popular across the web in the 'Infographic of Infographics'.

The overall look of a chart gives you an additional opportunity to develop the story. For instance, instead of bars and impersonal shapes, we used icons that evoked the art form, such as ballet dancers.

Finally, text and numbers can be used to support the stories; but in charts, think of text as bursts of information rather than long sections.

Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks and Illustrator are fantastic tools to create charts. For those on a very tight budget, consider freeware like GIMP, and in the absence of someone in-house to assist with the graphic design, there is now a selection of user-friendly online tools available, including:

• Visual.ly
• Easel.ly
• Infogr.am
• Wordle
• Piktochart (premium)
• re.vu
• StatSilk

We used a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator. The background photograph was processed in Photoshop with a Gaussian blur filter to make it less sharp. The image was then imported into Illustrator, where text and simple, white shapes were created with the pen tool, with varied levels of opacity creating a contrast between objects (below left).

We sketched some icons, which were scanned into Photoshop, cleaned up, and traced in Illustrator (below right). Alternatively, you could draw the icons from scratch within Illustrator using the pen tool, or buy in vector art from online suppliers like Shutterstock and Vecteezy.

Once it was ready, the completed infographic was exported from Illustrator as a JPEG so it could be posted to the ROH’s social networks:

Hopefully this has given you an insight into how an infographic is created. If it has piqued your interest in infographics, or made you want to create your own, here are some further sources of inspiration:

• David McCandless' Information is Beautiful
• Infographics on Pinterest
• Guardian Data blog

 

Emilia Spitz and Linda Uruchurtu work with companies to develop their online voice, producing content, delivering advice and assisting with strategic planning. They can be found at lumelabs.com and on Twitter as @lumelabs. They also blog at The Ballet Bag, a dance webzine named one of the “100 Best Arts Tweeters” by The Times.