Whilst forming a marketing strategy, I uncovered that our main audience are member of the University of Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts. This meant that these audience members were between the ages of 18 and 25 (approximately). I decided that the two main ways to marketing ‘The Man Whose Memories Fell Out’ to this audience were online and on the university campus.
The advancement over the past decade or so in technology has meant that cultural organisations have had to also advance the way that they communicate with their audience. The social media platform allows us to have an ongoing presence and gaining an online audience means there can be constant communication. Bonita Kolb states that ‘because of the ease of communication of words and images over distances, today a cyber-community is just as “real” and, therefore, as valid as a physical community’ (2013, 2). As a theatre company made up of artist who are already part of this ‘cyber-community’ (Kolb, 2013, 2) it was important for us to gain an online presence quickly.
Upon finalising the name of the company, I created online social media profiles to represent it. I decided that the two main platforms that we would reach our audience on were Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media sites. The audience that we intended to reach were student between the age of 18 and 25 and using these sites allowed us to communicate with this audience.
‘The experience where artists communicate their vision to an uninvolved audience, but must develop a means through which the audience is able to communicate the ideas and even engage in the creative process’ (Kolb, 2013, 1).
This idea in which the audience are involved with the company is one that at the beginning of our process was important to us as we intended to use the research that collected from the public to create our show. This changed as we developed as a company as we found that this was not a way of creating theatre that suited us. Instead, as marketing manager, I decided that the way to keep our audience engaged was to allow them to see parts of the creative process that could only be viewed online.
‘Individuals are engaging with culture in many new ways: they are able to modify creative works to personalise and customise, create their own content, file-share with a like-minded community, and adopt a critical perspective through blogging and twittering’ (Hayes and Roodhouse, 2010, 52).
Online social media platforms have become places for audiences to share their opinions on the work created and they do this whether their opinion is good or bad. Cultural organisations were once the ‘traditional gatekeepers and informed the public of what was good art versus bad [but] have been replaced by anonymous bloggers who share their opinions whether informed or uninformed’ (Kolb, 2013, 3). Although these opinions can be problematic, creating a platform where audience can share their opinion upon the work as, well as being a good marketing techniques, it serves as feedback for the company. It is better to give the audience a way of giving feedback and in doing this the audience become more informed.
This means that a cyber-community will aid the company in two ways. The first is that it will be a good marketing strategy and the second is that we will be able to inform our audience so that they are able to give us feedback that will be useful.
Works Cited-
Hayes,D. and Roodhouse, S. (2010) From Missionary to Market Maker: Reconceptualising Arts Marketing in Practise. In: Daragh O’Reilly and Finola Kerrigan (ed.) Marketing the Arts: A fresh approach. New York: Routledge.
Kolb. B. M, (2013) Marketing for Cultural Organisations: New Strategies for Attracting Audiences. 3rd edition. New York and Oxon: Routledge.
