One of the most popular justifications for the influx of established Hollywood stars on to our West End stages is that it is attracting new audiences into the theatre. And certainly there will be plenty of people who have not been there before, who have been lured into the Piccadilly Theatre by the prospect of hearing Obi-Wan Kenobi sing ?Luck be a lady tonight?. Undoubtedly, new audiences have been attracted to drama in the West End to see Sienna Miller, Rob Lowe, Brian Dennehy and the rest, yet this audience will trickle through theatre?s fingers if efforts are not made to find out who they are and how to get them to come back again. And it?s fair to say that the random brochure or direct mailing will not work for the technologically savvy, generally young audience that is drawn in by the celebrity stardust.
With films being reworked into stage plays and pop songs being strung out into musicals, the broader entertainment industry is certainly infiltrating the artistic output of the West End and of many regional theatres too. Why then should theatre be so reticent about adopting some of the more aggressive marketing techniques that are commonplace in selling films or shifting CDs? It?s interesting that Pamir Gelenbe, who is working with Ambassador Theatre Group to launch an SMS audience development initiative in London (p3), perceives the arts sector to be falling behind in its use of this technology for marketing purposes. Direct marketing has always been one of the mainstays of audience development activity in the UK, and arts organisations were mailing their databases with alarming regularity long before the Tesco Clubcard was ever invented. They have always tended to pride themselves on the sophistication of their box office systems, and their ability to sniff out a potential attender from a list much longer than the average arm. Now is surely the time for them to get their texting thumbs working.
Liz Hill and Brian Whitehead, Co-editors