Full House: Turning Data into Audiences
By Roger Tomlinson and Vicki Allpress
Published in both Australian and New Zealand editions, Full House brings global experience from Roger Tomlinson, Tim Roberts and Vicki Allpress (NZ) to create a twenty-first century update on Tomlinsons original Boxing Clever, produced by the then Arts Council of Great Britain in October 1993. This was a seminal work, written in the long forgotten era of disk space crises and staff who had never used a keyboard. Those fundamental challenges are long gone but have been replaced by the altogether more fiddly frustrations brought by the Internet. Online systems have emerged from nowhere in the thirteen years since Boxing Clever was published, but other comparisons across the decades remind us that sound principles of communication endure.
The original books four main sections, respectively setting the overall business context, providing guidance on creation and then management of the database, and finally marketing execution, are retained and divided into thirteen chapters in Full House. The book contains a wealth of annotated and web-linked material crucial to those involved in box office, marketing or any other activity that comes into contact with an arts or entertainment organisations patron database. And this is no system-focused technically-oriented reference. In the first three chapters alone I was reminded of the many ways in which, as the head of a large sales, marketing and development department, I could be providing better management and direction. There is no-one in our industry who would not benefit in some way from reading Full House.
Dont be put off by the prospect of information less directly relevant to the UK reader, about Australian and New Zealand data protection legislation, ticket agencies and demographics. We face the same issues here and there is no shortage of British arts references on these subjects. It does us no harm to broaden our understanding with parallel knowledge from further afield. Likewise, statistical analysis is an activity that many regard as a faraway land and it is extremely helpful to find a section that provides a gentle decoding of standard deviation, correlation and regression. You will at least be equipped to understand the audience development agency report, if not to write it yourself.
The final two chapters, Online Marketing and Managing Revenue, truly complete the demystification, with enough accessible background to enlighten the confused and galvanise all of us who know that our current practices are in need of constant revision. Relentless developments in these areas will have far reaching implications for just about everything covered in the preceding chapters. The pace of technological change will not slow over the next thirteen years and this section will undoubtedly need to be updated well before 2020.
Review by Duncan May, Head of Marketing & Development, Glasgow Theatres Ltd, Ambassador Theatre Group