Marketing is seen by most arts managers as inextricable from, though not synonymous with, audience development. The majority of New Audiences projects relied on some aspect of marketing and communication to achieve their goals. New Audiences created several funding strands to support creative marketing initiatives.
Methods of drawing people into the arts ranged from the high-tech, including e-mail, text-messaging and websites, to the intrinsically personal, with the use of ambassadors and word-of-mouth schemes. Large-scale initiatives contacted thousands of people, while small projects costing hundreds rather than thousands of pounds focused on a specific aspect of good practice.
Testing the water
The Test Drive concept was outlined by Anne Roberts in a paper commissioned by Arts Council England in 1998. Acknowledging that advertising can never convey the reality of any purchase, an organisation can offer customers the chance to try out the arts experience, to see whether it is comfortable, enjoyable and suitable. Test Drive introduces people to the arts for the first time, sometimes by using ambassadors or by asking people to persuade their friends to try it out. It is also a positive way of using unsold capacity to develop audiences strategically.
In the ambitious Test Drive: North West, Arts About Manchester persuaded 20,000 new attenders to try a new artform, by telephoning 54,000 people and offering free tickets or smart discounts to events in over 40 venues. The results were impressive: 88% of recipients said that they had enjoyed the experience. At Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra, over 70% of their 1,500 new attenders said that they intended to return, and over 40% have paid to attend subsequent concerts. A key aspect of the project was making prompt follow-up calls with further offers.
Branching out
New Audiences funding enabled both more traditional methods and cutting-edge ideas in marketing to be tested. The long-established direct mail method was explored in depth by Developing Audiences in the North, aiming to develop audiences for contemporary dance with three North East venues. The project attracted more than 1,500 additional bookings for contemporary dance, and created a database of 700 dance attenders.
A mixture of mailing, telephone recruitment and leafleting was deployed by the M6 Group, a consortium of eight visual arts venues in the West Midlands, in their Hot Spots project. A series of specially created taster events, with free transport, was targeted at new audiences in under-represented areas. A common mailing list allowed the group to promote the visual arts regionally. An ‘overwhelmingly positive’ response came from attenders, with 92% saying they were ‘more likely to visit again’.
The Junction CDC e-mailed programme details and offers to students, building up a database of 350 young people in Cambridge. Youth & Music’s 1998 Stage Pass project in East England again worked with a group of venues to draw young people into a discount membership scheme. The Stage Pass card could be given as a present from relatives and friends.
You are spoiling us …
Arts ambassadors have emerged in a range of areas under the New Audiences banner: cultural diversity and youth development are examples. Ambassadors are able to nominate recipients of free or discounted tickets, or to activate valuable group bookings in clubs and community groups. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) defines ambassadors as ‘a network of well-briefed volunteer supporters who would be willing to evangelise… and who have a sufficiently diverse social network to encourage [attendance]’. The ambassadors recruited frequent attenders, subscribers and CBSO Society members via an introductory evening, offering special benefits and discounts. Pride in being part of an organisation to which they were already loyal made a huge impact on volunteers, who also appreciated the opportunity to contribute to achieving the project’s aims. The scheme was effective in converting those ‘already well-disposed’ to classical music into concert-goers.
The Laing Gallery in Tyne and Wear deployed arts ambassadors for a more specific purpose. Three ambassadors were appointed to represent the gallery to socially excluded groups, especially those aged 16-25, and to engage their interest in the visual arts. This pilot project was an extension of three years of outreach with young adults, ethnic minorities, disability groups and elderly people. The ambassadors organised youth worker training sessions, visited 28 youth groups and arranged 46 tailor-made, hosted visits to the gallery. Fifteen-hundred young people were involved in the project, a third of them first-time visitors. Flexibility and responsiveness gave young people the chance to experience the gallery on their own terms.
As always with New Audiences projects, the issue of sustainability was crucial to the gains made during short-term marketing campaigns. However, a huge amount of research and analysis on the pioneering work carried out by many organisations is now available to feed into the knowledge base of arts managers across the country.
Beyond the Page
Find extra information, analysis, downloadable reports, summaries and resources, including a new overview report by Sarah Bedell, at http://www.newaudiences.org.uk
Feedback to Essential Audiences can be sent to audiences@artsprofessional.co.uk}
Essential Audiences is compiled and written by Catherine Rose. For more information about the
New Audiences Programme, contact Arts Council England, 14 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 3NQ.
t: 020 7973 6497 f: 020 7973 6791 e: newaudiences@artscouncil.org.uk textphone: 020 7973 6564