One of the joys of wandering into the foyer of any decent arts centre or small theatre is the plethora of posters advertising their current and future programme.
Acres of A4, A3 and even A2 artwork adorn the cracked walls exhorting the punters to invest their ticket money in this show or that. And by and large it works. The better the poster the better the result ? especially for new work whose title may be unfamiliar, reckons John Field.
However, the distribution of these posters and leaflets is often a matter of such arcane and bizarre fancy that one often wonders if the publicity produced for all the shows toured in the UK has led to serious deforestation!
At No Strings Attached we book in excess of 80 shows for over 35 small companies in small and mid-scale venues across the land. Most of these productions are children?s and family shows running around an hour and suitable for a single performance. And the print requirements of each theatre are as varied as the product we have on our books. It varies from ?No thanks, we don?t need posters or leaflets as we provide our own in our colour brochure, but a couple of decent colour pics would help though? to ?we need 6,000 A5 leaflets overprinted to our requirements, plus 500 A3 posters ? also overprinted, plus three press packs with black and white and colour photographs, five biographies and any video, DVD or CD help you might have.? This is on top of a visual image for the brochure provided at the time of booking the show some six months previously.
To ask for such enormous amounts of publicity from companies which by and large receive no subsidy, is remarkably foolish when one looks at the costs involved. On average a leaflet costs 2-3p per piece to print; posters anything from 50p to £1 and more. If you are at a theatre for a couple of weeks, then some expense can be envisaged, but for a one-off or even a three-nighter, asking for print with a value in excess of £500 is laughable ? especially when the theatre may only be paying £350 per performance.
We decided some time ago that the shows contracted through us would provide a basic pack of 100 A4 leaflets and 10 A5 posters for distribution around the building, and any theatre requiring more could buy them from the performing company at cost. Although 90% of venues find this acceptable, the remaining 10% find it impossible to accept. Cries of ?but I have to have 3,000 for our mailing? occur regularly, and ?we need 200 posters for our distribution network? is a common lament.
This desire for the company to provide print is somewhat fallacious in the end. Good targeted publicity that comes from the theatre with the theatre?s logo and imprimatur is of much more value than a brown envelope stuffed with a sheaf of A5s. Wherever good regular theatre for children and families is offered, a special leaflet devoted to that line of product is of immense value and a well programmed space can advertise 15 shows on one double-sided A5 with ease. The Warehouse Theatre in Croydon does just that and attracts a regular audience of theatregoers. A rural arts centre will always need a different policy for print distribution, and posters in local halls and shops may well attract an audience. But by and large, it is the theatre?s responsibility to provide the principal push ? and if that doesn?t work then either the venue is at fault, the product is unappealing or the whole approach needs looking at again.
John Field is Director of No Strings Attached. t: 020 7690 7449; e: nostring@blueyonder.co.uk