Advertising - The Key to Success?
The Show "Circle of Life"
As I sit here redeveloping the new Belper Musical Theatre website, I wondered how theatre companies managed to spread the word about their up coming shows before the internet existed. Posters and hand bills have been in common use as a means to advertise entertainment since the late 1500s and we still use these methods now, but how effective are they? Before that even, in medieval times, travelling performers processed through the streets announcing the play they were to perform. So nothing changes there either! You may have noticed that we still stand out on King Street in Belper, accosting passers by and thrusting a flyer on them advertising our next great production.
What this all comes down to is advertising. It feels like we are on the cusp of a revolution in the way we advertise our productions. The tried and tested methods of processions, hand bills and posters that have been used for 100s of years may become less effective with the demise of our traditional high streets. More people shop online, socialise online and as a result, don't see things that are out in the real world. So we need to promote our shows online as well. The internet is interactive and animated. Flat posters by the side of the road could be everywhere and you might pass by them every day, but do you see them?
So we advertise online, via our social media accounts and our website. Should we drop posters and our wet Saturday mornings standing cheerfully outside Poundland with a fistful of flyers? I think not. We are probably a generation away from that. Once the vast majority of people are online with active social media accounts and frequent access to email perhaps, but for now we still need to publicise using our 16th century methods. We can make our posters and flyers as enticing as we can and we can encourage interaction with our social media and website pages, but we cannot drop the humble poster yet.
Why does this all matter? Advertising is a crucial part of the show circle of life. We advertise to sell tickets. Ticket sales bring in vital revenue to the company. The revenue is spent on the production. If the production is successful, enough revenue is generated to advertise the next production... and so the cycle begins again.
Perhaps I have missed the most important method of advertising. Word of mouth, telling our friends, neighbours, family and colleagues, people down at the pub and the mums and dads down at the leisure centre waiting for the children to finish their swimming lesson. Let's hope that we don't forget this most important way of reaching out. Because human interaction, talking to people face to face, is vitally important.
