Tagged: marketing

Business Of Theatre

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I attended an enjoyable theatre forum today, at the Auckland Theatre Company – facilitated by Lynne Cardy and Michael Adams.

We discussed the topic of developing new audiences, through the platform of digital marketing.

Online and Offline presence are equally important for any brand – namely a theatre company, who wants to be sustainable. We openly discussed the subject of raising awareness of personal and company branding through images, video and human engagement.

After all – theatre is about storytelling for people, who are willing to watch and listen. Yes?

Who is our audience? What is their persona? Do they have a digital footprint? How can we bring value to their life – by live performance ?

So many (great) questions.

I write and direct plays because it excites me – to create new and controversial work for the stage.
Each rehearsal brings new discoveries, vulnerabilities and truth.

I think theatre scares some people. I have spoken to acquaintances, strangers and random individuals, who have never experienced theatre, ever.

Amazing.

As well as having website presence, and Hootsuite to manage all your social media platforms – it is still important to have human interaction. Always.

Long live theatre.

Innovative Marketing in 6 Seconds

To stand out from the crowd today, you need to be innovative. So what can you do, to achieve this? With the launch of Twitter’s platform ‘Vine’, this has introduced a new ‘medium’ that is clever, succinct and engaging footage, that captivates your audience, in just 6 seconds. Recently, ‘Tribeca Film Festival’, invited people to submit entries using Vine (the iPhone app) that creates these remarkable 6-second looping videos. Amazing. However, you need to plan your storytelling effectively, so your short film will reach and maximise your audience, who will keep coming back for more. You can also watch the latest film reviews, in just 6 seconds on sixsecondreviews.com, as everyone is now time deficient, after all. The maximum spoken word when using Vine, is roughly 25 words, but less is more. So when brainstorming your next Vine clip, think about how you want to be perceived: images and text, that represent interesting ideas is what you need, to ultimately provoke and stimulate your audience’s heart. Connect with people.

Do You Thumb?

Have you heard of Thumb? This app is incredibly simple to use and consumer driven. You just upload a photo and ask a question, to fellow members to comment with text, and add thumbs up, thumbs down or neutral to rate the product, service or idea. Thumb creates serious engagement, with an average of 50-100 responses in minutes. There is everything to comment on from fake nails, exotic locations, products, relationships woes, hot bodies and religion, to name a few. When you rate and comment on an image, along with a question, you then accumulate votes and stars on your profile. Thumb is also on twitter, of course, however they don’t tweet much. Great for brands to get ‘real-time’ feedback, if you want to jump in. Cool app.

Transparency

Presently, I am reading this brilliant book called ‘Brandwashed’ by Martin Lindstrom, which was released last year. The Foreward in the book is by Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) who encouraged me, to watch his film, that I had not seen yet. ‘The Greatest Movie Ever Sold’ is genius. A documentary film about product placement, marketing and advertising which was reportedly itself financed through the ‘actual’ products in the film, namely POM (pomegranate juice), jetBlue Airways, Hyatt, Amy’s Frozen Pizza, Mini, Ban Deodorant and a few others, around 22 in total to make this (USD) 1.5 million dollar film. Visability is credibility, after all. Morgan’s wish is to educate the consumer about the psychology of marketing, through the brands, that accept the challenge to be transparent, which really appeals to me. We live in a world of information and everyone chooses a different brand personality. Yeah. Have you ever tried to brand detox? Difficult. Or not?