After working at Strike A Light for many years in producing, with a bit of marketing on the side, I’m now the fully fledged Marketing & Communications Lead. And it still seems pretty laughable to me that I’m leading on Marketing & Comms. I have a good ol’ Gloucestershire accent, stumble over big words, and any kind of schmoozing makes me feel physically sick.
But over the years I’ve come to realise that, at Strike A Light, these things don’t really matter. In fact, they’re kinda even strengths.
I worked closely alongside our previous Marketing Manager (the man, the myth, the legend, Ben Whitnall) for many years. And during that time, Ben did a brilliant job of shaking up the way we talked about what we do at Strike A Light – particularly how we pitch to non-arts attenders and make arts and cultural events genuinely interesting to people here in Gloucester.
So, in case it is of interest to anyone, here are some of the things I’ve picked up from Ben, seen work over the years, or just try to keep in the back of my mind when doing my job.
(I will say that lots of this stuff Ben brilliantly covered in one of our ‘This Is How We Do It’ sessions, and you can watch the full recording here. But if you can’t be arsed to watch an hour long thing, then keep reading).
So the big one is: do things on their terms. The terms of the people you actually want to be there. Not the people who are already going to be there. Not you. Not the artists. The terms, language and manner of the audiences you want in the room. It’s dead simple to say and seems completely obvious, and is just the basics of marketing really, but is something the arts industry in general just doesn’t seem to have quite grasped.
Clarity is so important (and as someone with a neurospicy brain, it’s something I particularly want). I bloody love it when our Artistic Director sends me all the stuff through for an upcoming show and I can understand all the words in the copy, without having to use a dictionary, and actually have some kind of idea of what to expect.
Just speak like you normally would. Your copy might sound poetic or academic, but the jargon is just nonsense to most people. You don’t need to list all of the different fusions of dance practices or have a 500 word biography of the artist with every residency they’ve done at prestigious arts institutions. Just say what it is, what will happen and what people can expect to feel. If you want to get non regular arts attenders to come to your events, you have to make it really clear what is going to happen. And start with that! So much copy starts with ‘So and So, in association with So and So, presents this blah blah blah production from the creators of blah blah blah’ – literally no one cares, just get to the point and say what it is.
And this goes further than just the copy about the show. Give people the info they need to actually attend. Make pricing really clear from the get go, so people don’t go five pages deep before realising it’s way out of their price range. Tell people about public transport and parking options. Let people know if they can bring their dogs or babies. Be clear if there’s a bar, or if people can bring their own food and drink. Tell people you’ll provide blankets if it’s cold. Clear info helps make doing literally anything for the first time easier.
I will say that, on the whole, the artists and companies we work with are really open to these things. And I guess part of the reason they want to work with Strike A Light is because of the local audiences we get coming to stuff. I don’t think most of them would actually choose to describe their work in an arts jargon way, but they think that’s what’s expected of them to seem ‘proper’ in the industry, or how they think they’ve gotta speak to get funding.
One of the things we do as a whole team, before each event, is have an Event Design Meeting. And in this meeting, the very first question is: ‘What is it?’ Having the chance to break it down as a team helps us get it in to a simple form, in real language, and discuss who we want coming along, why they would be interested and what are the potential barriers. Then I can go away with that info and start to work out how we’re going to talk about it and how we’re going to get them there.
And that thing of why they would wanna come along is obviously also dead important. Like why do they want to be there? Why should they leave their house and not just stay in on the sofa with their dog and a can of Rio watching Jaws? (Although that might just be me.) What do they actually get out of it? And how easy is it for them to attend?
One of the things Ben always banged on about (but in like a super clever way) and that has really stuck with me is about ‘personas’ and how it’s so much easier to think about talking to one person than talk to an abstract audience. Don’t think of your audiences as one of those segmentation blocks. Create a persona of the person you want to be there in the audience (and you can literally give them a name in your head if you want). You don’t have to write it down or share it out loud but having that picture of a person can be super helpful. It just really helps to focus on writing to one person, rather than having absolutely everyone who might read it in mind.
And if you want to make sure you’ve got the pitch right, then the best way is to speak to someone who you want there, face to face and tell them what it is. You’ll soon find out whether they think it sounds crap or not.
So, changing the way you’re talking about the work is a great step in the right direction but it does also obviously go deeper than that. There are loads of reasons people can feel excluded from the arts or just not think that the stuff happening is for them.
There’s the where. Which, as a non-venue based organisation, is actually something that kinda works in our favour. We can take the work to the people we want to be there – whether that’s a community centre, a school, a shopping centre or ASDA car park.
Then there’s the what. What are we actually programming? What projects are we saying yes to? And are the people we want to come or be involved ever going to give a shit about it? (We genuinely once had a company say they wanted audiences to find the work ‘boring’ so they had time for contemplation.)
We’ve moved away from having a programme that is fully Artistic Director-led and now have more voices involved in the decision making, with everyone in the team getting input, including our brilliant Community Producers. (Shout out to our fab Artistic Director EJ for facilitating this so well and always being so open to trying new ways of doing things.)
And speaking of our Community Producers, there’s the who. Our CPs are invaluable to getting people through the door. We currently have three CPs who are based in Gloucester, are well connected to their communities and really understand this whole ‘on their terms’ thing, and have the relationships and trust to get people involved.
Of course another thing is how much it’s gonna cost. All our events are either free or pay-what-you-can, so this is a big selling point. People might feel more comfortable taking a punt on summat new when they know they’re not going to be massively out of pocket afterwards.
And then there is so much stuff around access. And not just whether the building is wheelchair accessible but whether the event is set up to make people feel welcome and comfortable. I could properly go on about that for hours.
Anyway, that’s my wee brain dump. None of it is particularly revolutionary, and I’m sure there are marketing people who could explain all of this using fancy terminology and what not.
But I think there’s something to be said for just speaking like a “normal person”, being clear, focussing on the people you want in the room and making it as easy as possible for them to be there.
– Jess Gibbs (Marketing & Communications Lead)
