Season Marketing Campaigns

Canberra Theatre Centre (CTC) just launched its 2013 Season and it pleases me greatly that the initial response to the marketing campaign has been extremely positive. Given that often debriefs are very much about what went wrong, I thought it would be nice to share a few thoughts on why I felt it went right. See the Season site here.

A clear creative brief
The concept of a work from every state and territory was one that came to CTC as part of its involvement in the Canberra 100 celebrations, as did the subtitle "Collected Works:Australia".

This gave the designers a well-defined paddock to work in, we could define for them notions of Australiana, history, travel, maps and the like (whilst cautioning against the temptation to go into cliché). We knew that we also wanted this year's effort to look like a development of last year's look and feel and as a celebratory issue, we wanted to concentrate on the fine detail and production values to make it feel a bit special.

We had also learnt last year, the value of having the look and feel reflect the audience's taste, this was achieved by the use of quality literature as a metaphor for quality theatre.

Basically if you put the time and effort into your brief, and you have good designers, you are that much closer to a satisfactory result.

Organisation
The 2013 Season is almost twice the size as CTC's usual seasons this made for a lot more work with regards to stakeholder management and the approval process. The way I deal with this is through upping the organisation, at the start of the info-collection phase every stakeholder gets an email outline the process and rough dates for sign off.  They then receive a table asking for every element required (Show blurb, images, logos, warning etc). The results of all this is tracked in a spreadsheet so that at any time, I know who has supplied what.

We also borrowed the wire-frame sign of process from the digital world for copy sign off. Stakeholders see their exact layout just minus all the designery affectations. This removes the subjective talk of heading styles and border colours from the conversation and focuses attention on to copy editing when it is cheaper to make changes.

Then of course finally all stakeholders are able to sign off on their final design page, a process that takes less time because they already know what the copy and basica page layout will look like.

The basic motto here is "when the workload goes up, you need to up the level of organisation equivalently".

A good team with clear roles and ownership
I am lucky that our marketing team is a very tight and highly performing unit. During the planning phase, different individuals are allocated different autonomous roles, our publicist 'owned' the AV filming and our marketing coordinator 'owned' venue dressing for the launch event. Obviously they reported back and kept an eye on their budgets but effectively they were given licence and ownership to make these elements happen as best they saw fit.

As a committee, CTC might never have decided upon a giant icosahedron globe of the world be mounted as a centre piece in the foyer, but our Marketing Coordinator, brought this idea to the table and because we were letting her 'own' it (and we could afford it... just), the managers involved let her run with it. The result a very motivated staff member who delivered an excellent result. It looks great BTW.

And it wasn't just these two examples, everyone involved knew their roles and executed well partly because they had a degree of ownership and autonomy.

A collaborative process where no one cares where the good ideas come from, no turf wars
There were times when non-designers gave suggestions about smart solutions to design challenges that were gleefully tried and used and examples whereby designers we involved in problem solving around copy and the booking form process. A good idea was a good idea and that was all that counted.

A willingness to play and do stuff because its cool.
CTC usually launches with a postcard, bookmark or flyer summarising each show, on a whim late in the piece I decided with the designers that it wasn't one postcard but 20! One for each show. And then instead of normal copy we'd run a stream of consciousness block of words on the back. Then we decided on a clear spot varnish on the front, and THEN we decided for no real purpose other than it was cool to do special boxed sets of the postcards with all 20 collected in a nice envelope.

None of this was pragmatic, the only thing pragmatic was each step of the way I knew I could afford to do it. Be willing to play, think differently and do stuff because it excites you, because if it excites you it will probably excite others also.

The QR code innovation, quite possibly the first season brochure in Australia to feature rich media within the brochure content, WAS driven by pragmatic concerns, the AV cost a lot and I wanted to make sure as many people saw all the videos online. That QR codes are effectively free and the media was already being made, means it really was not much extra work and even if not many typical subscribers use this technology it says something about our brand and makes an attempt to further outlay the video investment.

Know your brand and be confident
It's now four season brochures since CTC re-branded and we have constantly sought to refine how we present ourselves visually and have grown more confident with "Who we are" and how we represent that.  The brand is deliberately quiet these days, a mark of assuredness that doesn't fight with the shows, which by their nature have to be the things getting the most attention. Having a quiet quality brand allows our Season campaign to reflect much more on the patrons than on us. I have been guilty of running season campaigns in the past that have gone too far the other way, all about the internal brand and what we want to project.

The little things really DO matter
I had MANY conversation with the designers about the exact finishing on the cover of the brochure, weight of stock, and I made sure I press checked the booklet as the shade of brown on the cover could so easily stray into poo-brown territory! It really is important to care about these details.

Anyway these are my thoughts following a big week with some tremendous results for our team. Please do check out the website and request a brochure, it's really cool!