Brands with an limited shelf life

Unless it is a major musical or a touring concert act most of the products we engage with in the performing arts have a limited shelf life, in some cases maybe only a matter of weeks for the idea to be taken to market, people to become aware of it and then hopefully buy tickets.

And that's got me thinking, what other types of products do this, exist in a bespoke manner for a very limited period and then disappear.

Outside of the performing arts I can only really think of fast food special menu items and fashion as two similar examples.

McDonalds always have a new item on their menu for just a limited time, lamburgers, Angus beef, McRib (or as Homer would say "Hmmmm McRiiiib"), special slushies and the list goes on. So why do they do this? It's pretty simple really McDonalds is omnipresent, it's just always there, if they don't give you different reasons to visit there's every chance that you could fall out of the habit of going.

And how do they do it? Again really simply, they bombard you with marketing, mainly TV but from time to time social media too. With a big spend and frequency, frequency, frequency. The lamburger practically appears in your hands via some form of "message-to-matter" process that scientist themselves don't even understand. Quantum physics I think.

It is also interesting to note that McDonalds uses different media for different messages. TV sells the specials, outdoor is directional "Next Macca's 500m on the right" and radio is informational "in your market there is a 24 hr McDonalds operating", "McDonalds now has better coffee" and the like.

Trouble is all of these special short term products are the teeny-tiniest sub-brands serving the needs of a dominant overall major brand. Performing arts in most cases the show is at least the equal of the organisation on brand terms if not more important. But the lesson we can learn from Macca's is to choose frequency with your media buy when creating recognition for a product with a short term life span.

Fashion too is a bit different as the product with a short life span is not a single product but a set of products that are marketed as "this season's look". As there is usually some commonality across stores with 'looks', its a weird situation where you and your competitors are cross-selling for each other, generating a demand for a 'look' and then people select which store to go to partly out of brand loyalty and partly just as a result of browsing the shopping centres.

So the fashion analogy leads one towards brand loyalty, performing arts companies with a strong brand such as Bell Shakespeare, Sydney Theatre Company and Bangarra Dance Theatre bring with them pre-existing brand equity which means there's already a readiness to accept the 'new' offering and creates a sense of standing apart when one is surfing the net or flicking through the weekend newspaper magazines thinking about things to do in the coming weeks.

So frequency and working on a strong primary brand as two keys to launching a product/show into the market place for a short period of time. 

To this list, I would add a third, care, take the time to really nail the design and word execution around the show. If you only have a short period of time to build up a show's brand you really have to nail it, make every component work as best it can, focus on how will the show impact on the patron and do everything you can to represent that feeling or response in your marketing, if you are selling an unrequited love story then your marketing should drip with pathos. "Have you ever being in love", "For anybody who has loved and lost before" OK these are clichés but you get the drift. Put the audience into the picture, give them a taste of the feeling. 

By-the-by MacDonalds now often launch new product with cheap $3 dollar taste wraps, they give you a teaser of the full thing. It shard for us to do this in the arts but we work towards giving people as much of a taste as we can.

Anyway that's enough for now. I'll leave you and your budgets to figure out how you achieve frequency!

Do physical theatres constrain community connection?

Its more of a thought bubble this week...

Does the presence of a physical theatre and the need to manage such a resource prevent city, county/state or territory funded Performing Arts Centres from achieving everything they could achieve?

How would say the “BIG NEW SUBURB PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE” be different if it didn't actually have a BIG NEW PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE to manage and populate with shows?

Are we tying up valuable arts funding in capital expenditure when we could be using it in other ways?

What if the programming/marketing/backstage/ticketing/FOH activities that performing arts centres generally deliver to communities happened but without the constraints of having to happen within a set of fixed four walls?

Programming would be entirely site specific, education programs would happen almost universally in schools, communities would naturally be more engaged in the creation of work as it would be happening all around them and work would HAVE to be created to spec. Maybe the conversation would be less around the programming off-the-shelf Williamson touring productions and more focused on the needs, issues and interests of the community being served.

I dunno, I just find the focus on large monuments is sometimes a distraction from the real purpose of workplaces like ours…

Its certainly a distraction for politicians and bureaucrats when it comes to big picture vision thinking. It's all about getting their name on a plaque and not about achieving real results for communities.

Persuasive letter writing

Does anybody still write letters? We still do from time to time, either A. because our email list has been hammered yet we still want to talk directly to some specific patrons (I know. I know we should use better segmentation tools), B. We've made what we beleive to be a very well executed form of printed collateral and we just want to get it directly into people's hands or C. you have to craft an argument that takes a bit more explaining than you might otherwise have room for in other media.

With this in mind and noting that as it is Subs Season, lots of us are actually writing letters, here’s a quick tute on persuasive letter writing.

• Scope out on a bit of paper (Or wherever) your key messages before you start. Don't have too many maybe three, max.
• Write in the format of your end letter – it helps make sure you keep to length and are seeing it how the end reader will as you draft.
• Remember that direct mail writing is one-to-one communication not one-to-many, write accordingly.
• Write with an individual in mind that is your target audience – put their name after DEAR… I write my Subs letters to "Denise", a real subscriber that I know.
• Use Headings, Pull Quotes and PS’s – some people will only read these so make sure that read in isolation the headings etc actually carry your key messages and form a lose narrative of their own.
• Tell ‘em once, tell ‘em again then tell them what you told them. You can repeat your key selling point up to three times (Or more) just find different ways to phrase it. Heading, intro, body copy and conclusion.
• Always seek to use active not passive language. A good tip for active writing is to make sure all tenses are in present tense where possible - not past or future. don't get held up by technicalities here, effective selling copy trumps strict English boarding school grammatical copy everytime.
• The shortest way to phrase an idea is usually the best.
• NEVER precede a noun (Like "performance") with any more than two adjectives. One is best. "Smith delivers a thrilling performance.", "Smith delivers a thrilling, haunting and moving performance." - see? Trust me the shorter one is better.
• Think about how the shows you are selling will impact on the reader, don't just describe the show, paint a picture of how it will me THEM FEEL!
• A synopsis is NOT Marketing copy. It just isn't alright. Look: "Avatar is a movie about some security guards that travel to a far away jungle planet to guard a mining operation and  one of them begins to sympathise with the local tribes." This is what synopis driven marketing copy reads like to your patrons.

I think that's it from me for now. Happy letter writing!

Ricky

Tip for Managers: don't be afraid to learn from your staff

A short one this week. Just because you are a manager and are "supposed" to know it all there is no shame in learning from your own team members. Remember as a manager you will be seen as successful if your entire team is achieving beyond expectations, so it really doesn't matter who's great idea it is, if it gets accepted and goals are achieved you will be viewed as being successful, even if the great idea didn't come from you personally.

Some examples, a Season campaign many moons ago was delivered that went completely OTT on trying to show where the brand was headed and delivered a very cool Terry Gilliam inspired Brazil look and feel. A short time later a new marketing coordinator came in and reminded myself and my Director about marketing 101 ie: How does that look and feel appeal to our key audience of 50,60+ females? The answer was it didn't, not at all. I have never forgotten that lesson and it feeds into every campaign I have done since.

Another one was adopting the wireframe process from the digital world for the Season brochure, I had been pushing for a Word based solution but it was my digital marketer who said to adopt the wireframe process used by web developers in full and actually lay the copy out exactly as per the book spread just minus the graphic affectations. And he was right, the process worked so much better.

And finally, we receive great feedback on last year's season brochure but an ex-staffer took me aside and pointed out some tiny signs whereby our designers probably needed more time to do the final finessing before sending to print.Again I took this on board and highlighted the need to care for the small details and tried to work the schedule to allow for more finishing up time at the end of the design process. The end result, is that the care taken this year can be seen and felt in the 2013 execution.

So in short learn from your staff, at the end of the day a successful manager looks great when the best ideas get up regardless of who's they are.

AFL clash Jumpers and brand values

OK so it's footy finals time which means it's time for me to address my pet hate THE CLASH JUMPERS IN THE AFL.


But because this is a marketing blog, of sorts, I'll use marketing-ese to state my case.

Firstly, what is a football club? What is it about these entities that inspires such passion? (AFL is per capita far and away the highest attended sport in the world.)

If it were the players then memberships and support would drop overnight when an insanely popular player like Richmond's Matthew Richardson retires. But guess what it doesn't, and it didn't. Fans love their players, but they love next year's crop just as much as they loved last year's.

We know it's not the coaches or other officials either, it also isn't the home ground as no one except for Geelong plays at home any more.

No it is the fierce inter club rivalry that inspires passion, the tribal connection people feel to an amorphous entity known as Carlton, Essendon or Collingwood. A rich set of experiences, a shared history going back more than 150 yrs for some, and an anticipated future. And the only tangible representation of all of this is the jumper, the club emblem that the players where across their chest.

It is the quintessential brand, more than a trade mark its a love-mark, more valuable to some fans than their own wedding rings.

So what does the AFL do? they decide for purely pragmatic reasons (to more clearly identify opposing players on the field) they force clubs to trot out 'clash strips' and then for reasons only know to the clearly vision impaired bloke at the AFL that decides such matters, force clubs to wear them even when their is no obvious clash, sometimes making the clash worse!

It goes without saying that people have watched almost 100 years of the worst clash, Collingwood V North Melbourne (even on black and white TV) without ever having a major problem but all of a sudden over the last decade this has become SOOO crucial that the AFL feels it is more important than tampering with the one tangible connection a fan has to his/her clubs culture the jumper.

Look at these pictures, Essendon are RED and BLACK, it's powerful, passionate and strong - not insipid grey. North Melbourne are a vibrant royal blue it speaks to their aspirational working class culture and traditional style of play, they are NOT some Diego Maradonna Argy uniform rip off. And the iconic CFC on the old dark navy blue is regarded as up their with the All Blacks as one of the best jumpers in world sport - WTF to this light blue version!

DEAR AFL - Fans follow their club, the most tangible representation of their club is the jumper, the jumper IS the brand. it may not seem important to you but given that you slap the AFL brand on more items of shoddy merchandise than Krusty the Clown one shouldn't be surprised.

PLEASE return back to a more relaxed approach where only the absolute worst examples require clash strip and tolerate minor jumper changes such as socks and the like to achieve the desired result STOP tampering with our love-marks.

I suppose the lesson for marketers out of this rant is to think, what part of your organisation is really important to your fans? And be conscious when what seems like a pragmatic change might actually cause an unpragmatic emotional response.

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!

Marvel, a little deaf boy and corporate culture

OK Read this (its short)





A HEARING-impaired New Hampshire boy is now a superhero.

Marvel Comics has created a superhero called Blue Ear in honour of Anthony Smith, a four-year-old boy from Salem, who was born with a chromosomal disorder that left him with severe hearing loss.

Anthony, who has no right ear and only partial hearing in his left, wears a blue hearing aid that has enabled him to speak and attend school.

A devoted comic book fan, he told his mother three weeks ago he was no longer wearing the device because "superheroes don't wear blue ears," WFXT-TV reported.

Alarmed by the boy's refusal, his mother, Christina D'Allesandro, emailed Marvel Comics in New York City, asking for assistance.

The comic book publisher sent D'Allesandro a picture the next day of "Hawkeye," a superhero who lost 80 percent of his hearing and wears aids. The company then sent an image of its newest creation, a character called "Blue Ear," who it said was named after the boy, according to the station.

"It's amazing," D'Allesandro said of the company's response. She said her son brought the comic book pictures to his pre-school, which prompted teachers to hold a superhero week.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/marvel-creates-new-superhero-for-hearing-impaired-new-hampshire-boy/story-e6frfmq9-1226365269279#ixzz22lFN6nvq

Now read this...(please)

I'm hearing impaired and so is my daughter, we each wear two hearing aids, so naturally I was drawn to this story.  On the surface its just a great story about some people at a large company doing something nice for a little boy, but it is much more than that. It's story about company culture and values.

When you engender a culture in an organisation that values people, that values doing the right thing, regardless of reward, you invariably find that good things come back to the organisation (I'm hoping Marvel didn't leak this story). 

It's no accident that Marvel are on a seismic roll with hit movie after hit movie and a massive purchase by the idea-bereft Disney, like Pixar before them Marvel are a culture that values people, has ideas and approaches those ideas with courage, values long since lost at Disney.

And clearly Marvel values people, their iconic creative muse Stan Lee (90 odd) continues to receive producer credits on all movies and TV shows featuring his creations even though he is no longer an active member of Marvel, he gets his cameo appearances in every movie and one would hope that he is consulted on various bits and pieces for those movies within his producer credit.

And then to this story, first look at the timeliness, within a day the company had responded with some information about Hawkeye wearing hearing aids (which I didn't know, he's even cooler now than before!) and then shortly later with the ultimate above and beyond effort of creating a dedicated character based on the boy's particular ear issues.

Too often in business we forget those little above and beyond moments in favour of "focusing on core business" without realising that it's those little above and beyond things, those things you do for patrons, co-workers and suppliers, with no expectation of a reward that make up the culture of an organisation.

At the risk cracking my cynical marketer's mask even more, could all our workplaces do with a little more "Just for the hell of it" niceness?