Month: April 2017

ACE Marketing

Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager ,

How do Arts Council England define marketing?

“Marketing is the process of communicating the value of your work to potential audiences, visitors and participants. A good marketing plan will allow you to meet your goals and the needs of audiences. It encourages you to consider the audience perspective as you plan your activity. You should look at things like choice of activity, where and when the activity will take place, possible costs for the audience, and methods of involving and communicating with potential audiences and participants.”

ACE suggest that you make a marketing plan to achieve the above, consisting of:

“Background information on you and your current activities

Briefly describe what you currently do, and explain why you have decided that you need to do the audience development and marketing activity that you are asking us to fund

Your (audience) objectives

Clearly set out the objectives and targets for your audience development or marketing activities. Make them smart (SMART) – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. For example; increase audience aged 55 – 65 for Jazz performance by 5% before October next year. Look for evidence that these are realistic

The details of your activity

Describe the target audience or participants for the activity (be specific, identify each ‘audience type’, for example students aged 18–24). Provide details of how many people you are hoping to involve (be specific and break this down by each ‘audience type’). Describe the benefits and why it would appeal to them. Describe what is unique or different about your activity and plans

Demand for your activity

Describe how you know that there is demand for your activity from your target audience, and provide details of any research you have carried out

Audience development and marketing methods

Describe the tools, approaches and methods you plan to use to reach your target group

Timetable

Provide details of the timetable for your activities, give exact dates if possible

Budget

Provide details of the income and expenditure for your audience development and marketing plan, and remember to include the costs of evaluating your plans. Where possible break down the figures to show the detail of the budget. For example, If you were engaging a freelance marketing advisor for 4 days work and they charged £250 per day, you would express this as: 4 days @ £250 per day = £1000.

Evaluation

Describe how you will evaluate the success of your plan against your objectives and targets. For example, how you will find out if you have reached the people you wanted to reach. Include information on when you will do this and who will be involved. Remember to reflect, review and evaluate to inform future work.”

This is the plan that I roughly followed when constructing our company’s presence on social media, our brand, and our relationship with our potential audience. This plan aims for a company to be able to apply for ACE funding by knowing in detail all of the above questions, and I believe that with a slightly more detailed understanding of the Timetable and Demand for Your Activity sections, The Pin Hinge Collective’s marketing plan would be ACE funding worthy.

I knew from the ACE website and from reading works such as This Way Up by Caroline Griffin that in order for our marketing to be in-keeping with ACE funding requirements, I would have to focus heavily on our “identity” (Griffin, 2007) as a company and how to get this across, particularly through social media, our copy and our print. These methods in particular are some of the most common ways a “customer can come into contact with [our] organisation” (Griffin, 2007), and therefore needed to be consistent and in-keeping with our company ethos/manifesto.

To ensure I did this, I made the textual content put out across social media warm, welcoming and for the most part, informal. This was to build a rapport with an audience and act as a very personal form of communication. I also made sure our visual content was diverse, bright and colourful to not only be eye-catching, but to appeal to different people in different ways, going alongside our desire to create personal, intimate theatre that celebrates individuality.

Something that Griffin promotes in This Way Up is the use of word of mouth or “friends” (Griffin, 2007) as advocates for our association. I made use of this advice by engaging consistently and confidently with other theatre companies across social media platforms and in person, networking and advertising each other’s shows to branch out into each other’s audience pools. This became extremely useful during our fundraising period as other theatre companies such as Rubbish Theatre were interacting with and sharing our fundraising activity to their audiences – and this gained results! Networking is an extremely important part of marketing!

Works Cited:

Arts Council England (2017) Audience development and marketing, and Grants for the Arts.

Griffin, C. (2007) This Way Up. Cambridge: Arts Marketing Association.

Copyright Laws for Our Performance

Jason Lodge Assistant Stage Manager

As a professional company The Pin Hinge Collective has a high standard we wish to maintain. As sound Designer for the show i wished to make sure that this was achieved regarding our sounds for the performance, making sure all of our songs where all obtained legally.  To gather this information I emailed the Stage Manager of the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, Darren Page, hoping he could offer me guidance.

Darrens Response
(Page, 2017).

 

From Darren’s response i was able to understand I need a PRS form, which would allow royalties to artists whose songs we have used within the performance such as  Billy Joel and Hans Zimmer.

 

Page, D. (2017) RE: Question about Copyright [email]. Sent to J.Lodge, 26 April.

Writing a War

Sam Coggin Set Designer

The majority of our script was written by our Director Dwain Brown, however I was given the task of helping to write the war scene for Jo’s delusion. The scene needed to show Jo as a strong leader in opposition to Beth whom she saw as an evil dictator figure. We needed to emphasise the importance of the upcoming promotion and how close the two of them where in sales; the delusion needed clearly depict that this was what Jo was fighting for. Therefore I made sure to continually relate back to her soldiers being coded as units, as well as having the enemy, allies’ ratio similar to that of their sales from the last quarter.

The military jargon used was inspired from various places including war films such as Saving Private Ryan and Lone Survivor. As well as some unconventional stimulus including Call of Duty video games and comedic sketches from the likes of Monty Python and Armstrong and Miller. This was to keep it relatively accurate to a military strategist and maintain a fast pace of how Jo handled each scenario that came at her. I felt this was necessary in the pace and impulsiveness of Jo’s character as immediately after this we see she has to leave work to look after her ill Father and is struggling to keep a balance of work and family problems.

The interruptions voiced by Beth in German radio transmissions continually worked to remind the audience and Jo of the rivalry between the two of them, each becoming more frustrating than the last. The final transmission we decided to cut and replace with an explosion, it being the final blow of Jo being removed from the top of the ladder of success, being replaced by Beth, as well as a foreshadowing element for the next scene in which Jo has to leave the office.

I feel this delusion fit the character of Jo really well in her fiery nature and emphasis on hers and Beth’s rivalry for the promotion. The placing of the scene was a strong choice in being the second delusion shown and also gave a strong build to the emotional phone call that came immediately after this scene.

This Time it’s War

Dwain Brown Director

The second delusion was one of the most difficult ones for me to craft as a writer, I knew I wanted both Joanne and Beth to come against each other for the promotion in the office. I wanted to make it clear that they were both strong women who were fighting over this job promotion. Using a war like setting helped reflect the ‘real life’ as military strategy and soldiers are often spoken as ‘units’ and the sales in the office were also referred to as ‘units’.

I depicted Beth as a Nazi who only spoke GCSE level German, as the delusion itself was Joanna’s and of course she doesn’t speak German show only the small amount of German she learnt at school. This delusion was filled with frantic speech, that mocked old BBC broadcasts with over the top diction adding some comic relief to the frantic war text.

When the delusion finally finishes, Joanna is struggling in the war. Losing many of her units and the bunker she was hiding in, had been hit with a missile. The delusion again reflects the real world, Joanna in the office is doing well but is quickly trumped by Beth. When the delusion comes to an end, it is brought back into reality with a phone call from back home. Joanna’s farther calls, who is himself ill and is slowing down her sales.

The concept for the scene itself was not the difficult part for me to create, it was the dialogue itself. I have little to no experience in war jargon, however luckily for me our Set Designer, Sam Coggin has seen many war films and was able to come to my aid, taking the lead in writing the dialogue for this scene. I was worried at first about letting up the reigns of writing, but he knew more on the topic and was really able to help me craft some strong dialogue.

The Space Oddity

Jason Lodge Assistant Stage Manager

Each Delusion brought challenges in their own way, however, the most challenging was Sam’s character Tom’s space delusion. The delusion follows, Tom’s dream of becoming the first British astronaut to walk on the moon, as well as portray him reaching this dreams. The delusion consists of physical theatre to create the weightlessness and the anti gravity aesthetic which the scene wanted to for fill.

The challenge this came from the dynamic changes that this delusion possessed, to counter act this,  I had to make sure, i worked alongside Holly (the choreographer) to make sure the mood which she created matched the music which i produced for the scene. Essentially, the music had to match the emotion and the style of physical theatre which Holly was creating. The section had three differing styles, the first, was while Sam’s character was building the rocket. This section needed have a slight build to assure it gave the right emotion to the scene, as well as set a gentle overtone to the performance. For this opening movement peice, I decided that soft piano would set a nice pace for Sam to act out his scene to as well as set the tone for his delusion. Therefore, i believed that Hans Zimmer’s Afraid of Time was a suitable choice.

(GSOAT, 2016).

Afraid of Time was used in the Motion Picture, Interstellar (2014). I believed that the style of this song, suited the calm build up of ascending to space, as well as gave the same atmosphere as space, like the purpose is the tracks purpose within the film.

After this build up had been established and Sam’s character had arrived in space, i believed that the correct setting had been produced to the section, therefore i believed that the music itself could change, to compliment the different style which the scene was about to transcend to. The second, stage of the section turned into a pyshical theatre peice, involving a lot of breathing and wind like moves, so i wanted  to capture this through the next piece of music.

(Chambon, 2014).

Therefore, I believed Philip Chambon’s Coupling Dance worked best for this section. The song possessed the breathing and weightlessness which the section required, furthermore the track solely builds in pace which strongly accompanies the movement of the section, as the lifts heighten so did the movement producing a strong build up for the final lift.

The Final lift was the climax of this performance, it would show Sam’s character finally achieving his dream. For this moment, I wanted to use something different to the previous tracks as well as a well known song which relates to the style of this section. I decided nothing, would suit this moment more then David Bowie’s Space Oddity. However, i believed that the original version did not hold the grandeur  that the moment possessed. So instead I looked into different covers of the song to find something that could match the performances climax.

 

I decided to use the London Symphony Orchestra’s adaptation of Space Oddity. The track from 1:10 starts to build up on its entrance to the first chorus, i believed if this was edited and timed correctly, it would create a nice accompanying sound which would heightening the experience of the lift, as well as producing the grandeur that the lift rightly deserves.

work cited

Chambon, P. (2014) Coupling Dance [download]. 4 minutes. 56 secs. Between shadows. London: Phillip Chambon Music. Available from http://www.philipchambon.com/danceballet.html [accessed 23 April 2017].

edgycorners (2010) Space Oddity by The London Symphony Orchestra . Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB3k4wAAAQU [accessed 23 April 2017].

GSOAT (2016) Afraid of Time – Hans Zimmer // Interstellar Soundtrack (Deluxe Edition . Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFDfGK6zG4 [acessed 23 April 2017].