A Performer’s Perspective: Reflection

May 29, 2017May 29, 2017 Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager acting, final performance, performer, reflection

Throughout this blog I have discussed my role as Marketing Manager, and even reflected upon my abilities and tasks in this role. However, now that Kalopsia has come to an end, I believe it is important for me to briefly reflect upon my secondary role as a performer.

(Howard Rees-Jones, undated, cited in Facebook.com, 2017)

Performing has always been what I’ve wanted to do. From very early on in my educational career, I knew that acting was the path I wanted to take. Since being at university I have involved myself in as much acting as possible, usually avoiding production/technical roles and focusing solely on acting. I knew that since my time at university was coming to an end, I should branch out and jump head-first into something different whilst I still had the chance.

This was my main reason for choosing the Marketing Manager role; whilst it was a large, very important, and time consuming production role, I would still have the time and flexibility to act in the final show I would have during my time at university.

(Howard Rees-Jones, undated, cited in Facebook.com, 2017)

My character was Beth Campbell, a 23-year-old office worker with big ambitions to become the boss. Of anything. Of everything…? I wanted to ensure that Beth was a multi-dimensional character, therefore I undertook a lot of character profiling and found out things about her, that were hidden in the script, that I had not considered. I based Beth on a younger version of Louisa, Emma’s character. Lousia was the boss of the office, incredibly head-strong, and could come across as a bit of a ‘bitch’ because of her strong female presence *eye roll*.

I decided that Beth should be very similar to how I pictured Louisa was when she first got into business. Driven, with ideas and aspirations perhaps unreachable by others, a work-ethic that others could only dream of, and a lack of time/patience for anything that could disrupt that. However, the major difference I wanted between Beth and Louisa is that Beth still cared somewhat about being liked, whereas Louisa, I feel, had given up.

(Howard Rees-Jones, undated, cited in Facebook.com, 2017)

Beth’s delusion/daydream took place during her speech after successfully getting the promotion at head office. She imagines herself as a Queen, the ruler, addressing her loving subjects; she is leading those that serve her into battle, willing to lay down her own life for her duty (or job). This shows not only Beth’s desire to be a leader, but also her superiority complex over those in the office, which slowly diminishes towards the end as she takes pity on Michael, who she knows is in love with her, and gives him one last nice gesture before she leaves. After all, she doesn’t have to put up with him trying to distract her any more.

(Howard Rees-Jones, undated, cited in Facebook.com, 2017)

Upon reflection, I believe I could have done more physical work on my character. Our choreographer, Holly, gave me some Comedia del Arte characters to research and base my movement around, yet I don’t feel I gave this enough time or experimentation. If I were to play this role again, I would undergo a detailed exploration of these characters and find the features in their movement that I could incorporate in a subtle manner into my movement to create a more naturalistic portrayal.

All in all, I very much enjoyed playing Beth Campbell and would love to revisit the character one day if ever Kalopsia resurfaced. I believe it was a very fitting character to play in my final university performance; driven, headstrong, and sure of where she wants to be. Something I will take with me after graduation.

Works Cited:

Howard Rees-Jones, G. (undated) Kalopsia. [online] Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. Available from https://www.facebook.com/ghrjmedia/?fref=mentions [Accessed 29 May 2017].

An Audience Awaits

May 27, 2017May 29, 2017 Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager Arts Council England, audience, Audience Segments, distribution, flyers, marketing, posters

Reflecting on our show, I believe it is important to consider the audience we received, feedback we collated, and how this data could have differed through different marketing techniques based on ACE policy.

Arts Council England divide the Audience Spectrum into 10 distinct groups:

Metroculturals, Commuterland culture buffs, Experience seekers, Dormitory dependables, Trips and treats, Home and heritage, Up our street, Facebook families, Kaleidoscope creativity, and Heydays.

Based on my knowledge of the LPAC’s usual audience (mainly College of Arts students and younger to middle aged people), I predicted that our main audience segment would fall under both:

Meteroculturals – “Prosperous, liberal, urbanites interested in a very wide cultural spectrum” (Arts Council England, 2017).

and

Experience seekers – “Highly active diverse, social and ambitious, engaging with arts on a regular basis” (Arts Council England, 2017).

These groups are both what ACE call “highly engaged” (Arts Council England, 2017) with the arts. Therefore, much of our marketing was focused on social media, particularly Facebook which these audiences use on a regular basis. The promotion of our material across Facebook was targeted to people between the ages of 18 and 40. However, what I noticed from seeing our audience on the day and the feedback we received on social media was that a large proportion of our audience were older than this, and mainly fell under the Trips and Treats segment. These are people who “Enjoy mainstream arts and popular culture influenced by children, family and friends” (Arts Council England, 2017). This is because our cast invited their families and family friends to celebrate the occasion.

Learning from this, I would have perhaps approached marketing our show slightly differently and spent more time distributing flyers and posters in town and making conversation to members of the public who fell under this category, rather than targeting younger people and students on campus and in trendy coffee shops. The feedback we received from our older audience was wonderful and showed us that our show is suitable for people of all ages, not just the young.

Works Cited:

Arts Council England (2017) Culture-based segmentation. [online] Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/participating-and-attending/culture-based-segmentation [Accessed 27 May 2017].

The finishing touches

May 10, 2017 Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager colours, design, distribution, flyers, marketing, posters, target audience

It’s just 2 weeks away from our performance now, and our print has been finalised and is being distributed!

In regards to our flyers, I made the decision to have our design printed in different colours. I did this to ensure they were eye-catching and appealing to different people, as whilst it is widely known that red reaches the back of the retina first (hence why I chose it for our poster design), different people are drawn to different colours based on their personality. This is in-keeping with the theme of individuality and expression running through our show, reflecting the idea that different people view the world very differently. I believe these colours all complement each other and stand out both on their own and in a set, and I hope to test this theory when we distribute them in town and around the university campus.

Our posters are beginning to pop up around the city; I have made sure that they are put in places relative to our target audience to ensure maximum reach and that this correlates with ticket sales – there’s no point putting them in places our audience will not visit! A prime location for our type of audience is independent coffee shops, and many owners have been very keen to put up posters and flyers as they are driven to help promote emerging companies/the arts!

ACE Marketing

April 27, 2017May 29, 2017 Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager Arts Council England, Marketing Plan

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.