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Dear John

Self promotion at festivals

First published 9th June 2005

Question:
I'm involved in a show running over the next few weeks at a summer festival. We don't have a lot of money and it's costing us quite a bit to be part of the event but we've all worked really hard on the production and are quite proud of it. However, as the date approaches I'm not sure that the festival office has done much promotion for us, beyond listing us in the brochure, and the pub we're performing doesn't seem very enthusisatic, even though the more customers we bring in the more drink they will sell on top of what they're already getting for the room hire.

Any tips to help us? It would be a shame if we end up performing to empty seats.

Answer:
Festivals are great not just for bumping up your stage experience and teaching you to develop your show over an extended run but also in teaching you about the importance of marketing.

As with performers who sit back and wait for agents to bring in work, without making any effort to find it themselves, expecting a venue or a festival office to do all your publicity for you is liable to lead to disappointment. Some venues and festivals do make a very big effort but the reality is there are often a large number of shows chasing the same audiences, so you need to factor in promotion time to your production schedule - a bit of a pain if you're a one person show. Make it your responsibility to make sure the show is sold to its best advantage, with whatever anyone else does as a bonus.

I think it's quite important to work out exactly what you want from the show. Do you want recognition from the press and/or industry or do you want to get bums on seats? I know in a perfect world you'd want both but when you have limited time and resources you are going to need to focus on whatever aspect of your marketing gets you the results you most want quickest.

You may need to try a couple of different approaches to find out what works best for you, so when you do get customers in the door, make sure you have some method of finding out where they came from. For instance, it's a good idea to get people to sign up to your mailing list after the show and to include a ''where did you hear about us'' type question.

Not only will you start to get an idea of which type of marketing works best for your sort of shows, you'll have a list of potential customers for your next venture.

If the Festival has a press officer or you know anyone who was involved in shows before, finding out what did and didn't work in previous years can be invaluable.

You might want to take a leaf out of the West End's book and put up a webpage promoting your show, with a link to the festival box office if you aren't selling tickets yourself. Always remember, however, that a webpage in itself isn't much good unless you get people to come and look at it.

Whatever you lack in marketing money you will have to make up for in creativity. Think of ways in which the theme of your show relates, however vaguely, to stories in the news and write a snappy press release. Local press in particular are keen on photo opportunities, which are a bit more interesting than the usual group shots, and local radio phone-ins always welcome entertaining contributions. Both mediums may also be open to ticket giveaways but don't get over excited with these unless you are prepared to underwrite the cost of all those free seats yourself.

Performers like the late Malcolm Hardee were almost as famous for their wild festival publicity stunts as they were for their shows but do try not to get yourself arrested as the ticket sales generated are unlikely to cover the court fines.

If there are other shows sharing the same venue, by all means see if you can suggest a communal marketing approach or even a discount offer where people can get into several shows at the venue for less then the price of buying individual tickets.

If your mates are expecting free tickets to the show make sure you press gang them into promoting it to paying customers.

Know your audience for the show - 'everyone' is too wide. Ask yourself where that audience would be likely to find out about entertainment and what would actually make them commit to coming. Simple things like a map to the venue on the flier can make all the difference.

Most of all persevere, persevere, persevere, especially if the show is running over several nights. Don't let a low turn-out the first night or slack pre-bookings put you off keeping the momentum up. Festival audiences often decide which shows to visit at the last minute. Make sure that's the minute when you are pressing your enticing flier into their hand.