Panel: Moving Targets - Marketing and Audience Development

Left to right: Dean Ricketts founder & MD the Watchmen agency also involved with Blacktronica;

Hannah Kerr, Shoreditch Audiences  Chair: Suzy Gillet, Programmer at Mosaiques Film Festival; Emma Courtney - Courtney Consulting.

Dean gave some background, talking about the social campaigns that the Watchman agency have been involved in and Blacktronica, regular event in housed at the NFT, partnered by BFI to promote black film and music (founded by DJ & spoken word artists Charlie Dark).

Hannah began by talking about Shorditch Audiences focus being their community. Their programme on mainly live events is dictated by the community and their audiences and is very participatory for example using advocates from the community to promote the activities.

They also work with other key venues and organisations to secure access to the arts for their communities.

Interesting and different model of working with audiences to access work, largely through involving their community as full creative participants, creating ownerships and advocacy.

Emma started by giving an example of her work with the Welsh National Opera - Opera being a sector that traditionally has great challenges developing audiences.

Her strategy was to bypass the usual technical knowledge and historical knowledge required or expected of audiences - which also put off new audiences and focus on the universal appeal of the emotional experience. They employed a clever marketing tool - printed tissues with information about the Opera (La Bohemme).

"ADIA - Attention - gain your audiences' attention, Desire - create desire amongst your audiences, Interest - create an educated interest in the product,  Action - turn the interest into action plans to participate purchase"

Also going on to give an example of work with the Carnival sector. An excellent presentation - Emma will be sending out the presentation to the group check view the presentation here (also in 'useful links').

Emma made a good point that the audience reaction to your content builds your reputation, loyalty, trust.

Recommended the Heritage Lottery, Voluntary Arts Network and National Statistics for some very useful templates, stats and information sheets to help audiences development and marketing strategies.

Building Audiences: Top Ten Tips

1. Know your audiences (Research - test your proposition)

2. Build and Leverage partnerships, networks & communities

3. Make customer relationship management your manta : Attract - Retain - Enhance

4. Integrate your communications and choose your channels with care and creativity

5. Harness the power of PR

6. Define your selling proposition - succinctly

7. Recruit credible champions that your audiences will respond to

8. Leverage your value proposition

9. Make your product/event easy to access removing as many barriers as possible

10. Evaluate your success and failure

A discussion evolved asking the question 'should we worry about focussing on Black audiences as opposed to  a general audience'. (Paraphrasing) Dean made a good point that whatever your bias, we should at least consider how we develop a future generation of Black audiences and grow a culture of participation and access for Black communities.

"Why do you need to see this film?"

Happy Souls Festival - celebrating the best in Black & Asian films, specialising in attracting hard to reach BME communities and people suffering from Mental Health issues in these communities. See info on Happy Souls Festival here.