Orchestral Joint Marketing Campaign, November 2010 – July 2011
The issue at hand:
In January 2009, a consortium 12 London-based orchestral organisations commissioned Audiences London to facilitate the Orchestral Benchmarking Project. The project has enabled the consortium to build an understanding of audiences for orchestral music in London. The first four strands involved market research, while this fifth strand focused on applying the research findings to a joint marketing campaign.
The research allowed us to develop a bespoke segmentation of orchestral audiences. This indicated that a marketing campaign to encourage repeat attendance by people who had tried classical music concerts in a small way, but who haven’t yet developed a strong ‘habit of attendance’ offered the chance of increasing revenues to the organizations by growing the number of regular concert-goers.
Who joined in:
Participants in this strand of the Orchestras’ project included seven orchestras and four venues: Barbican Centre, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Cadogan Hall, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Southbank Centre.
How we went about it:
1. The campaign objectives were:
– To test the effectiveness of an offer that responded to the needs of the target market
– To monitor the ROI and impacts of a campaign for the agreed target market
– To test the effectiveness of a collaborative orchestral music offer with the target audience
– To develop the partnership working of the participating organisations
– To share the results and learning from the campaign with the wider cultural sector and Arts Council England, according to the intentions of the Arts Nation plans.
2. The combination of quantitative and qualitative research analysis undertaken earlier in the Orchestral Benchmarking collaboration suggested that frequent attenders of classical music concerts in London are knowledgeable about the art form, do not find price a barrier to their attendance because they place value on ‘hearing in person’, and that they develop a ‘personal menu’ of a few orchestras and concert halls which they prefer to attend. Conversely, the research suggested that infrequent attenders feel ‘overwhelmed’ by the number of concerts available, because they feel they lack the deeper knowledge of the art form through which they would make selections. They did not have loyalty to any one orchestra or venue and they did not come across as particularly price-sensitive.
3. The Consortium therefore decided to run a marketing campaign that would address the target audience’s needs for help ‘navigating’ the choice of live classical music in London, by presenting concerts according to the emotional appeal the music might have, rather than according to more detailed art form knowledge such as conductor, composer or historical style.
4. To further support the audience’s needs, we decided to offer more background information about what it is like to attend a classical music concert, the characters of the different orchestras and venues and pointers to building understanding of musical styles and terms. We therefore directed people to a web micro-site hosted on a ‘trusted’ third party provider, Time Out. Time Out’s classical music editor and listings team helped in describing the ‘themes’ of the concerts, the event details and the background information about orchestral music.
5. We selected existing contacts from across the whole consortium’s mailing lists who met the target audience criteria, and let them know about the micro-site and specially-themed selection of ‘Music to Remember’ concerts from the whole group. We posted information to half of the list and emailed half.
What came out of the project:
The marketing campaign and dedicated micro-site will run until July 2011, after which the impacts will be assessed and interesting lessons absorbed and shared. Among other aspects, we will be looking at visit statistics for the micro-site and email click-though rates, comparing response rates between people who received the information by post compared to email, and asking people through a survey whether they thought the approach was useful and effective. We will be looking at booking rates for the featured concerts by people contacted as part of the campaign, and seeing if the approach of the micro-site has appeal among a wider group of Time Out users.
These aspects will be assessed after the site closes in early July 2011.
Legacy:
1. Lessons from this campaign will be shared through Arts Council England as part of their Arts Nation pilot schemes sharing day and a dedicated area of their website from September 2011.
2. The participating venues and orchestras are interested in continuing with their Consortium networking, with a view to potential future practical and research collaborations.
3. There are related free documents and resources on the Free Resources section of our website, as follows:
Audiences, Leadership and Change in the Symphony Orchestra Field
Resources to help develop audiences using digital tools
Quick Guide to Tour Marketing
Findings from the Arts Debate
Who funded it:
The Orchestral Audiences’ joint marketing campaign was funded by Arts Council England with contributions from the participants.
Taking it forward:
Get in touch if you’d like to:
• Find out more about the orchestral joint marketing project or ACE’s Arts National pilots;
• Consider how a similar collaboration might be applied to your own art form or sector;
• Benefit from Audiences London’s wide knowledge of the London arts ecology through a marketing, research or audience development surgery;
• Undertake research on your own audiences and box office data.