Fringe MarketingFringe - A Marketing Guide
Tuesday, 14 April 2009 01:21
At the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008 there were approximately 2,000 shows offering over 31,000 performances. Although those bewildering numbers make the Edinburgh Fringe the largest Arts Festival in the world, it also makes it the most competitive market in the world for a theatre company trying to sell tickets to their show.
Broadway Baby has assembled the combined knowledge of promoters, venue press managers, reviewers and our very own editor to bring you the following tips to best market your show on the Fringe (and most of this will apply to any festival, not just Edinburgh).
Consider Your Budget
Many people underestimate the costs of doing any kind of marketing of their show, allowing only the minimum for printing flyers and posters; or expecting that the 'co-op' marketing that the venue are charging them is supposed to cover all activity. It won't. And if you invest nothing in marketing, you're likely to see very little in ticket sales on your show. Even if you have one of the best written, best directed, best acted or best designed shows on the fringe, unless you invest time and money in marketing your show in advance of your arrival at the festival, it's unlikely the word will get around about how good it is until the festival is almost over. You won't be on reviewer's radar. You won't have preview stories in the press. You won't have any of the buzz required to get ticket sales starting early, and you'll probably be in the all-too-familiar situation of papering your first week of performances to avoid the embarrassment of playing to empty houses. The good news is that your marketing budget doesn't need to be huge; but should be carefully planned and wisely spent.
Get A Good Press Agent
One of the most important parts of your marketing arsenal is your PR guy. They are worth their weight in gold if you pick the right one. To pick the right one, make sure you find someone who has plenty of previous experience at the festival you are going to and hasn't already got too many other acts on their plate to look after. Ask to see what they have done for clients in the past, and ask for references if you can, so you can see whether their clients really were happy with them.
If you are doing the full run of the festival, expect to pay around £1000 for their services - and this will include all the pre-publicity work as well as handling the media on location. If your budget is really tight, you may be able to negotiate a deal which just involves getting your press releases out - but bear in mind it really is worth going for the full service if you can. Even if that means dropping an advert in the Fringe programme.
Press Releases - Basic Rules
There are long-standing basic rules regarding the writing of a press release, and some quick research on Google will help for those unfamiliar with the conventions. Unfortunately there is a growing trend over the past couple of years to fancy-formatted PDF documents containing text and images laid out like a newsletter. From a publication's point of view, these are a hindrance to your show getting coverage, for the simple reason that images are not easily extracted from PDF documents at a useful resolution, and text copied from PDFs includes unwanted linebreaks, so your listing information requires additional formatting to get it into the publication you are targeting. With in excess of 2,000 shows, you can see why documents that are troublesome to deal with are ignored, and the shows that provide easy to digest information get the coverage.
Ironically, the best way to send a press release is as just text within an email. That way there are no compatibility problems, and chunks of information that the editor wants to use, such as listings info or a summary of the show, can easily be copied into whatever system they use without the need to open any other applications.
For images, never, ever, *ever*, send unsolicited file attachments greater than a couple of hundred kilobytes. It's ok to include a web-resolution production shot of your show (at around 600px wide), but if you send 8MB images out to all the journalists on the Fringe's press list, you'll soon find yourself off their Christmas card list. When there are thousands of shows, if everyone sent huge files to every journalist, it wouldn't take long to completely overload their email inbox. If a publication requires a high-resolution version of a production shot, they will ask for it - never send those big files unannounced.
For Broadway Baby specifically, we want your press release as text within an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and one 600px web-resolution picture. That's all you need to send us.
Targeting the Press
Know which publications are at the Fringe before you get there, and agree with your press agent which ones are on your priority list. There is a lot to be said for targeting the free-press first (such as Three Weeks, Broadway Baby, etc), rather than putting all your effort into high-profile targets like The Scotsman or the national press. The Scotsman, especially, have certain rules which could delay publication of your review if you are up for a Fringe First. You may get a reviewer into your show in the first week, only for them to sit on publication until the final week of the festival. The free publications and websites typically are far quicker to press, and if you need pull-quotes early in your run then try and tempt those reviewers on one of your first few performances - although be realistic. You are one of more than 2000 shows trying to lobby journalists who can only see about 4 or 5 shows in a day, then still have to write up a (hopefully witty and insightful) review for each. Even Three Weeks, with over 120 reviewers on their team, struggle to cover everything these days. Only a fraction get coverage in the first week. Your pre-Fringe activity, and who and how you've targeted the press will have an impact on whether you appear on a review-scheduler's list. Sometimes it can be a simple as your image being so striking that it'll look good on the pages of the publication, regardless of the show. Quite often it is because you're doing something of note - either because of your cast, writer, director or production company, or because the material you're doing has caught the attention of the public (or, at least, is likely to catch the attention of the public). Think about your unique selling points - your "USPs" - and make sure that you are highlighting them in your press communications. Spend time on your photography. A badly-lit snap from your rehearsal room is probably not going to inspire The Scotsman to run a full-page editorial on you.
With the above in place, draw up a list of the publications you absolutely have to talk to. Resources will be too limited to get distracted by the press who aren't going to have any impact on your show, so the monthly magazine about farm machinery from Estonia that wants to do an interview with you because your press shot has a particularly fine example of a tractor in the background, is probably not worth worrying about; not least because their publication date is after the Fringe is over. The Internet has also become a great leveller in giving citizen media a voice, and whilst this is no bad thing (it is, after all, where Broadway Baby started), be wary of those over enthusiast punters who want to sap your time on the promise of being featured in their blog. Politely direct them toward the press resources on your website, and keep yourself focused in getting the pull quotes from the publications that can help sell your show. The "Hackney Marshes Badger Blog" probably isn't going to do that.
Talk to your press agent and agree a plan - some of your strategy will be directed by their own relationships with the media covering the fringe, a lot will come from the USPs of your show, and which publications are likely to be interested in those USPs.
Advertising
The Fringe Programme is probably the highest priority publication to get your advertising into - although at approximately £2,400 for a quarter page, it's also one of the most expensive. If your budget can stretch, you should also look at advertising where your potential audience will be. Think about your show, and who will want to see it. Think of the sort of publications your potential audience read and the websites they visit. The better you target your ads, the more conversions you'll get out of the eyeballs that read your message.
Festivals themselves have their own specialist media, Broadway Baby being a prime example. There are lots to choose from, however, including Three Weeks, Skinny Fest and various web-only publications. Our advice is to go with the publications that you've heard of yourself. Every year a new website or guide will pop up, only to disappear again. If you choose a publication that's been around for a few years, there's more chance it'll at least last until the end of the Festival!
You can also use Google or Facebook Ads to target your message. Facebook has some particularly powerful targeting methods that let you specify the gender, age, location and interests of your advert audience, and also link it to a Facebook group for your show. And because Facebook isn't quite as heavily used by other advertisers as Google is, you'll probably find your ad clicks will be cheaper.
When it comes to setting a budget for your advertising, our suggestion for Edinburgh shows is to allocate 10% of your anticipated average ticket price as the cost of filling a seat. If, for instance, you expect your average ticket price to be £12 and you are in a 140 seat auditorium for 24 performances, you can work out your ad budget to be £1.20 (10% of £12) x 140 seats x 24 performances = £4032, which will be enough for a Fringe quarter page programme ad, some ads in the fringe press such as Three Weeks and Broadway Baby, and campaigns on Google / Facebook.
Brand Yourself
Because of the sheer number of shows you're competing with in a festival like Edinburgh, you really have to be creative to get noticed. Although you may think of Edinburgh as just another arts festival, in reality it's a cut-throat market where brand-awareness is paramount. It's a playing field that would give even experienced marketeers a run for their money - and to work it you need to be organised.
To start with, you need to come up with an image, look and feel that will instantly be associated with your show. It will form your poster design, flyers, press releases and be prominent in every scrap of communication between you and your potential audience. It should be striking, relevant and able to tell the viewer what it is through photography, illustration or typeface regardless of the words. You should be able to take the title of your show off your poster and still know what it's about. In every venue, your poster will appear on a wall with many others, so make your design clean and clear so as to draw your audience in from a distance. Make sure your text isn't lost on a busy background. Make sure there isn't too much text. Don't be afraid of 'white space'. Show your potential designs to as many people as possible to get their feedback. And when you're happy you have the absolute best design possible for your show, use the same image, fonts and style throughout everything you do.
If your marketing budget runs to it, think about reproducing your brand beyond posters and flyers. Get t-shirts for your flyering team, beer mats in your venue and flags for Royal Mile performances. For less than a couple of hundred quid you'll have a lot of options in promotional marketing giveaways - a search on Google will provide many hundreds of companies that specialise in branded merchandise, and their websites will give you thousands of ideas. The more you can get your brand seen by the public, the more chance your show will get their consideration when they're thinking of shows to see. But make sure your brand is strong, and it appears everywhere.
Showing Off Your Show
Adverts, blanket postering and great reviews are all great ways of getting your brand out there, but also consider giving your audience a free sample of your wares either before the Fringe starts using a service like YouTube or Festival Previews, or when you're in town you can apply for a slot on the High Street Stage Spaces, or as part of a showcase 'best of' fringe show (there are always many of those every year!). Before considering this option though, experience suggests that a strong comedy sketch or musical number can work well in isolation, but typically drama does less well when a scene is ripped out of context - especially when the material surrounding it is less weighty. On the High Street there is the additional technical challenge of being heard, and shouting your way through a love scene may not do much for your audience numbers let alone your actors voices. If the venue you're in have a 'best of' type show, and your material lends itself to a short extract, ask your venue press office to get you an invitation to perform.
If you are in one of the larger venues, especially one with a busy bar area, you can ask your venue management if you can perform for the bar audience. Some venues, such as C for instance, will even let you lay on themed party nights to really focus on your show. Not only will this give you an extra publicity boost, but also give you an excuse to get closer to all the other companies in your venue; which can have many advantages if they are then also talking about your show to their circle of influence.
Flyering / Papering & Postering
Opinion is very much divided on the effectiveness of flyering the Royal Mile. There is no doubt that you will see some ticket sales as a direct result of standing outside the Fringe Shop handing out flyers, but equally it is a lot of work and you give a lot of flyers out to people who'll throw them away. The point is, if your show lends itself to a particular type of audience, you'll probably get a much better response for less effort (and less wasted paper) targeting that group specifically. If you've got a gay-themed show, for instance, hit the gay pubs a couple of times a week. Visit the gay friendly businesses, and get your posters up where they'll be seen. In a pub, one of the best positions is directly above the urinal!
If you need to paper your house for the early performances, try and make sure the people who'll be able to say good things about your show are the ones you're giving tickets to. In the above example, give the landlords of the pubs & business owners you are flyering a few free tickets so they can tell their regulars about the show for the whole month. No point giving free tickets to tourists who are going home tomorrow - who they going to evangelise to?
We should stress that the information provided above is purely opinion about what has, and hasn't, worked in the previous festivals. The is no single 'right way' to do a show in Edinburgh or Brighton, but by its very nature a cookie-cutter approach will be lost in the white noise of competition. You should always look for your unique strengths and use them. Identify who your core audience is and market your product as much as your budget can afford. Once you've worked out your numbers, take a step back and do a sanity check. Are you spending more than your ticket price per person to get people in the door? Are you only spending the bare minimum but expecting the house to be full? We hope the above is useful, but above all - enjoy your experience at the Fringe; it's one of the best on Earth.
