Hot tips: Making a Marketing Pack

Here’s out next in our series of blogs looking at issues and ideas floating affecting the arts industry. This one is all about marketing – specifically, what you need to capture and collate to create a marketing pack.

This checklist has been prepared for the Arts on Tour Touring Workshop, but we thought it might be useful for all indie artists at any stage of a project.

Below is a series of materials you should look at capturing, and a handy Dropbox template for how you can make those assets available to presenters.

Need any other marketing tips? Get in touch with Thom at marketing@performinglines.org.au to see if we can help.

Important Note

We cannot stress enough how important forward planning is to ensure you get what you need.

It is hugely expensive and time-consuming to get at the last minute or after the fact, and you may not be able to capture it at all.

Allowing time and budget during the development and premiere season will ensure you can get the best quality materials in the most cost effective way.

Basics

Credits: list of creative team with appropriate titles. This sounds obvious, but ensuring you accurately reflect the contributions of all team members is vital, and that that contribution is agreed upon going forwards.

Marketing Copy: We provide three lengths of marketing copy.

Long copy: 100+ words suitable for websites, brochures, places where more detail and nuance can be accomodated
Short Copy: 50 – 90 words suitable for listings, landing pages, and limited space publications
Tagline: A single sentence that nails your work

Reviews: include pull quotes and links to full reviews

Awards: won stuff? Great! Let the presenter know.

Cast + Creative Team Bios: keep these short sharp and interesting, ideally to 100 words max.

Notes: you can supply a Director’s Note, Choreographer’s Note, Designer’s Note, etc if desired. We try and keep these to around 500 words max.

Logos: Many producers, presenters and funders contractually require these to be included on all public-facing collateral about your show. You may also want to include yours on there!

Text acknowledgements: These are in addition to logos, and acknowledge less significant investment in a project or in places where logo placement isn’t possible.

Style tip: We lead with who produced the show, who commissioned it, then who funded it in order of financial contribution. This can also be a place to acknowledge support offered during previous developments.

Ie: <project name> is produced by Performing Lines in association with Arts on Tour, and was commissioned by 107 Projects. <Project name> has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body; and the NSW Government through Create NSW. <Project name> was developed as part of Arts House’s CultureLAB supported by the City of Melbourne.

Phew!

Darcy Grant’s original Cockfight production shot

With colour treatment added for socials

Final design concept from Dance Touring Partnerships

Promo shot from Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday by Sarah Walker

Production shot from Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday by Amy Brown

Promo shot from Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday by Sarah Walker

Production shot from Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday by Amy Brown

Images

Make sure you capture a range of images for use in campaigns. These include:

promotional shots: high quality, eye-catching shots for use in campaigns
production images: invest in quality production shots of your premiere season
rehearsal or development shots: behind-the-scenes stuff will help you sell this and future seasons
and literally any additional other images you have that may work for online and social distribution. A good image is just a filter away…

Make it clear what the photos are, who’s in them, and who took the shots. Don’t forget to credit your photographer!!

Videos

Full length run
30 sec HD TVC suitable for broadcast
60 sec trailer for online
15 – 30 sec teasers for social
Behind-the-scenes footage or interviews with creatives
up to 6 min for funding applications

Make sure you hang onto any footage you have, as this can be recut to create new content. We store all our video on Vimeo, as it’s easy to access and presenters can share or download direct at whatever output quality they require.

Audio

This is not vital, but if you have any of the below, it can’t hurt to chuck it in.

any pre-recorded interviews with cast/crew for radio/web packages
backing tracks
high-quality show audio

Collateral & Support Materials

If your budget extends to it, the more you can supply to presenters, the more success you’ll have in booking future presentations and tours. If we can afford it, we try to provide:

Education kit: show specific activities and additional content with curriculum links for teachers
Show collateral files: Flyer, poster & show program, supplied as InDesign files. Venues can then add their own info and get them locally printed
Campaign guide: you may wish to provide information about target audience segments, marketing strategies, interesting background info, anything else that could help a venue sell your show.
Title treatments and fonts: note that not all venues will use these, so don’t be too prescriptive unless it’s a deal-breaker for you!

Get the template>>

Want more tips? Join the mailing list.

We’ve created a handy template that links to dropbox folders for content and a marketing pack doc.

You can use whatever file storage system you like, just make it as clearly laid out and as easy to access and update as possible.

We use dropbox, but Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive, etc are all options. Investigate which works best for you and your existing file storage systems, and be aware that each system does have drawbacks.

Tips:

Google Drive is cheap and integrates seamlessly with gmail accounts, but generally requires the recipient to have a Google account, which can be a pain
Some local government agencies and some countries (like China!) can’t access Dropbox. We use WeTransfer when sending files to China.