London’s theatre scene is thriving, with tickets to the hottest shows selling out in hours.
Shakespeare retellings such as Much Ado about Nothing and Romeo and Juliet have seen sold-out runs, in part thanks to their star names, which include Tom Hiddleston, Hayley Atwell and Tom Holland.
Fan favourites Six, Wicked and Les Misérables consistently open to a full house. While ballet and opera have seen a resurgence in audience numbers, with the Royal Opera House reporting ticket sales increased by 81,000 in the year to 27 Aug 2023.
Off West End venues are also performing well. The Barbican’s production of My Neighbour Totoro broke the venue’s record for the number of tickets sold in one day, and The Park Theatre’s Kim’s Convenience sell-out run has led to a UK tour.
But how do theatres market their shows?
We spoke to Ella Lewis-Collins, The Royal Opera House’s director of audiences, and Dawn James, Park Theatre’s sales and marketing director, to find out.
Support
Lewis-Collins said the level of marketing for each show can depend on several factors, such as how it has performed against financial targets in the past, the opportunity it offers to bring in new audiences and the chance to tell important stories.
“We find that while long-running productions are often well-known and loved by our core audiences, these groups have had the chance to see the productions many times before, and so often, these shows need us to bring in a higher proportion of new audiences, which will require proactive advertising,” she explained.
James said it “really depends on the type of show”.
“The first thing we take a look at is the themes and the hooks of the piece, and we work from there. For our recent production of Kim’s Convenience, which was a Canadian/ Korean story, we immediately set to work finding where these communities could be reached, both physically and digitally, in and around London.
“Reaching out with Korean language posters and flyers in areas such as New Malden [London’s ‘Korea Town’] formed part of the campaign and also encouraging social media influencers such as Korean Billy to attend and review the show, are a couple of examples of how we did this,” she added.
Performance
When it comes to predicting how a show is going to perform, the ability to be agile and react quickly is important, said Lewis-Collins.
The marketing team at the Royal Opera House uses prediction tools to anticipate “where each show is likely to land” on the current sales curve. They can also use the sales curve of similar titles to predict the popularity of a show.
“We use the more well-known shows as an opportunity to reach new and underrepresented audiences. Titles like Swan Lake and Carmen tend to have around 35-40% of the audience booking with us for the first time, so they are crucial for finding and keeping those new audience members,” Lewis-Collins explained.
“Again, the level of marketing needed will depend on the production, but even where ticket sales are high, some of the seasonal favourites, like The Nutcracker, can offer an opportunity to market our membership schemes or engage a broader audience on our social channels.”
Lewis-Collins said well-known opera titles often “require more marketing support than well-known ballet productions”.
“Generally, there tends to be greater barriers to attending an opera for the first time than a ballet, so a key focus for our marketing efforts is around shifting perceptions of opera and encouraging those new audiences to attend.”
Storytelling
So what techniques are effective?
“Storytelling is always at the heart of our marketing strategy, whether that’s the productions on stage, or those behind the scenes, which help to attract audiences to new and lesser-known works,” said Lewis-Collins.
“But it really depends on the target audience for each show, as different audiences will respond to different messaging and consume different media. For some audiences, critical reviews help them make the decision, whereas for others, it’s the artists and creatives involved in the production.”
Opera Festen, which had its world premiere a few weeks ago, “saw sales increase dramatically after the press reviews were published”, she said.
“We capitalised on this through showcasing the 5-star reviews through our email marketing and advertising, which continued to drive ticket sales.”
Theatres will also use different marketing approaches to attract different audiences. James said the approach used to bring in a 65-year-old retiree is not going to be the same as that used to appeal to a 20-year-old.
Different shows could also have different target audiences.
James explained that for a traditional theatre title that attracts the Park Theatre’s demographic of 65+ retirees, the theatre may look at posting adverts in the local newspaper or on theatre outlets, such as Official London Theatre and WhatsOnStage.
For an edgier fringe theatre show, the team at Park Theatre would look at investing more time and money into making content for Instagram and TikTok.
Social Media
More and more shows are promoted through influencer recommendations and TikTok videos.
The Royal Opera House has over 6 million social media followers globally, including 1.2 million on YouTube and 1 million on TikTok.
“Social media plays an incredibly important role in driving engagement with the brand more generally,” said Lewis-Collins.
“Organically on our channels, our approach is grounded in storytelling, opening up the world of ballet and opera and peeking behind the curtain at our Covent Garden home and beyond.”
She said, the theatre company promotes a wider range of content on its social channels, from artist rehearsals and costume restorations, to new props being constructed.
“You might walk around a set of one of our shows or find yourself in the wings of the stage watching a view you could never experience from the auditorium,” said Lewis-Collins.
“The key thing is that our social channels are about engagement. With 85% of our social audience outside the UK, many of whom might never come to the Royal Opera House, it is important that we keep our approach editorial. We don’t use social for sales messaging – that is the job of our advertising and email marketing. Social is about engaging people with who we are and what we do,” she added.
On the other hand, the team at the Park Theatre do use the tool to bring in audiences. James explained that one of the major ways the Park Theatre markets its shows is by using Meta and social media advertising.
“We recently undertook some digital consultancy and overhauled the way we were targeting our adverts. That has yielded great results, as we all know meta is constantly moving the algorithm goal posts,” she said.
“We couple the paid ads with regular, good quality and good fun organic content on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook with a slightly different tone and approach to each channel.”
Budget
James explains that one of the biggest differences in marketing fringe or Off West End theatre is the budget.
“I don’t know if the techniques differ hugely, but the budget certainly does. My experience has always been in the Off West End sphere, where budgets don’t reach the heights of the West End, and therefore, you have to think more creatively about where to put your resources for the biggest possible impact you can achieve,” she said.
“Our recent win of The Stage’s inaugural Campaign of the Year award for Kim’s Convenience (where the marketing budget was a tiny £12,000) proves you don’t always have to have the big bucks to find the right audience, but you do need to supplement this with a lot of grass roots activity and outreach to groups who might be interested.”
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