The Marketing Department is home to professionals in sales, marketing, communications and advertising. Marketing strategies for productions cover everything from publicity and media planning to multichannel ticket sales, delivering a comprehensive audience experience and post-show marketing. The Marketing Department is also responsible for venue hire, event organisation and corporate partnerships. Audience engagement offers a glimpse behind the scenes, a deeper insight into productions and theatre work, and opportunities to take part in making theatre. Workshops for schoolchildren, learning materials, backstage tours, events and theatre projects are all forms of audience engagement. The aim is to make theatre accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. Helsinki City Theatre employs a Head of Audience Engagement and audience engagement coordinators, as well as project staff working in audience engagement. The archivist manages production-related archive material spanning the theatre’s entire history. Their duties also include maintaining the work histories of artistic staff, filming productions for the archive and digitising old recordings. The department also includes the theatre’s switchboard, staffed by a switchboard supervisor and a switchboard operator–usher.
The audience takes centre stage
When marketing a theatre production, there is no belief in magic tricks. “The production is always what matters most, and the aim is to create a campaign that reflects the character of each show. It is more about directing the ‘spotlight’ to the right place and highlighting the production’s greatest strengths,” says Marketing Planner Petra Bühler.
“Theatre marketing is not simply about selling,” says Marketing Planner Petra Bühler. “We spend a lot of time thinking about how we connect with people, whether here at the theatre or on social media. That is very important to us.”
One of the key aims is to lower the barriers to cultural participation and make the theatre an approachable place for people who are not yet accustomed to attending performances. Rather than buying a theatre ticket, an easier first step might be to attend a free event that offers an introduction to the theatre. Artist talks and workshops, meanwhile, give passionate theatre enthusiasts an opportunity to deepen their relationship with theatre.
The theatre’s Audience Engagement team, led by Mirja Neuvonen, is responsible for all this. “A theatre’s role can extend beyond simply creating productions. I believe we also have a social responsibility to do this work and open doors in many directions. We are Helsinki City Theatre: we must be a theatre for everyone in the city—including those who would not immediately buy tickets to major musicals.”
When a genuine connection is made, the audience also forms a bond with us.
“Compared with marketing, audience engagement also has an educational dimension, but ultimately we are doing all this for the same audience,” Bühler emphasises.
Neuvonen agrees. “Even though we do not directly calculate how many ticket buyers this generates, it certainly makes a difference. When a genuine connection is made, the audience also forms a bond with us. A relationship develops, along with a sense of ownership of the theatre.”
The theatre has something for everyone
The Audience Engagement team organises workshops, opportunities to meet artists and other creatives, and backstage and theatre tours. The theatre has also begun taking its work beyond its own walls and developing longer-term projects with Helsinki’s neighbourhoods, among others.
“Most recently, we ran the three-year Pääosassa Jakomäki project. It gave rise to adult theatre groups, children created their own plays in drama clubs, activities were organised for older people, a touring theatre group from the City Theatre gave performances, and we created video portraits. So it was a very wide-ranging programme,” Neuvonen says.
The projects have focused on areas of Helsinki where cultural activities are otherwise scarce. They have reached groups who might never have bought a theatre ticket, including immigrants and people experiencing long-term unemployment. The nationwide Taidetestaajat project is also under way, giving every eighth-grader the opportunity to visit the theatre twice: once nearby and once farther afield.
So far, 3,100 young people have visited us…
“So far, 3,100 young people have visited us, with some travelling all the way from Enontekiö,” Neuvonen says. “Many of them had never been to the theatre before.”
The audience engagement strategy places a particular emphasis on children and young people. Most partnerships are with schools and day-care centres. Neuvonen is enthusiastic about how rewarding it is to work with young people in workshops, even if getting started can sometimes be a little challenging.
“When, by the end, every one of those hoodie-clad youngsters is throwing themselves into it, it really is wonderful!”
Bühler also believes it is important to inspire an interest in theatre and offer fresh ideas to new audiences. “I hope theatre will become a more prominent option in people’s minds when they are deciding what to do in the evening or in their free time. And I hope people will not have strange preconceptions that theatre is somehow not for them because it is too difficult or because they have to be a certain kind of person to go.”
Experiences and emotions
Theatre marketing involves a great deal of thought about how productions are presented to audiences before opening night. Marketing for a new production must begin at a stage when very little may actually be known about the finished result.
“This is particularly true of new writing. Marketing begins almost a year before opening night, when no one yet knows what the play will ultimately be like. A theatre production is not something made on an assembly line,” Bühler explains.
For her, successful theatre marketing offers people something they can connect with and makes them feel that this production could be just right for them.
“We are not marketing an essential product that can be explained through rational arguments by listing its various features.”
The greatest marketing effort and investment comes when a new production goes on sale. Advance sales are particularly important for large-scale productions with many performances scheduled over a relatively short period. The aim is to get sales off to a strong start.
It is wonderful to highlight those experiences because they are genuine.
Once performances are under way, audience experiences and feedback are used in the marketing. “It is wonderful to highlight those experiences because they are genuine. They are also easy to relate to: if someone has found something meaningful in a production, others may do so too.”
Marketing also involves working with stakeholders by inviting them to see a production and helping to generate wider public discussion.
Bühler does not believe in marketing magic tricks. She stresses that the production itself is what matters most. “The aim is always to create a campaign that reflects the character of each show. The good thing is that we consistently create outstanding productions, so there is always plenty to talk about. It is more about directing the ‘spotlight’ to the right place and highlighting the production’s greatest strengths.”
She believes the unique quality of theatre lies in the audience’s ability to experience a performance coming to life in that very moment, right before their eyes. “That is something we should highlight more. These days, it is quite exceptional.”
