The marketing department employs sales, marketing, communications and advertising professionals. The marketing strategies of the performances cover everything from information and media planning to multi-channel ticket sales, providing a comprehensive viewer experience and after-sales. The marketing department is also responsible for renting out the premises and organising events, as well as corporate cooperation. Audience work leads you to take a peek behind the scenes, get to know performances and theatre work in more depth, or participate in the making of theatre itself. School workshops, learning materials, behind-the-scenes tours, events and theatre projects are audience work. Audience work aims to attract as many people of different ages and backgrounds as possible to the theatre. The City Theatre employs a person in charge of audience outreach and audience workers , as well as project workers in audience outreach. Archive material related to performances throughout the theatre’s history is managed by an archivist. Her duties also include, among other things, maintaining the work history of the artistic staff, as well as videotaping performances for the archive and digitizing old recordings. In addition, the department includes a theatre centre, which employs a centre operator and a switchboard-usher.
The audience plays the main role
When marketing a theatrical performance, people do not believe in hocus-pocus tricks. “The performance is always the main thing, and the goal is always to make a campaign that looks like each performance. It’s more about trying to direct that ‘light’ to the right place and support the best aspects of the presentation,” says Marketing Planner Petra Bühler.
“Theatre marketing is not just about selling,” says marketing planner Petra Bühler. “We think a lot about how we meet people, whether it’s here at the theatre or on social media. That is very important to us.”
One of the key goals is to lower the “cultural threshold” and make the theatre an easily approachable place even for those who are not yet used to going to the theatre. An easier first step than buying a theatre ticket can be to participate in a free event that makes the theatre familiar. On the other hand, artist meetings and workshops offer passionate theatre enthusiasts the opportunity to deepen their relationship with theatre.
For all this, the theatre has an audience outreach unit, which is run by Mirja Neuvonen. “The task of theatre can be more than just making performances. I see that we also have a social task to do this work and open doors in many directions. We are the Helsinki City Theatre: we must be the theatre of all the city’s residents. Even those who don’t buy tickets to major musicals right away.”
When an encounter occurs, the audience also commits to us.
“Compared to marketing, audience work also has a pedagogical dimension, but it is the same audience for whom we do these things,” Bühler emphasizes.
Neuvonen agrees. “Even though we don’t directly calculate how many ticket buyers this generates, it certainly matters. When an encounter occurs, the audience also commits to us. A relationship and ownership with the theatre is created.”
The theatre has something for everyone
Audience Outreach organizes workshops, artist and maker meetings, and backstage and theater tours. In addition, the theatre has started to go outside the building and carry out more long-term projects, e.g. with the districts of Helsinki.
“Most recently, we had the Jakomäki project in the main role for three years, in which adult theatre groups were born, children made their own plays in drama clubs, club activities were organised for the elderly, we had a touring theatre group perform and we made video portraits. Quite a variety of activities, in other words,” Neuvonen lists.
The targets have been those areas of Helsinki where there is not much culture to offer in principle. The projects have reached groups that might never buy a ticket to the theatre, such as immigrants and the long-term unemployed. In addition, the national Art Testers project is underway, in which all eighth-graders go to the theatre: once near and once far away.
So far, 3100 young people have visited us…
“So far, 3100 young people have visited us, the furthest of whom have come from Enontekiö,” Neuvonen says. “There are a lot of young people in that group who have never been to the theatre before.”
The audience outreach strategy states that the main focus is on children and young people. Most of the cooperation takes place with schools and daycare centres. Neuvonen praises how rewarding it is to work with young people in workshops, even though the beginning is sometimes sticky.
“When you can finally get each of those hoodies to go all in, that’s great!”
Bühler also considers it important to arouse interest in theatre and to offer fresh ideas to new audiences. “I hope that theatre would be more strongly in people’s minds as an option when thinking about what to do in the evening or in their free time. And that theatre would at least not be associated with such funny thoughts that for some reason it is not for me, because it is too difficult or you have to be there in a certain way.”
Experiences and emotions
In the marketing of the theatre, a lot of thought is given to the way in which the performances are told to the audience before the premiere. The marketing of a new production must be started at a stage when there is not necessarily much information about the end result.
“This is especially emphasized in the case of new texts. Marketing begins almost a year before the premiere, when no one knows what the play will be like in the end. A theatrical performance is not a factory product,” Bühler explains.
She sees that there is something in successful theatre marketing that people can get a grip on and they get the feeling that this could be just right for them.
“We are not marketing a necessity product that could be explained to people with rational arguments that this has such and such features.”
In theatre marketing, the greatest work and stakes coincide with the time when a new production is put on sale. The importance of pre-sales is especially great in large productions with many performances in a relatively short time. They want sales to get off to a good start.
It’s nice to highlight those experiences because they are genuine.
Later, when the screenings are running, the aim is to make use of the viewers’ experiences and feedback. “It’s nice to highlight those experiences because they are genuine. They are also easily relatable: if someone has found something for themselves in the performance, it can work for others as well.”
Marketing is also done with stakeholders by inviting them to watch the performance and thus creating topics for discussion among the people.
Bühler does not believe in hocus-pocus tricks in marketing. However, he points out that the proposal is the main thing. “The goal is always to make a campaign that looks like each performance. The good thing is that we invariably make wonderful productions that are easy to tell things about. It’s more about trying to direct that ‘light’ to the right place and support the best aspects of the performance.”
She feels that the uniqueness of theatre lies in the way in which the audience can experience the creation of a theatre performance in that moment, in front of their eyes. “This is an issue that should be highlighted more. That is quite an exceptional thing these days.”
