Open to Persuasion

The words we use to describe the events we put on are crucial. If you are marketing on a shoestring they are your most important marketing tool. Whether we are writing copy or talking face-to-face with potential attenders, we need to use words that persuade. If we don’t, then we waste precious resources on marketing communications that simply won’t work. Words don’t cost money. But they do cost time and that’s often just as precious. So how can we make deciding what to say less time-consuming (and less painful)?

Know what you are talking about

You can’t be persuasive if you don’t feel confident you know what you are talking about. The participants in the AMA’s recent Do the Write Thing copywriting seminars pinned down the problem nicely: they get copy from their curators/artistic directors/choreographers/visiting companies that even they don’t understand. How can they hope to turn it into something that communicates effectively with their audiences? Together we came up with some solutions…

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Open to Persuasion

Game for a laugh

One of the biggest issues for venues marketing incoming touring shows is that the images and copy don’t reflect the show accurately. So how do you write copy that reflects a funny show? You could simply tell the reader that it’s funny. Chichester Festival Theatre’s season brochure says that The Merchant of Venice is a dark comedy and that the Coffee House is ‘Goldoni’s glittering comedy’. It’s easy, though, to end up with unconvincing clichés like ‘riotously funny’ and ‘hilarious comedy’. Perhaps it’s better not to overclaim, as the Gate’s description of Angels of the Universe sounds much more believable: ‘despite the ultimate air of tragedy the tale ripples with humour’.

Some words are more convincing than others. Arts Council England commissioned research that asked attenders of large-scale drama whether particular words used in copy made a production more or less appealing…

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Open to Persuasion

Frequently asked questions

Imagine you’ve got just 20 minutes to answer ten arts marketers’ questions about copywriting. Then imagine doing that three or four times in a row. I enjoyed the round table sessions at both the AMA conference in July and last month’s Scottish Arts Marketers Forum but they aren’t easy.

Some questions came up again and again, clearly of concern to lots of us. Here’s what we thought round those round tables:
I’m writing boring copy – how can I get out of the rut?

Pin up a picture of someone from your target group, torn from a magazine. Talk to them. Persuade them to get involved in your event. Good copy is conversational so write down exactly what you say. Many arts marketers talk good copy but the moment they pick up a pen turn phrases like ‘Call us on 01223 578078 to get your tickets’ into ‘Tickets are available from the box office on 01223 578078’.

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Open to Persuasion

Making ourselves understood

We write copy to give people information about the events and activities that our organisations offer, and to persuade them to take action. Unfortunately we don’t always succeed:

What I dislike about some brochures is that it’s very difficult to get the information out of them.

Midlands Arts Marketing, Live and Direct: research into contemporary music attendance in Nottingham (1998)

We’re all well-educated, articulate people, so why don’t we get our message across? Well, the problem is that we are well-educated, articulate people and most people are not. Most of the copy that we write is incomprehensible to most people because they can’t read it. Readability is about whether a piece of text can be read successfully. There are two sides to this, namely: do they have the necessary technical skills to read it; and can they get meaning from it? Quite often people are able to read bits of what we write but cannot integrate those bits into a meaningful whole…

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Open to Persuasion

Getting the message across

When First Sport say they are ‘First for replica shirts’, we know instantly what they are offering and to whom.

When 20th Century Fox ask ‘If you had the opportunity, would you?’, we know what Unfaithful is about.

A single minded offer is essential when you have so little time to get your message across. Your advertisement has to stop readers in their tracks but, having got their attention, you need to tell them instantly what you are offering. If you don’t, they will turn the page.

The National Gallery tells us exactly what’s in the tin: ‘Golden Opportunity – free events to celebrate the Golden Jubilee’. The Theatre Museum, however, have so many different things to tell us about that the overall message is one of confusion (particularly because the ad has a subheading ‘Free entry’ above some ticket prices). This advertisement doesn’t tell readers what they need to know – what The Theatre Museum is about and what kind of experience they might expect. The Natural History Museum’s ad certainly catches the eye as it hoovers up the text on the page. But the copy line that makes the all important offer, ‘Play with the forces of nature’, is tucked away in tiny type at the foot of the page…

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Raspberry & Peaches

Writing copy for events aimed at children presents an interesting challenge – who are we talking to, the grownups or the kids?

Peaches and Cream… (and not a single rasberry!)

A family theatre trip is the result of complex negotiation between the adults and the young people, even if those young people are under 8s. We know from countless research reports that all but the most confident theatregoers are anxious that they will not enjoy themselves. But this anxiety increases if you are making the decision to attend on behalf of other people. Adults know only too well that children have particularly high critical standards. Unlike their partners or friends, they will not tolerate being bored. Worse still, if they are bored, the kids will blame them and probably behave inappropriately (and embarrassingly).

Some promoters clearly feel that there are shows that need no introduction. The A5 leaflet for Bradford Alhambra’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs names the two headline stars and adds a single strapline ‘with a fabulous supporting cast’ before going on to set out a staggeringly complicated pricing structure on the back. But which are the shows that need no copy? Leeds Grand’s leaflet for Peter Pan has one line of copy, ‘The fabulous family pantomime’ and the layout and use of colour and typefaces is similar to dozens of other large-scale pantomimes across the country…

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Raspberry & Peaches

How do you signal to the readers of your season brochure that this event is seriously weird? You want to encourage them to take risks but you’d rather not have half the audience stomping out in a huff. Peaches and cream for these copywriters who have been working towards some solutions.

Peaches and Cream…

You can be up front – this gig from Edinburgh’s independent music festival Planet Pop may be harmful to your health …
Only for the true believers … Huckleberry’s blaring Hammond organ, fuzzed-up guitars and heavyweight rhythm section go straight for the heart, blowing your eardrums along the way.

Or, like the Barbican, you can issue an irresistible challenge to your audience:

Feeling pretty confident about contemporary dance? Know your way around? Bring it on. It’s time to leave the comfort zone. i said i shatters everything you ever thought about dance and dancers. Bizarre, breathtaking and as full-on as you can get: expect to go home and rest afterwards…

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Raspberry & Peaches

Why do we seem to find it so difficult to persuade people to experience the arts? Could it be that we are not talking to people in the right way? Almost all audience members need straightforward answers to three straightforward questions: What is it about? What is it like? How am I going to feel when I experience it? In a bid to get us all communicating appropriately, JAM brings you a range of peaches to aim for and raspberries to avoid.

A Big Raspberry to…

The dance festival that consistently writes copy that goes straight over most people’s heads – including those who like contemporary dance:

His performances explore movement inspired by how the body is regarded as both form and content in a live performance. [This] is a solo work which searches for the space where the perception of oneself as object collides with the wish to retain control…

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Raspberry & Peaches

Why do we seem to find it so difficult to persuade people to experience the arts? Could it be that we are not talking to people in the right way? Almost all audience members need straightforward answers to three straightforward questions: What is it about? What is it like? How am I going to feel when I experience it? In a bid to get us all communicating appropriately, JAM brings you a range of PEACHES to aim for and RASPBERRIES to avoid.

A Big Raspberry to…

The three day contemporary music festival taking place in March in three different towns which refuses to give potential audience members a single word of description of any of the pieces, just the composer and title. We need to tell people what the music will be like, so another raspberry to the leaflet for Jocelyn Pook, which, despite offering in very tiny print (and sideways) a sampler CD, restricts itself to biographical information and name dropping like this…

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