Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Theatre land traditionally doesn’t understand marketing, seeing it as commercial and a bit dirty (Forget who Should pay the bills, that should be government and the taxpayer shouldn’t it darling?) To run a theatre, they are often managed by accountant sor by a board which is dominated by someone with a balnce sheet to worship. They are even tougher to convince because they cannot see to connection between a given marketing spend and a given number of bums on seats and thus a given ticket revenue. If you take away the former, the latter is expected, dues ex-machina to continue.

As for “Our Father.....” – that’s not bad advice. I was sales director for an electronics company where the MD had screwed things up so badly that most of our products became illegal to sell in the EC and the problem was not going to be rectified for 5 months. My sales team had nothing to sell and I had targets to meet.

He opened a crisis meeting with “This is a very challenging situation and I want your best and brightest suggestions as to how we will still make our targets”

I said, “Well, praying would help”
He said “I didn’t ask for sarcasm”
The Engineering Director said, “He’s not being sarcastic, he’s a Christian, so am I and I can’t see a better solution”

I got the sack about 4 weeks later – for failure to meet targets. I brought down the entire board 5 weeks later for misleading the owners and got a nice pay off.

And that is your problem. Unless you can make the connection between thespians in management and accountants in management about the maths of marketing spend and filling a theatre, and do it in their own words, not just yours, then you are stuffed. You probably have one chance to become a super sales person. You should not present an argument for your budget to them in the hope that they will agree with it, you should sell it to them and by trial closes ask them if they want the outcome – bums on seats. Ask about marketing activities item by marketing item and then ask if they see the relationship between a these bits of marketing and x theatre goers paying for a ticket. Don’t accept the argument about “And exactly how many people did this advert attract and what were their names?” It is management by attempted belittlement and you will need all your skills of overcoming objections to handle it – not just a good grasp of statistics. It’s an internal sales job, it’s probably your toughest challenge and your job probably depends on it.

I’ve worked in the voluntary theatre section and commercial theatre and have experienced this disconnect. I did technical stuff – lights and sound and marketing. Light and sound are expensive and any argument for new equipment would be ruthlessly stamped on by a bean counter. That is until the system failed half way through a play as I had publically predicted it would and made them all look like idiots. Once they’d given up accusing me of sabotage, I got a new lighting desk, but the ride to it was rough and laden with threats.

Best of luck and start reading “The Stage”

Steve Alker
Xspirt