Twespians has been going for a while as a great place for lovers of, and workers in, theatre to get together and put the world to rights over beers in a pub. Often a pub a long way from my house. More recently I have moved, which has made the pubs a lot closer, and Twespians has branched into Twespians Fringe - a place where more niche groups can gather to discuss issues related to their particular field. As part of this, I spoke on a panel at the Twespians PR event last night. The question around which our discussion was focussed was 'Theatre PR: Are we doing all we can?'
While we spoke across a variety of issues brought up by the wonderful Andrew Girvan, I felt that there was an enduring theme that arose from the discussions - and one that created more questions that we need to discuss in the longer term:

•  Are we talking about promoting shows now or building communities? How do we develop that beyond a desire?
• Clearly there is an element of symbiosis between theatres and bloggers/online media. In the longer term we need to work together to develop the 'legitimacy' of blogging etc among our audiences and increase the value for both of us from online content.
• Is there an element of pragmatism that we need to consider in this as well, should the question instead be 'Are we doing all we should?'

I think that there is a long way to go and a lot we can do to further the discussion. I look forward to being a part of it.

If you would like to listen to the full discussion, you can do so at http://girv.cc/p6bzrg - kindly recorded and posted by Andrew Girvan.

As a footnote, I avoided a question last night about strategising our coverage between digital and print media - I think that it's difficult to strategise in terms of the amount of coverage and the split as column inches on the arts are disappearing. All coverage is good and we want to achieve as much as possible whether it is online or off - the key is to constantly evaluate how this is benefiting us and how we can develop this further.

Here are some of the notes that I made during the prep for round table discussions on video marketing that I hosted at the Arts Marketing Association conference this year. If there is anything I missed, or you have a question, please give me a shout.

High End or Low End?

Using video in marketing is a great way for us to become storytellers, to engage our audiences and colleagues and to produce things of cultural value.

As we have discussed, there are many ways of creating video content, from the high end with production companies/film makers and the low end with flip cams and iPhones.

There is no inherently bad thing about high end video or low end video, they have different benefits with different audiences.

Example: Maya Gabrielle – digital content producer at the National Theatre gave a talk at the Sadler’s Wells Video Day recently -
A different way of creating content cheaply, and with buy in from cast/creative:
Gave flip cams to members of cast/Assistant Director who are happy to make films.
Free to shoot - Poor quality video but you get insight.
Get people involved in the creative to make your video.
Only costs are the cameras in the first instance and paying for the edititing – about £200 should get you a day’s editing (depending on where you look).
If you can’t afford the edit, find someone who may be able to do it for free – students, interested local bloggers/youtubers, etc.

These kind of videos still need to be interesting and have a hook – and they aren’t necessarily going to sell more tickets, but they will add value to people’s experience and may help to persuade WOM, encourage tentative bookers, etc.

It’s worth bearing in mind that short form, professionally shot videos still have a high engagement level with audiences, so you can’t just suddenly make everything lo-fi and hope to have the same effect. The key thing is to make sure you get lifespan out of your video – don’t spend (too much) money unless you know the video will have a life long enough to get an acceptable ROI.

Distribution

Most of these stats are borrowed from a great talk by Tom Laidlaw, CEO of Videojug

There is no debate that people online watch video: Internet consumers watch video content: 42.9 mill have internet, about 37mill watch video.
Youtube takes 45% of video watching on the internet. Iplayer/facebook etc are only about 4%.
Wide distribution is important – get your videos everywhere, don’t just hope people will come to your site. Your website will count for about half of your views. Youtube and Facebook will cover most of them. Facebook is fastest growing video channel, but YouTube still wins.

Why Video

Most people don’t need to be convinced of the power of video in marketing, but if you need to enage other people in your organisation:
People are more likely to click on video than click to read more information. Video bridges the gap between marketing and programming. People need to persuade people to come with them – video is a great tool for this.
Average person watches 7 minutes of online video a day. Every month the UK watches about 11 YEARS of video.
A whole new generation are growing up where video is the norm – they don’t read broadsheets etc where we would normally advertise. Video is a natural fit with social media.
BUT – be honest about outcomes, most content won’t become viral. It needs to push certain buttons.

Tools

Animoto.com – greate for creating animations with a backing track
Jaycut.com – online video editing, reduces the need for high-spec kit
YouTube allows you to replace all the audio from a video with a tracks from certain artists without needing rights – there’s just a buy now link at the bottom of your video instead. This is great if you don’t necessarily have any soundtrack for your video.
Flip cams (and many other cheap cameras) come with basic editing software or can edit in camera.
iPhones have iMovie, which we created and edited videos with in a field at Latitude – it’s very easy to use.
Don’t forget that storyboarding is the most important thing – you can get away with very basic editing tools if you have already planned properly what you are going to record and how you want the end result to look.

Kit

Flip cams are great but Cisco are no longer making them – there are LOADS of similar cameras on the market though and flips are still available – check out amazon.
Shotgun microphones are really handy for cutting out extra noise when interviewing people.
If you have access to a Mac, Final Cut Pro is now a lot cheaper (and also a lot more basic/user-friendly - depending on your experience level).
Windows comes with Movie Maker, which a lot of people said they found fine for what they wanted to do. I hope these are helpful.