MARKETING DEVELOPMENT WORK

Key learning

• Probably the first time the ‘take a story for a walk worked’. Worked because it came at the end of the activity (so introduced to Atom and Luna) and obviously the right environment • The foraging walk have been working throughout - but Lora was very strong at linking her finds to Old Mother Redbeard and our story • The overall session provided lots of inspiration for wrap around offers for Autumn 22 • It also effectively tested the range of offers the project could provide to festivals, outdoor theatres and so on. Through the Wild Rumpus Activity Day we got a chance to test an overall offer that blends foraging walks, taking a story for a walk, games and of course (ultimately) the performance

Lora leading another public foraging walk - this time with families and children as part of Wild Rumpus

Wild Rumpus photos - Matthew Linley

As a small company which at its heart is a loose partnership between three creative practitioners (Murray, Nina and Matthew) our partnerships continue to be critical to our work.

Our two core partnerships - our bedrock if you like - are with our in association partners Theatre Porto (formally Action Transport Theatre) and Eastern Angles. Their continued support, championing and practical help is utterly invaluable.

During this period, Theatre Porto have:

• Donated to us the time of our director Nina Hajiyianni. • Supported us financially with sees support of £500, as well as committing to take the tour in Autumn 22 with a small guarantee. • Helped us to continue to build our links with key North West partners, particularly Big Imaginations. • In kind support valued at £1000 including general support, loaning of props, education, marketing etc.

Eastern Angles have:

• Supported us financially with seed support of £500 as well as committing to take the Autumn 22 tour with a small guarantee. • Helped us to build our links with East based venues and partners. As well as opening the show in the East we now have a strong East leg of the tour. • In kind support valued at £1000 including general support, loaning of props, education, equipment and marketing support. • Introduced us to their Associate Director Scott Hurran who directed our Colchester weekend.

As noted above, this year;s work has seen us able to develop our relationship with some of our seed funders (in particular Cheshire Rural Touring) and introduced us to some new potential partners (for example Wild Rumpus). Over the year of activity we have also began to develop partnerships with a range of other organisations including University of Essex and ROH Bridge.

We said in our application that we wanted to grow our networks on both social media and through our newsletter to develop a broader online audience.

Over the last 12 months we have grown our subscriber numbers by 350%, our Facebook followers by 72% and introduced the company twitter and Instagram channels.

Perhaps most importantly, Atom and Luna Part 2 has allowed us to have consistent marketing support across the year which as well as growth in our mailing list and socials, has seen us run strategic campaigns, develop key contents, test different approaches and become clearer about the marketing approach for Atom and Luna the touring show. This work has been vital to our continued growth and development

Mailing List Growth

We started Aug 2021 with 675 subscribers and over the period of this project have now grown this to 2,364 subscribers.

We currently have a 27-39% open rate (which is very good). The highest rate was for our tree planting campaign in the run up to Christmas 2021 (39%).

The Explorer Newsletter

In line with our commitment to encouraging children's creativity and using their ideas and thoughts in our process, we have introduced a monthly Explorer email.

This monthly email is sent to all subscribers and includes a foraging task from our Forager in residence, latest news from the team, what’s on and creative tasks from the team.

So far there have been 6 Explorer newsletters and an extra 7 since Aug 2021 and we will continue to release the Explorer email through to the end of 2022.

Social Media Growth

Facebook: Since August 2021 we have increased our Facebook page followers from 472 to 811 and total page likes have increased from 451 to 760

Instagram: Currently we have 141 followers (from 0) and since April 2022 (Instagram only provides data in maximum 90 day chunks) the account grew by 3.6% of followers, we had 96 content interactions and reached 152 accounts.

Twitter: Currently we have 148 followers (from 0) and we’re following 197 other accounts. In the last 28 days ( again Twitter doesn’t let you look back between the current date and August 21) we’ve 1,559 profile visits, we’ve gained 13 followers and received 5,016 tweet impressions. Our most recent top performing tweet was from our R&D media day and foraging walk in Wrabness, we took photos of the team doing their work and it seemed to really resonate with audiences. This had 44 engagements and reached 655 impressions.

Survey Data

• We took the time to survey out subscribers to find out a bit more about their engagement, a few headlines provided below: - Ethnicity - 93% white / 2.7% mixed / 2.7% Asian / 1% Black - 26% identify as a D/deaf or disabled, or have a long-term health condition - 78% had children under 18 - 49% had engaged in our audio tales and 10% our AR game - 72% were interested in new content - 70% wanted to learn more about the stage show - Reasons for signing up (multiple selection): - I'd heard about / interest in the stories of Atom and Luna - 39.3% - The activities for young people - 37.7% - The competition prize - 45.9% - The illustrations - 37.7%0 - The work of Murray Lachlan Young - 8.7% - The work of Action Transport Theatre - 7.7% - The work of Eastern Angles - 3.3%

Key Learning

• Our pre Christmas competition (where we offered a National Trust membership - a very complementary brand) was highly successful at increasing our mailing list memberships. • We were able to retain many of these by providing (and investing) in regular quality content. • We have been able through this ‘testing’ phase to develop strong relationships with our existing partners, and with the new venues who have come on line and formed the potential tour. The joy of a cross platform project, supported by our marketing team of Emma and Rachel and then Ben, means that we have content to share and crucially the capacity to develop these relationships. Hopefully this will pay off as we move into the touring phase. • Those strong relationships have meant we already have marketing plans in place with many of our venues for the tour. • We have been using Bek Palmer’s stunning illustrations as marketing collateral (and core image). Whilst these are beautiful they are perhaps not striking or immediate enough to grab attention in the current age. The illustrations too perhaps work less well for our target age range (7+) and it needs to be remembered that the illustrations reflect a particular moment in the first Chronicle and were not commissioned to ‘sell’ the theatre show.

What we are not seeing yet

• Is translation of the increase into mailing list and social growth into actual sales, something which may have been impacted by Covid. • Given COVID, and the challenges of the theatre market this is perhaps unsurprising, especially as you consider the highly localised and low key events we have been running. • Hopefully as we move into the touring phase this will change! • But as with the comments above it suggests we need to look again at how we are communicating the show visually

Actions going forward as we move into The Chronicles of Atom and Luna tour

• Look to build the mailing list again around the launch of the tour with another competition. • Create a new core image which combines live photography (possible as we have been able to work with the cast through this R&D) with illustration. The new image will be modern, bright, energetic and adventure.