Guardian - Theatre Trailers do they work?

Following on from my talk at the AMA digital day Honour Bayes did an online piece for the Guardian about video and its use in marketing theatre. They spoke to myself and my good friend Phil Newby, plus the RSC. Read it here.

AMA Digital Day

This week I was one of the speakers at the AMA's Digital Day at Sadler's Wells. I did not get a chance to sample the other sessions as we did ours twice, but I understand there were some excellent speakers. The keynote I did catch about MOMA in New York was particularly interesting. I picked up their iPhone App last year in New York and we heard about this, their Android App and iPad App. We also saw a nice video featuring a cat. It sounded if as well as devoting considerable resources to developing these Apps and their web presence (a team of nine I believe), they also enjoyed quite a lot of freedom in their development and marketing (hence the cat). I never really used the iPhone App but the iPad one looks worthy of further investigation. Certainly for museums and galleries the iPad offers a truly thrilling way for the public to engage with their collections.

It was also interesting to hear about the Tate's social media strategy from Jesse Ringham. They publish a very detailed and comprehensive outline of it online which is well worth a read. One very valid question that came up was about Social Media policies and how prepared we were to deal with Twitter storms, Facebook fights and all those bastard Bloggers. This is a big area and worthy of a lot more discussion. With the Southbank, National Theatre and Royal Opera House all having to face digital issues that hit the news pages it is a reminder that arts organisations attract a lot of attention when there is an easy headline available. The Opera North/Lee Hall controversy and the Facebook reaction to the British Museum describing the birthplace of the Lord Buddha as being in India shows how quickly these issues can escalate. Things are complicated in our sector in my opinion by the separation that often exists between marketing (who usually deal with social media) and press (who should deal with the stories it generates); and that assumes your press department actually looks at corporate comms at all. Many still are only focused on show and artist PR and critic's reviews.

The finalists that received funding by NESTA/ACE from the Digital Innovation fund were announced recently. If you missed the news, details of the successful applicants and the projects are below.

Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) with Videojuicer and The Arts Collective (£75,920)BAC is proposing to pilot a digital version of its acclaimed 'Scratch' programme. This will allow artists to share ideas online and engage in a creative dialogue with the public to develop those ideas.

Exhibition Road Cultural Group with the Dickens Museum and Seren Partners  (£70,200)
This group of cultural organisations will create a new app that will allow users to go on a digital cultural journey across London. The first journey will be 'DigiDickens', a journey across the capital inspired by the life, work and interests of Charles Dickens.

Imperial War Museum (IWM) with Knowledge Integration and University College London (£84,500)IWM and partners will develop a system that will enable the interpretation, discussion, collection and sharing of cultural experiences with, and between, audiences. This data-driven project will have in-gallery, online and mobile applications, which will augment and spread museum collections through social media and digital interaction.

London Symphony Orchestra with Aurora Orchestra and Kodime(£67,270)The London Symphony Orchestra will create and test mobile marketing and ticketing, allowing students to purchase discounted concert tickets through mobile apps. The apps will also use location data to show events nearby and allow students to share comments via social media.

New Art Exchange with Artfinder (£54,000)New Art Exchange in Nottingham will work with Artfinder to develop a digital portal for dialogue and exchange which allows gallery and artists to upload, sell and exchange their art work, as well as for audiences to vote on and virtually curate art programmes.

Punchdrunk  with MIT Media Lab (£80,120)Immersive theatre company Punchdrunk and MIT Media Lab will merge theatre and gaming on an online platform, that will partner live audiences with online participants. This will be piloted for its critically acclaimed show Sleep No More, which is currently running in New York.

The Sage Gateshead plus Manchester Camerata, Aurora, Berwick Maltings, Alnwick Playhouse and Durham Gala with Videojuicer and Aframe (£57,397)The Sage proposes to explore how digital technology can help orchestras and venues find new audiences and income streams. The project will broadcast live concerts through a range of distribution channels and into a network of venues across Britain. The aim is to reach new audiences that are younger and who live in more rural areas that previously would not have had access to live performances.

Site Gallery working with Lighthouse and Caper (£80,000)
Sheffield's Site Gallery will embed small teams of digital designers and developers in arts organisations, and see how this changes organisational thinking and develops more interesting digital ideas.

Digital Seminar - App Masterclass

This week I attended an excellent case study, as part of the Arts Council/BBC Building Digital Capacity for the Arts programme, about Faber & Faber's The Waste Land App for the iPad. It is a beautifully done App that features the poem in text but also read by various people including Alec Guinness, Fiona Shaw (voice and film), T. S. Elliot and others, supported by notes, video interviews, the manuscript and archive photos. What really impressed was the immense care that had gone into the build. The development took a year and was costly but the App quickly recovered its costs and moved into profit as well as generating very positive reviews. An App like this based on a text could have been put together without much thought for supporting material but this one truly enhances the pleasure of reading the poem. The seminar itself was very detailed and the participants from Faber and Faber and the developers Touch Press were remarkably generous and open with information about the process, budgets and what they had learned during the App's development.

The whole seminar was filmed and will be made available on the website.

You Tube - how to get millions of views in a matter of days

It has been a strange few weeks. Two artists that are associated with Sadler's Wells have received hundreds and thousands of views on YouTube.

The first one was Marie Chouinard who performed her show at Sadler's Wells in 2010. The video excerpt we put on YouTube has proved very popular, and as we leave them up after the show is over, has generated over 370,000 views since May 2010. It was surprise however when someone copied our video (complete with Sadler's Wells ident and end card) and put it up on YouTube with a new title. In less than a month it had over 1,670,000 views. Was this because of an a growing interest in French Canadian contemporary dance you ask? I'm afraid not, instead I suspect it was largely down to the new title. "I've got the weirdest boner right now"* I admit the clip is pretty unusual and it has been interesting seeing the comments. Quite a number have referenced Silent Hill and it says something that many have said it is the freakiest thing they have ever seen on YouTube (not an achievement to sniffed at). Of course the question you always get about video and YouTube is the impact it has on driving traffic to your own site. A new case study for audience development? Well I can report that in two weeks we had 33 people searching the site for the term "boner" and 25 searching for the word "crutches".


The second clip that has been hugely busy has been the one that compares the work of Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker with Beyonce's video for her single Countdown. This video has nearly had 1,700,000 views in 10 days (plus many other views for re posted videos). Interestingly the comments have been less coherent or measured for this clip. The debate on plagiarism vs. homage has received a lot of coverage with opinions divided but what was interesting was how many Bey fans have come out and said "What? My girl's been caught again!" as apparently she has previous form in this area. Reminds me of the whole Michael Jackson ripping off Pina Bausch Rite of Spring scandal...

De Keersmaeker is back with us next month; so will Sadler's Wells be rammed with Beyonce fans who have booked to see the woman who is one of her "inspirations", methinks not but everyone is welcome. If her fan club contact me I'll even set up a special discount code.

*This video may be down by the time you look for it. If it is, just watch our clip and imagine it with the new title at the top. Interestingly the phrase "I have the weirdest boner right now" is a known web phrase. Apparently it originated in a tv show and has since become used in situations where an image appears accidentally phallic or an erection would be inapropriate. Through 2011 the phrase has grown in popularity on the web (the link above actually showed the webstats!) and this video certainly must be adding to that.

Steve Jobs RIP

RIP Steve Jobs. To be honest as a marketeer I had to admire the man. His impact was immense. I know the technogeeks have always been snobbish about his products, but they deliberately and sulkily under estimated the huge influence he had on technology and the general public. Perhaps other people did develop products earlier but they did not create markets in the way Apple have. People may go on about walled gardens and the like but the fact is he took technology and truly turned it into culture, creating objects that are pleasurable to hold and use, that focus on what the public want to do (even if they did not know it) and that don't need to be explained with a hundred page instruction manual.

Every time Apple brought out something new like the iPad an "expert" would always say, "I'm not sure it is has a point. I don't see people buying this." But the public did, in their millions. Great marketing is about creating demand, Apple have done that and where they have gone the rest of the industry rushes to catch up.

I bought my first Mac years ago in PC world. I was just about to buy a replacement cheap PC and was queuing to pay when I saw an iMac. I had a play and was hooked. Yes it cost more but I liked the fact I was getting a computer for my home not some ugly beast made for an office. Importantly it would do what I wanted straight out of the box, organise my photos and music. And what a box it was. Gorgeous heavy board that provided a thrill to open that I have not had since I first pulled the shrink wrap off a record as a child.

And that brings us to music. The iPod is the greatest music device ever (except for the turntable). The first MP3 player I ever owned had a 32mb drive. Later ones always seemed annoying to use. I now carry 80 gigs in my pocket, in a simple, elegant device. The arrival of CDs never stopped me buying vinyl, but to be honest digital storage of music has made me rethink.

The iPhone may be a poor phone but really, who uses an iPhone primarily to make phone calls? If I go away travelling I take an old Nokia which has a battery life that lasts weeks. To be honest when you can  text, email, tweet and update facebook so easily actually holding it to your ear and speaking into it seems a bit of a bizarre throwback to another age.

And finally, like everyone else I ever meet speaking at events I have a MacBook which serves me well. But that still does not mean I don't want an iPad...

I think the point about technology vs. culture is worth repeating. The PC is technology, the Mac and its associated products are Culture in all senses. Their reach and impact on people. Their long established link with creativity. Their focus on elegant simple design. The intuitive nature of their controls.

Apple famously once booted Jobs out of his own company over a disagreement over direction. He returned and took them to greater heights. Let's hope the people left in charge understand what he added to the company and emulate it.

Turn it off!

It has been ages since my last post. Have I been away, no, not really. Just getting on with life with a baby. So no blogging, no browsing the web, a little bit of online shopping for DVDs, even Linus has been lax at updating his facebook account. But life goes on. Sometimes I wonder if we should just turn all this internet stuff off.

Amazon's hot sellers - baseball bats are so now

It seems the UK population is tooling itself up ready to deal with the violence on the streets. A look at Amazon.co.uk's movers and shakers  (the biggest increase in sales over the past 24 hours) in sports and leisure has 10 of the top 20 spots going to baseball bats. The top baseball bat's sales increased by 36,856% taking it from a sales ranking of 8500 to 23 in a single day. The top seller however is a natty expanding police style baton which saw sales increase by a staggering 41,341% in 24 hours; a leap in sales rank from 7045 to 17. Another spot went to the Kubitan and another to the Pocket Shark pen which are both self defence weapons.

I assume it is the good guys buying all this stuff as the bad boys would just loot it!

Blackberry and the youth rioter market

With a third night of rioting and looting in the offing tonight across London, one thing I can be sure of is that I won't have to listen to any more idiots telling me how clever and strategic Blackberry have been at capturing the youth market. I've had various people tell me over the past six months that Blackberry's were the cool item and the youth had turned away from iPhones as being too mainstream. Of course the only word that ever matters to the youth market when it comes to communication is "freeness" and BBM offered that, so it was no surprise it took off.

Personally I was never that clear how a load of hoodies using a free service was going to build a future business model for Blackberry but maybe I was looking too closely at the users I see in London. I certainly wondered if they would be able to keep their credibility as a key tool for the business elite once every "yout" hanging round the bus shelter had one.

Anyway, now they have the youth market in their pocket it will be interesting to see how their PR department handles the fact the Blackberry is every rioters favourite accessory. I also wonder what co-operation they will offer the police in tracking down those people inviting everyone to head down to the local JD Sports and rob the place.

Fake Apple stores in China

There has been a lot of press about the story of the fake Apple stores in China. For anyone catching up this came up from a blog by a US national living in Kunming in China who walked into an Apple store and realised it was a fake.

One thing that struck me about the story was the fact the staff really thought they were working for Apple. Whether this is true or not it struck me as a great touch. Creating a fake environment and including the staff in the process. It's like something out of a Phillip K Dick novel. People working hard for "Apple" and taking pride in their jobs, telling their friends and families they were part of a huge global company when in reality they are slaving away in a bizarre alternate universe.

Of course now it seems they are all over China and I suppose that is the interesting point. Technology and the web creates the demand for Apple products but that same technology means once the secret is out the whole world knows about it.

As we are on the subject this is a good excuse to remind people about some other classic store fronts that have become international stories, the classic one being Hitler's Cross, the Hitler themed restaurant in Mumbai. Another favourite is the Ken Livingstone tea stall in Cochin, India.

Power of online video seminar - video presentations

We have uploaded films of some of the presentations made at the Sadler's Wells seminar on online video.

Tom Laidlaw from VideoJug talks about short-form video.

Richard Cohen speaks about making the most of your content (and McFly!).

Patrick Johnston talks about SEO for video.

Maya Gabrielle from the National Theatre speaks about content...

...and here is my opening for the afternoon, on the importance of video to Sadler's Wells comms strategy.

Google Trends

A bit of a sad post I admit, but I love graphs, data and maps.

At the ECHO digital conference recently I included a screen grab as an example of the kind of information you can easily get from the web. It was done using Google Trends  a site you may or may not have used but one that is easy and quite fun.

Searches for Dance Classes

This was what I used as an example. Searches for Dance Classes, which showed that, like going to the gym, people make a resolution at the beginning of every year to learn to dance. Anyway, huge data sources are truly fascinating and I tried a few other things.

Aftershave and perfume are seasonal searches too. Though the market for perfume is definitely on the rise, I presume as it becomes part of every celebrity brand offering. Some more traditional seasonal trends are rather more predictable.

Searches for Aftershave

Searches for Perfume

Searches for Turkey Recipes

Naomi Campbell vs. Kate Moss goes to prove one major indiscretion can't compete with being a badass on a regular basis.

Searches for Naomi Campbell

Searches for Kate Moss

One of the interesting things is noticing the major trends up or down and then figuring out the reason why. Though Google sometimes helpfully reminds you.

Searches for Glastonbury

Searches for MDMA

Searches for Stingray

Tracey Emin vs. Damien Hirst makes an interesting comparison.

Searches for Tracey Emin

Searches for Damien Hurst

The rapid growth and decline of a global phenomenon...

Searches for Guitar Hero

...and everyone's gift for Christmas 2010

Searches for Kindle

And finally in case you were planning on getting one hot tubs are sooo over...

Searches for Hot Tubs

Ok, I need to stop now.

Guardian goes "Digital First"

I have not had time to post about this until now but it promises to mark a huge change in the way that the Guardian and Observer deal with content. Whether it has wider implications for the future of the UK newspaper industry, or is just a drop on the blood trail that leads to corpse of the Guardian remains to be seen. For those who missed it the Guardian have announced that from now on they will have  a policy of digital first. This is a dramatic change, and one prompted one suspects, less by a conviction that the future for newspapers is purely digital but instead by the huge losses the Guardian and Observer make (£33 million in the last financial year). After all GMN spent £80 million on brand new Berliner presses just 6 years ago and it wasn't as if anyone thought the web was just a fad back in 2005.

As part of this shift it has been announced that the GNM group will make £25 million worth of cuts over the next five years, so there will be a reduction in staff. Shifting direction like this is always difficult for any company that has an existing and long established business model. If you were to start an online publication from scratch you would, I am sure, begin with a very different management and staff structure. Unfortunately GNM have to adapt their existing print led structure to this new direction; shedding staff, retraining others and taking on new ones with brand new technical skills.*

There has been a lot said about the financial difficulties that GNM face but not much about what a digital first Guardian will be like. I wonder how this move will change how they deal with content. If they are not introducing a paywall what other measure of success will they use? Ad revenue of course, but page views and comments? We are endlessly told that only "real journalism" offers the expert analysis needed to make sense of the world, and that amateur bloggers don't have the experience and skills a "proper" news source can offer. Possibly true if you still have a full staff of credible journalists left and are not chasing web traffic by any means necessary. The Guardian has a passion for blogs but predictably those posts that get the most comments are either the most general or those that provoke most outrage. I can imagine a future where generating comments is seen as a measure of success, which inevitably will change the type of stories they pursue and the nature of the coverage. Certainly where commenting becomes a significant part of the plan it naturally has an impact on the tone of the site (as all you secret readers of the Daily Mail website will know).

What else will a digital first Guardian be like? Well there will be more video for sure. In fact, for the arts not having video, or at least enough images to create a gallery will put you at a distinct disadvantage I'd have thought. As to the impact this shift has on the amount and nature of reviews on both website and newspaper, we will have to wait and see.

*This change process to adapt to new technology and falling revenue is very interesting and theatre in many ways faces some similar (though less threatening) situations. After all if you built a theatre today what size phone room would you have bearing in mind over 80% of sales might be online anyway? Would you even have one at all? If you started a theatre company today where would digital fit in the business plan? As an old timer I find it funny that knowledge that was once essential for all staff (about print production for example) is needed far less now across the communications team. But, we have a foot firmly in the past even as we embrace the future. As digital grows steadily in significance we still produce thousands of leaflets, and to be fair a large section of the audience continue to want their information in this format. 


As I often say when asked about the application of modern non-arts marketing  to theatre, we should not forget we work within a great tradition that goes back over 2000 years, long pre-dating any 20th century ideas of brand based marketing. The issues we face today when selling shows have always been around and theatre marketing is probably the world's oldest form of mass marketing. There was probably a poster outside the Coliseum that said "Lion vs. Christians. Wednesday Matinee. Kids go Free!" and I bet Ancient Roman theatre owners worried how they could get a younger more diverse audience in to see those dull Greek Classics. Interestingly as more and more diverse channels of communication open up, and brands try and turn customers into audiences mainstream marketing comes to resemble theatre marketing more and more. But more on that another time.

Google adwords - competitor bidding and related ads

Following up on my post about the Royal Opera House bidding on Sadler's Wells as keywords for its current Adwords campaign I thought I would follow up with some more observations.  Again, I am using the ROH as an example, not because I have a particular problem with what they are doing, but because they are running an extensive campaign that is not show related and so highlights very well how Google Adwords work.

The first covers competition for page placement on Google and what this means when adverts are added to the equation. As you can see in this screen grab a search for English National Ballet gives you an ad for the Royal Opera House that sits at the top of the main column rather than in the familiar position to the right. Ad positions like these set you up in competition for your own name in search and force you (assuming it matters to you of course) to take your own ads to outbid your rival and regain top position. Great for Google's income line, but it would be a shame to see arts organisations waste money in a bidding war.

The second screenshot features something called Related Ads. These are Google ads that appear on keywords you may not necessarily have bid on. As far as I know their appearance is related to previous searches done, what Google considers is relevant to the user, and the broad match terms the advertiser may has used in their campaign; but I'll leave the definitive answer to any adwords experts (assuming they even know). It is a feature that has been around a while and is so often the case with Google appeared without much explanation or warning. A few people have gone as far as call these Evil Ads though of course Google say they are just offering customers better service.

There is more on this subject here and here for Google Adword junkies.

ECHO digital conference - Gateshead 20/21 June

The ECHO (European Concert Hall Organisation) Digital event was a big success and it was great to be asked to join the panel on Digital Media as a Communications Tool. There were some excellent speakers and case studies all in the lovely setting of the Sage, Gateshead. A stunning building with wonderful, welcoming staff.

Particularly interesting to hear from were some of the overseas speakers. Marie-Helene Serra, the Head of Education and Library of Cite de la Music, Paris showed us some of the extensive resources they offer online (check out the Media Library and Education sections on the website). Christoph Franke and Robert Zimmerman who look after the live broadcasts of the Berlin Philharmoniker via their Digital Concert Hall gave a fascinating insight into the seriously heavyweight set-up that they have in place to film and stream all their concerts. Benton Dellinger spoke about the New World Symphony in Miami and their incredibly versatile concert hall. There was also a great case study from the Manhattan School of Music and its distance learning programme. There was a scale to these overseas projects that was incredibly impressive. Tony Hall from the Royal Opera House did his bit for the UK however, talking about how much they have achieved globally through their cinema broadcasts, and it was great to see an impressive local  initiative, Live Theatre's Be A Playwright interactive course.

A big well done to Anthony Sargent for pulling together a truly international line-up and also for creating an event that was so wide ranging in its scope.

Personalised search in Google - the Filter Bubble

When I was a very young I remember talking about a TV programme on that night (it was probably Doctor Who) and a friend said "Will that be on my TV as well?" I had to explain that what was on my TVs was on all TVs and we would be watching the same thing at the same time. Of course things are very different now, but even today we still have our shared must see moments like the Apprentice (if I don't watch it when broadcast I have to hide from the metro, facebook and all work chit-chat till I see it).

The reason I thought of this is that you might imagine things were the same if you and a friend searched for exactly the same thing on Google. But I recently did a search on the term "dance" and found my results very different to the ones our web manager Mark got. Of course search results we assume will vary by country, or even by region but it really does seem that personalised search for all of us is now here. Last weekend there was a large piece in the Observer on this very topic which makes interesting reading. It certainly messes with your SEO strategy if searches are primarily based on an individuals previous activity. What does this mean? Well I suppose Google would say it makes your search more targeted so you get what you want but is that always a good thing? Or does it just reinforce your positive or negative opinions by never exposing you to anything new or challenging? Cynics would say it encourages businesses to spend money on Adwords to ensure your message gets across. Some people would say it just balances out the work done by companies trying to force their own messages on us. I mention all this because in the arts our aim (I hope) is always to reach new people and widen our audience. This was something the web offered that was very exciting. By narrowing down what we see to what we already think and like, Google is perhaps only giving us the illusion of access to information.

Eli Pariser has written a book on this very subject that comes out on 23 June and follows on from a powerful TED lecture he gave. His term for it is a Filter Bubble and it is an interesting concept with big implications for how we use the web to find information. The impact it has on how we will access news in the future is immense. Interestingly, Google may say this all makes their search engine more efficient and faster but at best it may make it a duller place to spend time, offering you more and more of the same. At worst it may limit how you think about the world.

Building Digital Capacity for the Arts - Arts Council and BBC partnership

On 10 March I was one of the speakers at the launch of the new BBC/Arts Council initiative Building Digital Capacity for the Arts. The event marked the beginning of an exciting series of seminars on a wide range of issues around digital and its impact on the arts.

The first seminar took place on 23rd March and covered Internet TV and Apps while the second will take place on 5th July and cover Audio and Audio Visual content. All the seminars will be available to watch online if you cannot attend adding up to a invaluable resource.

Royal Opera House bid on Sadler's Wells name in Google adwords

An interesting thing happened when we Googled ourselves recently. The Royal Opera House had bought Sadlers Wells (sic) as keywords in an Adword campaign. Just to be clear, there is nothing legally wrong with this, nor is it against Google's terms and conditions but it is a subject that has caused much debate since Adwords began. Google allows you to bid on competitor* names (even those that are trademarked) if they do not appear in the text of the advert (and in some cases even if they do). This was a big shock for a lot of companies that were not wise to the ways of the web and many people still regard it is as a dubious practice. It has certainly been challenged in a number of territories and Louis Vuitton lost a five year legal battle with Google over this issue. Over the years Google's own position has changed a number of times and has varied from country to country, so the position has hardly been clear. It is a fascinating topic (well to me anyway) so I have added some more links below.

As far as I could tell the ROH had not bought the word Sadler's (just Sadlers) and I could speculate this was a deliberate decision.  I also assume they aim to pick up customers that are new to dance since the ad copy is so general. Personally I'm not sure pushing the fact they have seats from £4 is the best idea. Even if is the best ballet in London in a £4 seat you would not see much of it. I sat in one of those seats once and only saw about 30% of the performance. For a first timer it would be a wretched experience and if you tried to upsell them to a decent seat the price might come as a shock.

Interestingly the advert itself points to the What's on page. I would have thought it made sense to link to a page aimed specifically at new visitors. If you are serious about encouraging new attenders to book tickets a dedicated landing page would ensure potential customers were not abandoned at the front door without guidance. Online ad campaigns do not end with the click through, they need to follow through and take you on an appropriate journey once you are in the site. Unfortunately when I looked there were seven ballets on sale that were currently only available for Friends booking (which costs an extra £79) and just one single 12pm performance that was available for public booking so the timing does not seem ideal for a value based message. 

More here on legal position 

and here

and finally here 

*Personally I do not believe too much in the idea of competition within the arts. I think arts attendance of any kind is a good thing whatever venue people go to, and energy has been wasted in the past applying traditional marketing theory on competition to arts and culture. Competition within our sector is a wasteful use of precious resources and for me the biggest competition has always been staying in (or the pub and a bite to eat). That said, I do feel this ad is slightly different due to its generic aim and the tone of the copy. 

There is a good tradition of co-operation within the sector and I see that increasing. But in some cases (mailing lists, e-lists) organisations that have achieved success through a lot of hard work should have the right to protect that data from its misuse in supporting short term goals (Artistic Director A says to Artistic Director B "Can you just get your Marketing team to send a solus email to your entire list to promote my show that is on this week? For some reason it is just not selling. It must be the marketing..."). But that is a whole different post.

QR codes - theatre video on the go

I first came across QR (Quick Response) codes in June of 2010 when City Center in New York added one to the poster for Swan Lake. Since then we have experimented with them at Sadler's Wells adding them to posters for shows at the Peacock Theatre like Shoes and Merchants of Bollywood, and increasingly on adverts. The technology is easy to use and well worth experimenting with for theatres that have video.

If you have not come across them yet keep your eyes open. You may notice small white boxes on adverts filled with patterns of black and white squares like the one below. When the image is scanned by a tag reader on your phone it can be used to link to  a video clip or other content.

So far views have been relatively low (129 for the Metro ad below) but I think they will increase as more and more people become aware of what these codes are and also as they are used more on adverts, leaflets and in season brochures. In London adding codes to ads in papers like the Metro and Standard will probably become the norm. Certainly every morning on the way to work everybody around me seems to have the Metro in one hand and a phone in the other.

The great thing about this technology is the fact you can access all the stats so you know if they work. You can look at video views by the day of the week, time of day and at the users location at street level (including two from Wembley for Merchants which was reassuring!). You can also see whether the viewer is accessing via a mobile (iphone, android, blackberry) or from a desktop. Exciting stuff and above all an easy way to get more use out of the video you already have.

Swan Lake Window Card

Metro 15x2

Power of online video seminar - example video

1) Flipcam video - Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake

This video was made in Times Square when Sadler's Wells co-presented Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake  at New York City Center. The event itself was a PR stunt where the Swans were taken down to Times Square one morning to recreate the classic Swan pose for photographers. There was no permission sought to do the photoshoot so we had to get in and out fast. I was one of three people recording the event for City Center with flipcams. That gave us a lot of video to work with for the edit and most importantly lots of angles to cut between. For example while the event was recorded from the front I was able to go to the rear and shoot the photographers. Additional content from before and after was added to give extra character to the film.

The whole thing was edited together in a couple of hours by someone at City Center and put online. It was cut to some music not connected with the show which was easy to edit to. The key thing was it went online within hours. I think perhaps more could have been done to make it visible within YouTube. The lesson here is that if you use YouTube as a way of putting video up on your own site don't forget the views you could be getting through YouTube; it could be thousands.

2) Bounce Michael Jackson tribute

The streetdance company Bounce created this event as a tribute to Michael Jackson after his death. In the end two clips were put up on YouTube and in total they received around 15 million views. Other people then went on and created their own versions inspired by Bounce. The video came out just before they performed with us and by the time we did the campaign for the show it had over 3 million views giving us something new to say about a show that was returning for a second time.

3) Rosas - Early Works

This video made by Lyndsey Winship and David Kaplowitz and uses existing clips from shows that had previously been filmed for broadcast. To promote a retrospective season at Sadler's Well they were cut together with an interview with choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. De Keersmaeker does not agree to many interviews with the press so there are not many opportunities to hear her discussing her own work. This approach allowed the public to hear about these important works in her own words.

4) Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake

This video uses interviews and rehearsal footage cut with clips of the performance.  The interviews and rehearsals were filmed on the same day. I did the interviews accompanied by just one person (Michael from Flutterby) for camera and sound. Note the board in the background as a reminder of the show and a way of dealing with a dull room. This was the poster artwork blown up and mounted on polyboard. I actually did two different sizes as the filming was done off site and I had no idea where we would be for the interviews. We switched the set-up for the interviews by moving the camera and the board to stop it looking the same each time. In the end we had to use a room with a skylight and did the interviews through the course of the day so lighting was a bit of a problem! Matthew was excellent at providing introductions for the different characters so we could easily edit in the other interviewees. The editor, Chris Clark, at Evolutions did a wonderful job of integrating the rehearsal shots with the performance footage which I think really adds something.

This clip was created to promote the New York shows but a version was also done to promote the shows across the rest of the tour so I ensured the backing board was deliberately generic. This is a long clip I know, but I think it is very watchable. We also divided it up for some websites so they could release it week by week in the build up to the show.

5) The Most Incredible Thing

A video by Lyndsey and David that combines rehearsal footage with interviews. Filming in the auditorium is always a good easy option as it provides a clean controllable environment. If you have to interview two people filming them in the theatre seats also works as they can sit next to each other and still look natural. There were two versions of the film done. One, a shorter promo clip to drive sales and second, a longer clip that formed the first stage of documenting on video the process of creating the show. See the shorter version here. By the end of the run of The Most Incredible Thing this short version had 36,500 views, either directly from our site or through being embedded on other sites. It was actually embedded on 58 other websites. These figures do not include YouTube views. For marketing purposes short clips are definitely best and most of the show excerpts we use on the site are only 1-1.30 minutes in length. In the long term however, I feel there is value in creating more detailed content for archival purposes. Plus in this case the huge popularity of the Pet Shop Boys and the fact that there was also an accompanying album being released ensured there was a strong interest in watching a longer film.

 

Read the seminar introduction here.

ECHO digital conference - Gateshead 20/21 June

On 20/21 June the Sage Gateshead is holding an international conference on digital technology and the performing arts. The sessions cover all aspects of digital and its application to the performing arts including marketing, audience development, publishing, distance learning and creativity.

Speakers include:

Hannah Rudman, Director, Rudman Consulting & Envirodigital 
Christian Payne Documentalist at OurManInside
Millicent Jones, Executive Director, Marketing, Communications and Fundraising, Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Liverpool 
Marie-Hélène Serra, Head of Education and Library, Cité de la Musique, PariChristoph Franke, Creative Producer and Robert Zimmermann, Managing Director, Berlin Phil Media GmbH, Digital Concert Hall (Berliner Philharmoniker)
Steve Jelley, Plushmusic.tv/Videojuicer 
Charlotte Spencer, Head of Development, and Manus Carey, Head of Artistic Planning, Manchester Camerata Streaming
Christianne Orto, Assistant Dean of Distance Learning & Director of Recording, Manhattan School of Music, USA
Jim Beirne, Chief Executive, Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 
Benton Delinger, Project Director for New World Symphony (Miami Beach, Florida) for Theatre Projects Consultants 
Tony Hall, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, CBE, Chief Executive, Royal Opera House, London and Chair of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad Board
Richard Slaney, Head of Digital, Philharmonia Orchestra 
Dan Efergan, Creative Director of Aardman Digital, Bristol 
Maximilian Madile, Product Marketing Manager, Google, and Core Team YouTube Symphony Orchestra
Tod Machover, Composer and Professor of Music and Media, MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, USA
Klaus Obermaier, Digital Video Artist, Interactive 3D Rite of Spring
and yours truly.


More details here.