On Monday the whole Dep team took part in a marketing training day in order to get a further sense of new marketing trends and campaign styles, with Kate Sanderson from Indigo Ltd. The training session raised a lot of questions for the team, regarding target audiences and figures; here is what Rachael thought about the day:
One of the most interesting parts of the day touched upon target audiences and how to profile them in order to specifically target there needs. After discussing the various different ‘types’ of audiences it became apparent that the general public falls into distinct categories.
This prompted me to question whether audience members should be told what to expect from a Contemporary Dance performance, which can be widely open to interpretation, or whether audience members should be left to make up their minds as to what they have seen.
This can be argued either way; personally I feel that guidelines can help give an audience member a frame in order to hang the performance in. This is perfectly illustrated through Darshan Singh Bhullers’ ‘Caravaggio, Exile and Death’ print which states that the piece will ‘…take the audience on a journey of a mans search for forgiveness and redemption…’ This text allows the audience to focus on the key themes of the piece, without being prescriptive. However it could also be argued that this may blinker the audience to extraneous themes, which they may have not considered.
From this question sprung a myriad of other opinions regarding formalised marketing techniques such as critical endorsement versus audience response and whether the star rating system still works as a draw to pull in audiences. Ultimately the day proved a huge success by allowing the team to interrogate current marketing techniques and discuss our own opinions in order to come up with new and inventive marketing plans.
Darshan Singh Bhuller will be performing ‘Carravaggio, Exile and Death’ on Saturday 15th October at The Carriageworks, Leeds, Click HERE for tickets
for more information about Indigo Ltd click HERE