Marketing Plan

Forming our Marketing Plan and research

There are currently two of us working on the marketing plan for the TIE piece for SToRMS so, we decided that we would think about all the different ways of marketing by ourselves and find out which ones we think would be the most effective way of advertising our piece. We would then come together and discuss what we want to do and divide the jobs between us and make sure that every area is covered and we are using as many techniques as possible in order to get our piece to be advertised.

We decided on a plan together and the steps that we would take to advertise the piece:

1. Phone Calls - We were thinking that we could call either the head of year 10 and 11 in the secondary schools as they are the people who our marketing campaign would be targeted at due to them being a pathway to our target audience for the actual piece. Having a phone call would allow us to give them the basic information about the piece and what it aims we want the piece to have, plus we could get an immediate response about whether they are interested and then we could get a follow up route to send them more information.
2. Emails - We would then follow up the phone calls with an email that explains the piece in more depth and we would include links to the N2C Theatre website which has more information on it and we would also send them a small version of the poster that we would put up so that they know what to expect.
3. Social Media - N2C Theatre has a variety of different social media platforms, including twitter, facebook and instagram, which can be used throughout the rehearsal process in order for the piece to reach as many people as possible. Both of us have access to these platforms through our teachers who run them and we can both pass on photos and captions that we think advertise the piece the most and in the best light.
4. Trailer - We thought that we could make a short trailer video that could be played at the start of the piece to introduce the rehearsal process of the piece and it could include cast interviews/ the cast saying how influential it has been on their lives as well.
5. Flyers - SToRMS have already given us a flyer that they want us to hand out but we thought that we could combine what is on that flyer with information about N2C and also maybe create a joint logo between N2C and SToRMS.
6. Program - We were thinking about creating a small program that the audience can read whilst they are sitting down in their seats which gives an outview of what SToRMS is and what N2C is and also what the piece is generally based on including some information from the SToRMS website about communication between males.
7. Posters - We had the idea of creating a couple of posters that we would take down to the secondary school with us and have on the walls behind us whilst we are performing containing short and snappy sections of advice that correlates with the piece and we could also include some of the "Wise Talkers" information from SToRMS which they will be given later in the piece.

I am going to be in control of creating the posters in different eye-catching forms as well as being a part of controlling the social media as a pair. As we already have some schools that have contacted us about the piece, our teacher is going to focus on the email aspect as he has been emailing and calling them from the start and we don't want to interrupt that process and so we are only stepping in after those steps have been made.

I decided to do some research on aspects of a good poster and what makes a poster eye catching and interesting. I found a website (https://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/10-tips-for-perfect-poster-design/ ) that has bullet points about the good points of a poster and I am going to create a draft poster using their points and see what the outcome is. The main aspects that I found helpful were:
- Making the poster easy to read from a distance
- Using one big visual
- Use plenty of space
- Consider size and location

Week 17: TIE (Primary School)

Starting a new project, research and devising

Our new TIE project is based around the idea of a "Survival Guide" aimed at Year 6s who are transitioning into secondary school and have worries about what is going to happened both in school and out of school when they move up.
The client wants a few specific things to be present throughout the piece:

• The message that the students aren't alone and that every year 6 around the country will be feeling exactly the same.
• Highlight the differences between secondary and primary school so that the pupils are ready and know what to expect.
• Give them tips on what to do if they are stuck in a situation or find that they don't know what to do
• Acknowledge that we know they have fears and it's okay to be scared because it is such a big change.

We then brainstormed some worries that some of us actually had and also some that we think they might have:

1. Being Bullied
2. Getting Lost
3. Homework
4. Getting to lesson
5. Catching the bus
6. Older pupils
7. Being by yourself
8. Not making friends
9. School dinners
10. Being the only one who's scared
11. Detention
12. Teachers
13. Exams/tests
14. Growing up
15. Setting plans
16. Corridors
17. Fights
18. Smoking/Alcohol/Drugs
19. Relationships

Other ideas that we thought that we could include are things like:

- "It's the thought of it that's worse" so thinking about all of the scary aspects will make it worse and we know that not thinking about those things isn't an easy thing to do considering it's a major part of their lives and a growing experience for them but thinking about the good aspects will help.

- "We survived!" Saying that even we had the same fears as them when we were their age and we made it through secondary school and we have experienced it and can tell them how it actually is.

- "Your fears are the same as ours." It is okay to be scared and it's a normal thing to be scared about going into secondary school and everybody has them. We also come up with a kinda of slogan which is "Don't be scared, be prepared" meaning that if you're prepared and you know what to expect that it could be slightly less daunting and that's what the piece is going to be aimed at. Getting them prepared so that they know what to expect.

We then discussed the structure of the piece and we referred back to what we thought of at the start of the other TIE piece which was the idea of short bursts of information that keeps the audience interested in the piece with interactive sections in between that help us gage where the audience's understanding of the piece is and we can also help them in those sections if they are stuck.

We then began working on the beginning and we obviously introduced ourselves as N2C theatre and explained what we were going to do in the piece and we had to change some of the language that we were using as we needed the year 6s to benefit from what we were saying and understand how they could use our advice when they move up to secondary school.

We thought of using unrealistic examples of secondary school to ease the audience into the piece and have a quite comedic start and so we decided to use High School Musical as it is a film that is well-known and we could use the US version of what secondary is like to make a joke out of it. So we added in a small section of cheesy dance moves and then we said "yeah, it's not like that" and then we thought that we could contrast that with the extreme which is an all out fight and then we paused that and said "yeah, it's not like that either"

We then thought about the easiest way to get our target audience to understand the fears and stresses that we are exploring and so we decided to split it into named chapters so that the piece was easier to follow so the first chapter is called "Little Fears." I feel like naming the chapters allows the audience to stay grounded on a central subject and can relate everything back to that.

When I went into secondary school, I didn't have any big worries like some people have and so we decided that I should narrate Chapter 1 because I could relate to the "Little Fears" and it might make the audience more understanding towards what I felt and those in the same position could relate as well. So we started off with me saying "When I was moving to secondary school, I didn't have many big worries I just had small ones. Like whether I had the right equipment, whether I was going to get lost, what if the work was too hard and was I the only one having these worries?" Having this section allows us to acknowledge some of the little fears that we know are present in the minds of the children when they think about moving to secondary school. Also having a person on stage that is saying that they felt the exact same way will allow the audience to both open up to us about how they feel and also will begin to relate to what we are saying and this is when they can take the advice we are giving them, understand it and then proceed to use it in real life.

Marketing Research

Starting an advertising campaign

Before starting an advertising campaign, you need to identify your target audiences and the target audience for our Theatre In Education piece is boys aged 15-17, in years 10 and 11 in school. The performance target audience is this age range but the target audience that we will be advertising to will be the people and teachers who are going to pay and book for us to come and perform for their children. As we are beginning our marketing research, in preparation for our own marketing campaign regarding our T.I.E piece, we need to identify the different types of advertising there are and how effective they are in the society that we live in and also regarding our target audience. We found that there are two different types of advertising specific and non-specific. Specific is when a campaign that is focused at a group that we know is in our target range and non-specific is a campaign that has a more widespread field of focus.

We discussed some of the options that there are for an advertising campaign and methods that could be used and we put them into the categories of specific and non-specific. And we came up with these:

Specifc

•  Emails
• Letters
• Web Page
• Phone calls
• Social Media
• Marketing products such as cups, tshirts etc

Non-specific

• Posters
• TV Adverts
• Radio Adverts
• Newspapers
• Word of Mouth

Obviously some methods are going to be a lot harder to produce than others like Radio and TV adverts as we don't have access to those types of marketing but we could create a sample of what we would do and use that as an introduction to the piece whilst the audience are walking in. Things like phone calls, emails and social media are some of the easiest forms of marketing that we have access to and also we can directly advertise the piece to specific people who are linked to our target audience for the piece.

Week 17: TIE (Storms)

Performing to an audience and making changes

So this week, we actually had the opportunity to perform in front of a group of around 15 students, some of which were female but only around 4 of them, the rest being male, who were all in the age bracket of our target audience, 14-16. Performing in front of them allowed us to practice our facilitation skills and also see what it would be like to actually speak to a group of people and find out some of the answers that they might say in regards to our questions about the piece. At the end of the performance, we asked them for some feedback about the good points and some points that may need improving.

Our groups good points included:

• Interaction with the audience - they said that they really enjoyed how involved the audience were in the whole piece and breaking that fourth wall really allowed them to ask any questions if they were unsure which, in turn, also allowed us to see where they were with their understanding of the piece and help them if needed. Specifically, the "morning after scene" was mentioned as it was easy to follow and the questions that were asking and the fact that we actually went out to discuss them, helped the audience to understand the situation more and this also meant that they could relate to it more.

Our groups points to improve on included:

• Difference between John being drunk and sober needs to be bigger - It was pointed out that there needs to be a bigger difference once the Alcohol factor has been removed from the mini cooper scene as the audience became confused whether John was actually sober or not.
• More options for the text message - some of the audience brought up the fact that they know that John's reply to Holly was inconsiderate and they said that they wouldn't have even thought of sending that. The only problem with more options is that, the text message triggers scenes that happen later on in the piece and so if we had options then we wouldn't know which one the audience was going to pick meaning the later scenes don't coincide with the earlier ones.
• Confusion with rewinding - there was a mass confusion about where in John's story we were skipping back to at certain points and so we need to make it clearer about where we have skipped back to and even give a short overview of what has happened so that the audience can understand the scene more and where in the story line it actually is.

We then had a full class discussion with our teacher included to feedback what we had found out from the audience's feedback and sort out what we need to fix and improve.

• Extended Family - As one of the options for "who should John talk to" one of the audience suggested extended family which we thought was a good option as they are less obliged to become defensive and will listen to what you have to say but they don't have to take immediate action because they aren't your parents and are more of a listening ear.
• Option of us repeating their point - During the piece, I asked one of the audience members to say their point to the rest of audience but I also gave them the option of me saying it and we discussed that it might have been too early on in the piece to suggest that as we want the audience to feel comfortable enough to say their point so if we let them have another option too early they may not feel comfortable later on.
• Positive Reinforcement - We needed a lot more positive language being fed back to the audience once they have said a point so that they feel included in the piece and also know that their answer was appreciated. We need to be giving them positive encouragement almost constantly after a point is made and this will both boost their confidence as well as help cover up some of the blank spots.
• Narrator's repeating the audience's points - We were saying that the narrator's need to re-say the point that has been made by the audience so that the whole audience can hear the point.
• Banter - we could use banter on stage between all of us on stage to make the atmosphere less pressuring on the audience and easier for us to talk to them and also easier for them to talk to each other.
• The piece as a whole - The piece is working in theory as the audience are saying what we wanted them to say but it feels flat when some of the jokes are being made. This could be due to timing or maybe some of the jokes are really funny.
• Pace - At times, the pace was slow which had a big effect on the feel and energy of the piece which also led to some sticky transitions that made the piece quite bumpy.
• Too much alcohol? - It was brought up that there was quite a lot of the piece based around alcohol but not everyone wants to drink which means that we could be aiming at a specific type of male, so some males may not react in the same way to the piece as they can't connect with what's going on. We also discussed the idea that it might be the difference between Year 10 and Year 11 as majority of people are normally introduced to alcohol influence more in Year 11
• Removing all the barriers - We need to establish the fact that by removing alcohol we could also remove swearing as alcohol can influence how your speech and language.
• Peer pressure in the mini cooper scene - Because peer pressure is one of the barriers on the list, we think that we need to keep everyone in the scene whilst Holly is there to act as another distraction for John. It would also give the scene energy and an atmosphere.
• Music - We could use music when we go out to talk to the audience so that it isn't completely silent whilst people are talking and when the music is turned off that is the signal for us to come back on stage and get some feedback.

 After discussing all of these changes, we decided to re-work the start. We decided that we would carry the chairs on separately instead of getting them off of the stack because we could then introduce the banter aspect as we could give each other smug looks as we know what is to come in the piece.

 - We also made more of the fact that we have fake penis' in our hands and made it more like we were proud of what we were going to do.

- We also kept the interaction between the "lads" quite quick so that the pace was kept up throughout and we used that as a starting point for the atmosphere especially with the music in the background.

- We decided to cut off some of the "societal pressures on boys" because we found that the audience had lost concentration during all of the different examples and so we cut some of them out and shortened that extract so that it wasn't as long and the audience would still remain included in the piece. We also changed one of the end examples from clothing to talking about going to the gym because we wanted to include some of the ideas that Sue, the client, spoke to us about when she came to review the piece. Adding in something about the gym was one of the points that she had mentioned as something that plays a very big part in the modern male's life and can become quite a pressuring factor. 

Week 16: TIE (Storms)

Adding in improvements

Due to us having the client review our piece last week, we focused on the feedback that we were given and went through the entire piece making sure that changes were being made and we were keeping what Sue said in our heads at all times.

We started with changing the line "80% of people who commit suicide have a penis" to "80% of people who die by suicide" so that suicide doesn't sound like a crime. We also changed the wording of some other lines so that it made the build up to the question easier for the audience to understand what we wanted them to do clearly. The line "please help me explain to my colleague what happened by answering the following questions with the person sat next to you," was changed to "right, we need you guys to help me explain to my colleague how non-verbal communication was used between all three characters in the scene you just saw. To help you out, we've put some questions up on the board for you to discuss with the people around you." We made sure that we included "with the people around you" so that they wouldn't be restricted to the person sat next to them and it also leaves room for bigger discussions. We also made sure that we the cast was called back, the instructions for what we wanted them to do was clearer and so we now say "let's replay the scene and when we reach a point of non-verbal communication, we'll pause the scene and hear some of your ideas." We thought that this wording made it much clearer to the audience what was about to happened when we replayed the scene and it also prepared them to be called on to say their ideas.

We then started discussing the idea of doing a potential second arm test during the sliding scale if no one decides to put their hands up to stop John when he's walking then we thought that someone could say something like "so you all think that John is going to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness" as a joke and then we would redo the sliding scale, asking for them to be honest.

Also during the "who should John talk to" scene, we were thinking about adding in the option of Childline or Samaritans etc as someone that he could talk to, or maybe not adding it on the slide that would be shown but when we go out and talk to the audience, we could mention it and see how they would react to Childline as an option. We would then have a true reaction from the target audience on how they would feel calling an anonymous line.

After these discussions, we then focused on the asides that are throughout the piece as we wanted them to have the most impact which meant that the atmospheres, from the actual scene to the asides, need to be as juxtaposing as possible. We went through each individual aside and made sure that we, as the cast, knew when the asides ended in order for us to bring the atmosphere back up.

We then moved onto the facilitation of the forum theatre as we have never actually clarified what we were going to say in that section and so we decided that Adam, John's friend, should be the one to introduce the idea of the audience telling him what to say and do in order for John to open up to him. We came up with some reasons, that we thought the audience might say, for why John isn't communicating. We thought of:

• He might be embarrassed of admitting he's struggling 
• It might be out of the blue
• The alcohol could be stopping him from communicating
• It's also in front of everyone

At this point, we would be in the audience asking questions in order for them to understand the situation more. If they did say that having the friends there was harder for John to explain how he's feelings then we would encourage them to put their hand up and suggest that Adam get John on his own.

We then decided to add in some chorus narration so that we could drip-feed some information to the audience about what was about to happen in the next scene, where Adam takes it upon himself to ask John how he's feeling instead of waiting for John to open up. One of the lines that I was given was "so here's our top tip for helping someone open up about their feelings," but we decided to change the line as saying "feelings" to an all-boy audience may cause them to switch off as it seems like a quite feminine thing to say. So we changed the line to "so here's our top tip for helping someone open up about stuff." We would therefore be using vocabulary that the audience can relate to and understand more in order for them to be able to unlock the real meaning behind the piece. We also had to change another line to "one thing that makes it easier to feel like someone gets you," for the same reason that we changed my line: so that the audience could relate to it more.

We also had a discussion about how we wanted to end the piece and we though that we could have a small section of reflective listening which is where we, as the cast, would go into character as John and give the audience a chance to practice reflecting John's feelings back to him. It also allows the audience a chance to see what it feels like to help someone open up and so if this situation happens in real life, they know what to do and how to react when someone is telling them how they are feeling and their situation. We would also highlight some mistakes that people make when communicating, which are thinks like direct questions which are more likely to make someone switch off instead of open up and so we would try and get them to avoid asking questions. At this point, we would also hand out the wise-talkers leaflets to reiterate what we have been saying about it being easier to ask than to explain.