The Ambassador Theatre Group: Press: Press Releases
Press Releases
Issued : 3 October 2002
The biggest collaborative audience development project in England, Ticketware, has been declared a success by the two venues taking part in the north west Midlands, the Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent and the New Vic Theatre, Staffordshire’s regional producing theatre.
Results and analysis just in from the programme, rolled out during summer 2001, show encouraging gains for the two venues.
Based on “taking the theatre to the theatre-goer”, Ticketware targeted 90,000 households with a £10 “2 for 1” joint ticket offer for each theatre. Households were targeted through profile-matching, and were all current non-attenders of the two venues.
Fieldworkers hand delivered and then collected back information packs containing the offer, providing qualitative feedback on customer response.
Made possible as part of a capital award from the Arts Council of England, Ticketware was developed by the two venues to attract more theatre-goers living within a drive-time radius of 30 to 45 minutes. This was the latest in a string of collaborative marketing ventures between the Regent Theatre and the New Vic.
The theatres agreed on these target areas because previous research had indicated that market penetration there was low, and visitor attitudes towards the venues were predominantly negative. The project analysis showed a number of interesting results including the following:
·Nearly 7,500 people in the target areas who had never been to either theatre took advantage of the joint ticket offer, buying nearly 15, 000 tickets.
·Although musicals emerged as the most popular choice for these new attenders – 65.8% at the New Vic, and 71.8% at the Regent Theatre, considerable gains were also made for drama and opera at both venues.
·Significantly, by the end of March 2002, a fifth of these new attenders had returned to the Regent Theatre (a 1685 seat venue), and nearly 15% to the New Vic (with 635 seats). The buying behaviour of Ticketware participants will be tracked over a period of three years.
“We are very pleased with the results of this programme so far,” said Pat Westwell, Group Head of Marketing at the Ambassador Theatre Group, which manages the Regent Theatre. “Ticketware is just the initial phase of a continuing strategy to convert new attenders into regular audience members, for both the New Vic and the Regent. By sending representatives out into the field, we were providing a ‘face of the theatre’, endeavouring to carry out relationship marketing in its purest form.”
“We intend to continue this highly successful collaborative approach to new audience development, and are grateful to the Arts Council of England for its vision and support.”
John Morton, Head of Marketing & Business Development at the New Vic said ”Ticketware was a major undertaking and a real success. But it’s only part of our strategy, in partnership with the Regent Theatre, to capitalise on
the opportunities for new audiences now that the Regent has raised the
profile of the performing arts in the region”.
Future initiatives flowing from the Ticketware scheme include a data-swap between the theatres, giving access to attenders in certain postcodes who have visited one but not both venues, and the exploration of offering cross-venue benefits to members of Friends organisations. A venture targeting the under-25s, and involving cross-venue discounts is under discussion for 2003.