Unit 2: Arts Leadership. BFI Gothic Season #4 – My Role and Responsibilities

My Specific Role
Head of Online Copy and Promotion for BFI Gothic Season Events.This role required me to produce copy for both the Friday Late Night Screenings and the Shining immersive event for social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Such copy would be both promotional and intending to maintain the social network buzz for the events. For the immersive event in particular, this would be achieved through copy that maintained an immersive, character voice inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Shining.

As such, I would be liaising with Claire Stewart, Digital Communications Manager at the Watershed, as well as the rest of my Gothic Team, particularly our Project Manager and Head of Marketing Visuals, Zoe Horn Haywood. This would be in order to ensure that the copy would be appropriate to the promotional voice of the Watershed, as well as to create a coherence between the copy and visual images used for promotion. I would also be able to utilize the Watershed’s existing presence in the social media, such as having my Twitter promotions being re-tweeted by members of the Watershed staff, thus reaching a wider artistic audience.

My main responsibilities to achieve before the events were in:

  1. Creating promotional copy for Late Night Friday screenings, to be distributed on Facebook and Twitter. I aimed to emulate the jovial use of social media promotion used by Future Cinema, who are well known for their immersive cinema events. This involved compiling a Google document contributed to by both Zoe and myself with a back catalogue of promotional copy and accompanying images. Such content was to be shared with and approved by Claire Stewart, Digital Communications Manager at the Watershed. To be completed by the end of October and distributed the weeks leading up to each Friday event via the Late Nights at the Watershed Facebook Event Page, as well as the personal Facebook and Twitter pages of the Gothic Team and the Future Producers. Tweets could also be re-tweeted by Watershed members of staff, as well as our creative collaborators, Compass Presents, thus widening awareness for the events by utilizing their Twitter followers. The use of the event page would communicate directly with our existing ticket-holders, while the use of personal social media pages would reach our target age range of 18-25 year olds as the Future Producers adhere to this demographic.
  2. Contributing along with my other team mates to the design and copy for the promotional flyer for the BFI Gothic Season events hosted by the Watershed. Such ideas were to be discussed via a Google document with my Gothic team mates, with a final decision being made as a group to submit our most popular ideas as a Google document to the Watershed Communications Team (Comms) by the beginning of September. This was to ensure that both the group and the Watershed were happy with the finished product of hard-copy flyers to be used as promotion. Through this collaboration with the Watershed’s Comms Team, we were able to choose the umbrella title for our programme of events, ‘The Corridor Sessions’, and connected such a title with an image of a spooky corridor, designed by creative collaborators of the Watershed, Smith and Milton. Such hard-copy promotion was then to be distributed at local university Fresher’s Fairs (such as the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England), thus reaching our target age-range of 18-25 year olds; as well as to be displayed in the Watershed Box Office to appeal to the visiting public of the Watershed building.

    gothic flyer

    ‘The Corridor Sessions’ final flyer design

  3. Creating copy for an in-character email for the audience of The Shining immersive event, for which Zoe Horn Haywood would provide the visual, graphic template. To be written in the style of the Hotel Manager of the Overlook, and include information needed about the proceedings of the night of the event. To be completed mid-November, and approved by Zoe Horn Haywood and Claire Stewart, and be distributed to ticket-holders using the resource of the Watershed’s online booking system. Emails would be sent out a few weeks before the event.
  4. Create copy for interactive promotion with the audience of The Shining immersive event, in collaboration with Zoe Horn Haywood, whose responsibility was to source high quality images to connect with such copy. Such copy was included in the Google document of copy for the Late Night Screenings. To be completed and distributed on Facebook and Twitter during the month of November, leading up to the event. To be approved by Zoe Horn Haywood and Claire Stewart, and distributed on the Facebook Event Page for the Gothic Season events as well as via the personal Facebook and Twitter pages of the Gothic Season Team and the Future Producers, allowing us to reach both our existing audience and a wider, potential audience adhering to our target age-range of 18-25 year olds.
    shining immersive promotion2

    Example of immersive Facebook promotion for ‘The Shining’

    Example of immersive Twitter promotion for 'The Shining'

    Example of immersive Twitter promotion for ‘The Shining’

     

Due to the online promotion for these events being a collaborative process between myself, the Gothic Team and the Comms Team of the Watershed, numerous alterations had to be made to the online copy before it could be distributed online. Though none of my main aims were altered, several drafts and edits had to be made to the copy in order for it to adhere to the existing online presence and image of the Watershed. Thus, there was frequent communication between myself, Zoe Horn Haywood and Claire Stewart, with Zoe taking on the main liaison role given her role as Project Manager for the Gothic Team. While some of my content was used, Claire was also able to alter my copy and create copy based upon the outline of my copy, such as for the in-character email for the audience of The Shining immersive event. This once more demonstrated to me the importance of working as a team, and the need to adapt within the collaborative creative process of putting on an event, to suit the requirements of the organization you are running an event with.

Health and Safety
In terms of Health and Safety from the perspective of promotion, I had to ensure that the content used in promotion would be appropriate for those under the ages of 18 to see. Though our marketing and promotion was aimed at 18-25 year olds (in coherence with our brief), I knew that under 18s would have easy access to viewing such content, such as online images and copy on social media outlets, and hard copy flyers. Thus, I ensured that the images and copy that was created and used for promotion were inoffensive yet engaging, with no mature or graphic content being used, while making clear in the copy that such events were aimed at over 18s. We also tried to make our marketing methods as age-specific as possible by distributing hard copy flyers at university freshers fairs, as university students adhere perfectly to our target age-group.

My responsibilities during the immersive event were:

  1. To ensure that there was an on-going buzz for the event on social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. My Gothic Team mates were able to make exciting tweets including images of the events, which were connected via the BFI hashtag, #bfigothic. I was also able to make some immersive posts on the Late Nights at the Watershed Facebook Events page on the day of the event, prior to the start of the event.
  2. I was also tasked with staffing W2, where our performer as Jack Torrance was set up to type away at his writing desk, and who would become increasingly deranged and erratic throughout the course of the night. I was to keep an eye on the performer to check if he needed any refreshment at any point, as well as to ensure the audience didn’t behave inappropriately with him. This was to take place from the start of the event until the film screening at 11pm.
  3. I headed up collecting feedback from audience members following the film screening with the great help of fellow Future Producer, Hannah. Such feedback was later correlated by the Watershed, and demonstrated that the night was successful in its entertainment value, and in an important aim of our brief; that our audience would be keen to return to the Watershed for other events and screenings.

Evaluation

Shining-Analysis_Page-1Shining-Analysis_Page-2

Our immersive event was a general success, as our feedback demonstrated that a high proportion of the audience really enjoyed themselves and wished to return to the Watershed for future events. However, our feedback demonstrated that the main method by which our audience heard about the event was by word of mouth. It was thus apparent that my online promotions from the perspective of promoting the events to gain an audience through social media outlets had not been effective. This being said, from the perspective of creating an immersive atmosphere through online content, aiming to keep an in-character buzz going for the event, this aspect of my online promotion was successful as we received some interaction from ticket holders on posts made on the Late Nights at the Watershed Facebook Events Page. Though online promotion to gain a wider audience was not effective, I have learnt that such promotion needs to be more persistent, well timed and well placed. If I were to improve or alter my work for this event, I would have posted more constant promotional content via social media outlets, posting in Facebook groups which the events would appeal to (such as University Film Society groups), and utilizing a resource of appropriate Twitter contacts (such as film groups and university Twitter pages) to re-tweet such online promotion. My experiences with online promotion through this programme of events have thus nevertheless been useful, and have aided in my understanding of effective marketing and communicative promotion.

2 thoughts on “Unit 2: Arts Leadership. BFI Gothic Season #4 – My Role and Responsibilities

  1. Hannah HigginsonHannah Higginson

    It was great working with you on the Corridor Sessions Shining Immersive Night Alex. The lead you took on online copy writing and promotion was excellent. Your work meant our communications were engaging and accurate both online, in the audience email and on the flyer. You had to work to tight deadlines and ensure you kept on top of communications – well done.

    Claire Stewart – Watershed Digital Communications Manager

    1. Alexandra Ricou

      Thank you so much, Claire! It was a pleasure to work with you and the Watershed, and of course, Zoe! My experiences have really encouraged my interest in online promotion, and I hope to develop my skills further in the future!

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