Scottish Opera 2002
| Organisation |
Scottish Opera |
| Project |
A multimedia audience development campaign to communicate the accessibility of the live opera experience, with particular emphasis on the 18-35 age group. |
| Artform |
Music |
| Location |
Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness |
| Application type |
Full project |
| Date |
2001/02 |
| Status |
Completed |
| Grant |
£25,000 |
| Total project cost |
£50,000 |
Scottish Opera is one of Scotland’s four national companies. Its main purpose is to perform world-class opera productions throughout Scotland and beyond. As well as the main large-scale company, the company tours small- and medium-scale productions to towns and villages across Scotland with Opera Go Round and Scottish Opera On Tour. Essential Scottish Opera tours concerts of popular opera classics each spring. Scottish Opera for All is the education and outreach unit of the organisation. It provides a programme of performance-based projects and workshops for a wide cross-section of the community.
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A multimedia audience development campaign incorporating cinema, the internet and print to communicate the accessibility of the live opera experience, with particular emphasis on the 18-35 age group. The campaign was supported by a ticket offer. |
Building on a successful cinema advertising campaign undertaken in 1996, Scottish Opera was keen to test an innovative multimedia approach to audience development that would allow them to:
- communicate the accessibility and emotional involvement of the live opera experience and challenge commonly-held beliefs regarding the exclusivity of opera
- target, in particular, the 18-35 age group thus expanding on previous successes with this audience sector and increase attendance by 2.1% over the following 18 months (approximately 1,250 responses to the ticket offer).
Cinema and the internet are universally acknowledged as ‘democratic’ with few if any physical or intellectual barriers to attendance. Recent statistics indicated considerable increases in cinema attendances and internet usage.
- A 40-second cinema commercial was screened over a five-week period in February/March 2001 (to coincide with the launch of the Scottish Opera season) in main screen cinemas throughout Scotland. The commercial was shown on over 326 screens (from Thurso to Carlisle) specifically targeting films for the 18-35 age group. It was also shown on the Scottish Opera website.
- A ticket promotion for performances in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness was mounted to support the campaign.
- A print campaign was run in conjunction with the cinema commercial and ‘e-trailer’, enabling the company to collect contact details including e-mail addresses.
- A response base tracking mechanism on the website enabled Scottish Opera to collect customer data from the internet.
- The cinema commercial was seen by an estimated 286,000+ people.
- The response to the campaign overall was encouraging, with very positive responses to the ticket offer in Glasgow (114 individuals booked 397 tickets, 66 being first-time attenders) and Edinburgh (55 individuals bought 118 tickets); less impressive in Aberdeen and Inverness. The total number of tickets purchased through the cinema/internet offer between November and June was 536.
- The commercial was downloaded from the internet 1,182 times.
- Scottish Opera now holds an active, permission-based e-mailing list of about 10,000 (as of April 2004), with 660 of these addresses resulting from individuals viewing the commercial online.
- The encouraging results of the campaign have strengthened the resolve of Scottish Opera to integrate e-marketing into their core marketing activity and to develop a strategy for the future.
Lynsey Taylor
Marketing Manager
Scottish Opera
39 Elmbank Crescent
Glasgow G2 4PT
Tel: 0141 248 4567
Fax: 0141 221 8812
E-mail: lynsey.taylor@scottishopera.org.uk
Web: www.scottishopera.org.uk |