Every year brings its own challenges for arts marketers: reduced funding; diminishing returns; accessing new audiences or the perennial question of how to create ‘that’ stand-out campaign to strike the perfect note with your audience and put your brand on the map.

We highlight four big themes that influenced arts marketing practice across Scotland and beyond in 2015, together with examples of the inspired and inspiring campaigns that emerged in response to them – at home and further afield:

#1 Collaborative marketing

For marketers who need to squeeze the last ounce from a stretched budget; to reach new communities; diversify audiences or amplify their brand, collaboration is the watchword. Collaboration can drive innovation; inspire fresh thinking and provide a platform for large-scale initiatives with national or international reach. Here are four notable examples of collaborations from 2015:

• ATTENDANCE was a collaborative marketing initiative to build and diversify audiences for dance in Northern Ireland. Arts Council Northern Ireland describes the project, in which Dance Resource Base partnered with dance companies, venues and festivals in a campaign to encourage audiences to try new forms of dance or experience dance for the first time.
• World Ballet Day Live saw five leading dance companies from around the world join forces to create a 23-hour live stream of content, designed to build global buzz around the artform – details via The Stage.
• Corners Live, described as a traditional gallery space, radio broadcaster and television channel rolled into one, this new digital extension of the existing Corners project was created by ISIS Arts in Newcastle to promote engagement with contemporary art on a Europe-wide scale. The collaboration involves over 30 different arts organisations and 55 artists from across Europe – A-N explains how it all works.
• Visual Arts Glasgow Culture Republic were involved in this collaborative marketing initiative between 30 museums and galleries, designed to build and mobilise audiences for Glasgow’s rich visual arts scene around the time of the Turner Prize.

For further ideas, inspiration and an overview of the power and impact of cultural collaboration in Scotland, Creative Scotland’s impact evaluations from the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games were published in 2015 and provide an excellent reference resource.

#2 Communities and wellbeing

In 2015 cultural engagement professionals focused on building social engagement, showcasing the importance and relevance of culture in people’s lives. This is part of the wider trend of art works themselves being grounded in participation from communities, as in Assemble’s 2015 Turner Prize win.

Marketers have needed to draw attention to their organisations’ contributions to building robust and healthy communities. Lots of research is happening in this space, including: the Cultural Value Project,  Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing or Arts Health and Wellbeing programme. Examples from 2015 include:

• Devron Arts saw a sharp rise in visitor numbers and a much wider group of participants after employing a Cultural Health Worker. Her prescription for the community of Huntly was to increase their participation in culture to increase community members’ overall wellbeing.
• The Whitworth Gallery has focused on removing barriers to access and building strong connections between its art and Manchester’s people.  In her talk at our 2015 conference, Access All Areas, Gallery Director Maria Balshaw described the Whitworth’s relationships with Manchester’s young people, Indian community and Iranian community amongst others. Maintaining and building these ties played a significant role in the Whitworth being named the Art Fund’s 2015’s Museum of the Year.

In the wider world, consumers are beginning to look to commercial brands to help increase their wellbeing, according to a new study from Edelman – and this growing pursuit of ‘wellbeing’ presents a clear opportunity for the arts and culture to play a role.

#3 Accessing hard to reach groups

A key goal for marketers in 2015 was connecting with and serving those members of their communities who are hardest to reach, breaking down barriers to accessing arts and culture. You can see examples of this trend at work in these initiatives:

• Edinburgh’s Festival and Kings Theatres launched an action research project for audiences with dementia. Profiled in The Stage, it reaches across the whole organisation and includes changes to infrastructure, offering new types of programming and calls for new communication strategies and tactics. This project will roll out over 3 years and Culture Republic is looking forward to working with Festival City’s Theatre Trust to measure its ongoing impact.
• Edinburgh International Festival worked hard to build stronger connections with family audiences in 2015. The Scotsman reported on their campaign, which included targeted programming such as the family concert and the NTS production of Dragon, as well as putting young people’s work at the forefront of EIF’s communications activity by running a competition for 5 -12 year olds to design the fireworks advertisement.

Culture Republic’s Access All Areas conference in October 2015 brought together a whole host of rich examples of arts and cultural organisations in Scotland and beyond that are making a real difference through their work with hard-to-reach groups. Check out the range of resources (including interactive maps, videos, podcasts and population profiles) we’ve created to help you improve your equalities and diversity practice and build engagement in the communities that matter to you.

#4 Blurring the line between creative content and marketing content

In the world of content marketing, the lines between communications campaigns and creative work are often blurry. 2015 brought some ambitious initiatives from organisations whose experiential approach to communications stretched the boundaries of traditional marketing to become cultural experiences in their own right:

• V&A Dundee began connecting with their audience long before the opening of their new venue. The team have made Dundee’s waterfront their canvas, with a giant comic strip that is an artwork in its own right and brings the V&A story out of the gallery setting and into the heart of the city. Their touring mobile exhibition has meanwhile travelled the whole of Scotland in partnership with the Travelling Gallery. Culture Republic are working with the V&A Dundee on a market segmentation project to support its activity prior to launch.
• Harper Collins drew prospective readers into the world of Harper Lee’s much-anticipated Go Set a Watchman with a sample audiobook chapter in the Guardian that was enriched with animated visuals and narration from Reece Witherspoon.
• Paris Opera Ballet launched a digital Third Stage for bespoke dance film productions that go far beyond the usual ‘making-of’ or ‘trailer’ style video marketing content. Featuring bespoke choreography and high production values, each is a piece of art in its own right, as Vulture reports. Our favourite film blends animation and behind the scenes footage and was created in partnership with former Disney animator Glen Keane.

Get inspired for 2016

If you’re hungry for more stories of real-life marketing campaigns that work, look out for Culture Republic’s  Brains Behind the Campaigns event, coming up in March 2016. This half day session will connect you with some of the most innovative and effective marketers working in our sector today, each of whom will give you a behind-the-scenes insight into their very campaigns – warts and all. To get a flavour of what’s to come check out our 2015 Brains Behind the Campaigns event and get in touch for your personal invitation to the next one.

Main image credit: Art by Dragan (CC BY 2.0)