03 Jul 2014
How do you promote your artform when many people don’t understand what it is? That was the challenge facing Chamber Music New Zealand (CMNZ) when they signed up for our Optimise coaching programme in late-2012.
The answer was to create and distribute short videos that captured the essence of chamber music and relate this to everyday life. The new campaign has had immediate and long-lasting positive effects.
What did they want to achieve?
Findings from Creative New Zealand’s Audience Atlas New Zealand 2011 report indicated that many people did not know or were unclear what chamber music was. The CMNZ team decided that online marketing would be the most effective way to overcome this barrier.
They used their Optimise coaching to developing an online campaign that would help to:
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raise exposure and awareness of what chamber music was
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encourage conversation online about chamber music and engagement on the CMNZ social media channels
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communicate the CMNZ brand values to new and existing audiences.
What did they do?
CMNZ decided their campaign needed to reach people interested in attending arts events, but who did not know what chamber music was or had no recollection of attending a concert. The Essence and Expression groups identified in our Culture Segments publication were chosen as their targets.
Team brainstorming sessions unearthed words that described the essence of chamber music, such as “exquisitely beautiful” and “a conversation”. These inspired the idea for a series of short videos based on the theme Chamber Music – Conversation through music.
CMNZ’s Marketing and Communications Co-ordinator, Candice de Villiers, led the campaign working in collaboration with design and production students from Massey University’s Open Lab.
The result was four short videos, each with a single ‘story’ related to the overall theme. They were set to a well-known piece of chamber music – Brahms’ String Quartet in C minor Op 51 No 1 performed by the Tokyo String Quartet. A composite video Chamber Music Capturing Life merging all four performances brought the stories to a finale.
One video was released per week supported by targeted YouTube In-Stream and Facebook Page Post Engagement advertising. Candice optimised analytics, landing pages and advertising messages to get the best possible result.
‘Selfie’ videos submitted on request by national and international chamber music artists went towards an extra ‘behind-the-scenes’ video.
The opportunity to work with the Facebook marketing team as part of Facebook’s new Start to Success Program ensured the most effective use of their spend and built internal capability.
Base targets for the campaign were:
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100 people create and/or share content via the campaign
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10% increase in new visitor traffic to CMNZ website
What were the results?
The CMNZ team exceeded their base targets with:
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503 people creating and/or sharing content about the videos (liking, commenting and sharing across the social media platforms being tracked during the campaign period of one month during November/December 2013).
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an 11.6% increase in traffic to the website (based on the percentage of ‘new visit’ traffic that hit the specific campaign landing page during the campaign period)
Long term results included:
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more internal skills in video production and social media advertising
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a body of video content that will not date and can be re-used
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stronger relationships with networks and collaborators who helped with – and benefited from – the campaign.
“We will be using this momentum to broaden our audiences, by engaging those who have now come across our videos to encourage them to experience more of what we do,” says Candice.
CATEGORIES: Audience development, Capability building Latest news and blog
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