Marketing Campaigns

General Target Audience
The target audience for the play would be families with children up to the age of 8. Dr. Seuss books are popular with children learning to read due to the simplicity, so I would be targeting that audience. As the main character is Boy, I would be preferring to target boys over girls.

Marketing Strategies

London
To get the best value for money, I would target the advertising towards the children, who would convince the parents. The biggest factor would include a highly produced and colourful video advert, preferably showing a song and show footage, to be advertised online. As children are on little social media, this would primarily be targeted at the YouTube for Kids app, to people based in London and the the surrounding area; as well as the main YouTube app, targeting new parents as well as children that might be watching on their parent's account.

This online strategy would also include social media accounts on all the major platforms; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, although posts would likely be duplicated across all 3. They would include rehresal and set photos/videos, along with behind the scenes content.

After that the best way to market would to conduct a large print advertisment scheme in London, which would remind children to ask their parents to go, as well as reminding parents. As well as billboards, this includes buses and taxis.

Finally I would schedule free performances of a few songs and workshops in bookshops during Half Term. Parents are often looking for things to do with their children, and free entertainment in respected establishments such as Waterstones and Foyles is popular. There is also the potential to hand out discount vouchers at these events. I would also schedule a performances at West End Live, a free event that takes place in June each year.

I would avoid TV advertising as so many people are watching online that any slots worth buying would be ridiculously expensive. Radio is an option, although I wouldn't use it as it is unlikely children would be paying attention.

We would also put together a press pack with photos of the show, and a synopsis. This would encourage critics to review the show.

Ringwood
As parents are far more involved in the production than in London, and family and friends are more than enough to fill capacity for the entire run, the marketing campaign in Ringwood would be primarily social media based, and aimed at parents. This would include weekly photos and potentially video from rehersals, drawings and photos on the progress of the set, and a video advert for the show nearer the run. We could also pay to have this appear to members of the community on social medias such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. 

Posters are also a good tool in Ringwood due to the aging population that may not be on social media. These are popular in the local area, but the designs are usually rather plain and boring. With an eye-catching design we could stand out and attract more of the town who aren't nessecearily connected with the school.

TV and Radio aren't really options. TV is due to the fact that we don't have local TV stations in the UK, and a national advert would be unesseceary and expensive. We do have local radio stations, but ones that would be worth our money (Local to the area between Christchurch, Poole and Salisbury) have poor listenership figures.

An alternative method of advertising is putting adverts in local papers, or contacting reporters to get featured in the newspaper for free. A good idea for this is to put together a print advert, and a press pack with photos and information about the show.

Evaluation

My 2 campaigns differ significantly. London aims at the children, as the larger budget would allow us to target a specific audience across a large population. Not every child has to like Dr. Seuss, as the large reach of the campaign would reach enough Dr. Seuss fans. In the Ringwood campaign the show is very much attached to the school, and would target the parents rather than the children. This is much more likely to work with a tighter community and smaller population.

Children would be targeted by the bright colours and happy songs, and adults would like the high production values seen in the trailer. The London plan aims at children convincing parents, and the Ringwood plan aims at parents bringing along children to entertain them.

The London budget would be significantly larger, due to the probable larger theatre and longer run. The campaign can go through stages, having peaks when booking opens, after opening night when the reviews come out, and before/during school holidays. The rest of the time the campaign can be scaled back. In Ringwood the campaign can be short but impactful, as the tickets normally sell out quick we only need to target the start of the booking period. Due to this and the locality of the campaign it should be far smaller and cheaper.