Marketing in the gaps
Or… how arts organisations can surprise and delight their audiences online (by sounding a bit more human)
Like most of the UK, I was thoroughly fed up of GDPR notices by May 25th. But it got me thinking about how cultural organisations use opportunities to talk to our audiences online… not just through websites, emails and social channels, but in all the tiny bits of communication that add up to our brand.
The pre-GDPR privacy notice / re-permission email. There it was, a pretty basic piece of communication, a necessity to many organisations and a blight on all our inboxes, and that’s mostly how it sounded; we’re really sorry, we have to do this, you need to re-subscribe, sorry again.
BUT. In amongst all the emails that sounded exactly the same, some people did it better (🙌 to Daniel Kitson who probably wins that one) with emails that sounded less like they’d been written by a legal team who had to do this and more like there were real people behind them, who did actually care about your privacy. [Edit: I’ve just been pointed to this great example from the National Opera Studio].
I’m a big fan of Slack, both as a communications tool and as a brand, and Anna Pickard, Slack’s Director of Tone & Voice (great job title) gave a talk at Webstock a few years ago about the work that goes into their software release notes and how they connect to Slack’s brand. She talked about finding spaces online where you can share your brand’s personality, and trying to put content in places you wouldn’t expect, to surprise and delight users.
My recent GDPR email experience suggests we’re not as good at this as we could be in the cultural sector; we’re not finding those opportunities, we’re not approaching our communications creatively and we’re not helping our audiences see the people behind our organisations. And really, we’re creative organisations, so we’ve got no excuse.
So where can cultural organisations find these these nooks, crevices, gaps and spaces? Where are the places we can surprise and delight our audiences? In truth, they’re pretty easy to find, but here are a few to start you off.
The boring pages
We all know (and are probably guilty of creating) those dry, practical, information-based areas on our websites; whether it’s the contact or how to get here pages, access or privacy information, even the footer. Of course we need them, and of course they provide vital information to users, but couldn’t they do it better?
Here’s a great example of access information from The Roald Dahl Museum (thanks to Matthew Cock for the link, from his post on Museum Accessibility). It’s practical and does the job, but feels completely in-keeping with the Museum’s brand.
Find the boring pages on your site; the statements, the policies, the things that are there because they have to be. Read them. Then rip them up and write what you actually want to say to people.
The labelling of the information as a ‘statement’ further frames it as part of a policy exercise that the museum is legally required to do, rather than something they choose and wish to do.
Bury ‘access statements’, very deep. Take the information within them, and write it in plain and honest language addressed directly to visitors about the barriers they may find, and what the museum has done to remove them. Matthew Cook
The automated bits
If you check your booking emails, purchase receipts, tickets, or simply the confirmations users get when they sign up to your email lists, I’m guessing you’ll find default system copy somewhere along the line.
Try it now. Go through your signups or purchase pathways and screenshot all the on-screen messages or email confirmations you get along the way. Does it feel like interacting with your organisation should? Is there anywhere where the language feels jarring? Now write it again, better. Often these bits of copy have been tweaked from a default. Starting from scratch can be really liberating.
(Bonus points if you make it look better too. You might not need a designer or developer, just changing fonts and colours can make a big difference.)
The details
Will Norris wrote a post recently On the Subject of Boring Arts Marketing, where he took particular issue with email subject lines. It generated a lot of discussion which I won’t repeat here, but the point, that small things like email subject lines can make a big difference to audiences, is a really important one. If you’re not already AB testing subject lines and refining what works best, it’s easy to do.
And if you’re already doing that, then what about the default email addresses you use? They don’t need to be admin@organisation.com (I saw ringmaster@ used by a circus organisation recently, lovely). You can also set up bespoke URLs for things like your emails or social shares, which can feel a lot closer to your brand.
Or how about the names of your ticket types, email lists or the wording you use on calls to action? Check them all out, think about how they feel to users, how connected they feel to your organisation’s personality.
And of course there’s always your 404 page, especially if you have a new site and there might be out of date links around (if you haven’t seen it, one of my favourites is artist Steve Lambert’s).
Find a playful space
Some organisations (and individuals) are great at finding spaces where they can be more playful and informal; communications that become extensions of their brand. Slack has its Release Notes, the Guardian has its Style Guide and Ed Vaizey has his weekly newsletter.
Maybe you have an existing piece of communication that you don’t think of as a marketing channel, but that might be a space where you can be a bit more playful with copy. It might be a list of links you publish on a corner of your site, a listings email for the area, or the descriptions of your regular video posts. Or perhaps there’s something you do internally but don’t share; something that says something about who you are and what you do, that marks you out as an expert in your field, that would have genuine value to your audiences.
So find those spaces where you can surprise and delight, tear up the default copy that’s there already and go crazy! *
* DON’T go crazy. You’re (probably) not Innocent Smoothies and if you start putting jokes in the middle of your privacy policy all of a sudden it’s going to look a bit weird. A playful, jokey tone might feel quite far away from your brand. But don’t let that put you off, you just need to find the tone of voice that’s right for you.
Which means before you do any of this you need to have considered and defined your organisation’s brand or personality, and thought about your tone of voice, and how you speak to your audiences.
And if you want any help working out how you do that online, creating something new or ripping up existing content and starting again, do get in touch.
