As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of my responsibilities as Marketing Manager would be to write a Press Release.

In order to do this I first looked at some examples of press releases from existing Theatre Companies such as: Look Left Look Right Theatre and Tortoise in a Nutshell Theatre. Both of whom had a press release published in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Guide on: How to Sell a Show. Here is the link to the online guide which I found extremely useful as it contained many handy marketing tips and advice.

https://www.edfringe.com/uploads/docs/participants/Fringe_Guide_to_Selling_a_Show.pdf

The Fringe guide suggested that when writing a press release you should use language that the general public can understand. It also mentions that you are effectively trying to sell your show as well give the public enough information without bombarding them details. For example, I needed to include the basics of, Who, What, When, Where and Why? Then after covering these points it was then possible to talk briefly about the style of performance and what sort of theatre company STAMP is. I had to be very conscious of what words I chose to describe as to make sure the press release would appeal to a wide range of demographics.

After writing the press release, I e-mailed it along with a promotional image to local press contacts. These included:

• BBC Lincolnshire
• The Linc
• The Lincolnshire Echo
• The Lincolnite

In order to make sure that we covered a wide area of demographic, I also e-mailed the release to other local newspapers and sites. I chose other towns close to Lincoln that had a working theatre. The reason for doing this was to try and branch out our marketing campaign so that it could reach the widest amount of the public as possible, and thereby increasing our potential for expanding our audience capacity. This meant that I also contacted:

• The Louth Leader- the Riverhead Theatre in Louth has regularly attended shows by their local public.
• Skegness Standard- Skegness is also a town which is travelling distance from Lincoln that has a fully functioning receiving house theatre.
• Newark Advertiser- With a direct train only taking you 25minutes, and a regularly attended theatre, Newark was also a town that we tried to reach with our campaign.

We had the privilege of having the press release published by the Lincolnshire Echo and below is a link to their website where it was also published.

http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/Lincoln-graduates-producing-innovative-work/story-19020281-detail/story.html#axzz2Tphz3s19

The full press release and our list of press contacts are available for viewing as a hard copy in our Marketing Pack.

Thanks, Joe.