Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) pioneers arts marketing success
01 November 2007
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has undergone a major transformation in how it interacts with its existing and potential audiences, resulting in a major marketing success. As of October 2007, the Company has seen a 72 percent increase in ticket buyers visiting Stratford-upon-Avon, resulting in more than 152,000 new customers in the last three years.
Through new ways of segmenting the RSC’s Stratford-upon-Avon and London audiences, the Company has gained a deeper understanding of those who come to the theatre, improved its marketing communications to reach new audiences and to encourage existing audiences to visit more often. It has increased the number of RSC Full Members by 40 percent.
The success that the RSC has been able to achieve is due in part to Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, which provides consulting services to help the RSC better segment customers according to their preferences and interests. Accenture has helped the Company determine the best tour locations to help meet audience-development targets. Through their work together, Accenture also helped the Company to attract new audiences to The Courtyard Theatre, its temporary performance space in Stratford-upon-Avon, pending transformation of the existing Royal Shakespeare Theatre by 2010.
Mary Butlin, Head of Market Planning at the RSC, explained the importance of the work to the success of the RSC’s marketing campaigns: ‘The RSC is an international company and is going through immense change with the closure of its main performance space, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, for a major transformation. It is critical that during this period we maintain and build our audience. The work we are doing with Accenture means we can talk to our existing and target audiences more effectively by understanding their interests through their ticket buyer profiles.
‘This work is pioneering within the arts sector and allows us to combine efficiency with the confidence that we are talking to all of our audiences as individuals, supplying them with targeted information that is relevant to them.’
Other successes have included a 75% increase in those regularly attending the RSC, an increase of 29,526 plus an annual increase of 67% in the amount of revenue raised for the Company through the Shakespeare’s Circle donation scheme.
“Our productive partnership with the RSC, now entering its fifth year, represents a powerful example of the best of business working closely together with the arts for mutual benefit,” said Mark Foster, Accenture’s Group Chief Executive - Management Consulting & Integrated Markets. “We are proud to have made a quantifiable difference in the way that the RSC engages with its audience, and we look forward to continuing to help the RSC bring the arts to an even wider audience.”
Accenture became the RSC’s “high performance business partner” in 2003, and in 2007 they strengthened their support of the Company by sponsoring the international tour of King Lear and The Seagull as well as its run in London from November 2007 to January 2008. Accenture provides the Company not only with financial support, but also consulting services which are helping the RSC develop its performance as a business and to achieve the same unparalleled success commercially as it enjoys artistically.
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Further information
For more information contact:
Philippa Harland
RSC Head of Press
0207 845 0512
philippa.harland@rsc.org.uk
Jane Ellis
RSC Communications Manager
07966 295 032
jane.ellis@rsc.org.uk
About the Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company aims to keep audiences in touch with Shakespeare as our contemporary – understanding his work through today’s artists, actors and writers. Therefore the Company’s repertoire not only includes the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, but also classic plays by international dramatists and work by living writers. The RSC also produces extensive education and outreach work to engage more people with Shakespeare’s work and live theatre. The RSC’s work is performed throughout the year in Stratford-upon-Avon, regularly in London and throughout the United Kingdom. Although the UK is the Company’s home, its audiences are global with regular performances in international theatres.
For more information about the Royal Shakespeare Company visit www.rsc.org.uk
