Last week I was back at The Old Crown for a Twespians PR event. It was a follow-up to September’s PR-centric panel discussion and was titled ‘Pushing it to its limits’. Here’s some copy/pasted blurb by way of explanation:
we’re wanting to open up the floor to talk about pushing what we do in arts marketing and PR to it’s limits. With the digital world being so important, do we need to rethink the tried and tested methods that so many still rely on today? Can we learn from what people are doing in other disciplines? Is a fundamental shift required in how we perceive audience, community and promotion?
This time, I’d very kindly been asked to join the panel for the discussion alongside:
- Lindsay Watson from Cameron Mackintosh
- Luke Murphy from 33 Digital (and Twespians co-founder)
- Ben Matthews, freelance PR consultant and founding director of Bright One Comms
with Eleanor Turney as chair.
Looking back, it’s funny how many of the points I made are sat as unfinished posts for this blog. They included thoughts about how arts marketing conferences could be improved, where the arts and culture sector should be looking to learn lessons on marketing and PR and why it’s not always helpful to think of ‘doing social media’ on a budget/in your spare time.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the evening for me was the sense that everyone that room had an idea of how they want to take their craft forward – they just feel constrained by a range of circumstances. If those obstacles to progress could be identified and overcome (and there were some smart people at the event) then maybe things might improve.
The other thing was that I brought up John V Willshere’s ‘Advertising Fireworks, Social Bonfires‘ idea, having been reminded of it at the AMA Digital Marketing Day the other week. I wasn’t able to credit John properly at the time, so I’m doing it here.
Thanks to the Twepsians folks for inviting me along to speak, to everyone else who was there for contributing to the chat and to Mobius for sponsoring.
Andrew Girvan recorded the discussion and has uploaded it to Soundcloud:
Oh, and Richard Herring and Stewart Lee turned up to the pub later on. Somewhere I’ve got a Fist of Fun tour ticket from 1995(ish) with their signatures on.