When working on fundraising ideas it felt important to me that our events not only raised us money but promoted both our show and Sherbet Lemon Theatre as a brand. As a new and emerging theatre company we were faced with the task of promoting our brand before we had a product to give us a name, therefore, needing establish our company ethos through our marketing. Working with our Lead Marketer (Emily Liddle), we quickly established that fundraising would be an ideal outlet in which to promote our company brand in person and to a wider audience. In today’s environment it is “increasingly difficult and uncertain” that a company’s “success [can be] based only on product quality” (Todor, 2014, 59). Therefore, by using our fundraising events to promote the Sherbet Lemon Theatre brand, we were able to establish ourselves with the university community and create a lasting impression on those we encountered.
In relation to marketing, we also tailored our fundraising events to relate to our brand and our debut show. Our first event was ‘Guess the amount of Sherbet Lemons in the Jar’, which immediately linked to our company as we were using the sweets from which we obtained our company name. We then proceeded to run a ‘Guess the name of the Bear’ competition which again linked to our company brand as we placed the bear in a company t-shirt, but also linked to The Truth About Bedtime… as many people can relate a teddy bear to sleep. When running these competitions we also thought carefully about how the location of our events would promote our brand most successfully. We learned that “a brand can not function without a strategy” (Todor, 2014, 59), therefore, running our competitions in the locations that would strategically allow us to raise the most money and promote our brand to the widest audience. We placed our competitions in three main locations: Zing café in the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, Ground floor of the University Library and the Students Union Reception, as we felt these locations provided optimum opportunities for reaching the widest audience. Each member of our company took part in our fundraising events prompting our ethos of a close working ensemble, all wearing either our company t-shirts or the colour yellow in order to make us recognisable. The tables on which we placed the jar and bear were decorated with sherbet lemon sweets, our business cards and yellow ribbon in order make us stand out in each location and all the event promotional posters housed our logo to keep everything brand related. Through this we were able to market Sherbet Lemon Theatre as a fun and approachable company, enticing the public and consequently making them more likely to donate to our cause.
(Round, 2018) (Round, 2018) (Round, 2018)
Alongside both of these competitions we also ran a Go Fund Me campaign, that allowed anyone outside of personal reach to our company the ability to donate if they wished too. This, therefore, allowed our company brand to be reached by a wider audience outside of our local market.
E.R.
(If you wish to gain more information on our fundraising events, please see the posts entitled Competition time!, Competition time! part 2 and reaching a wider audience, under the ‘Fundraiser’ tab. Also If you would like to examine the success of our competition locations please see the post entitled Analysing our fundraising campaign, under the ‘Technical Documents’ tab.)
Round, E. (2018) Guess the Name of the Bear [image].
Round, E. (2018) Sherbet Lemons on Display [image].
Round, E. (2018) Student Union Reception [image].
Todor, R.D. (2014) The importance of branding and rebranding for strategic marketing. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov, 7(2) 59-64. Available from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=f0b26e6b-d5cf-484e-8788-c89d603be781%40sessionmgr4009 [accessed 12 April 2018].
