Building a family audience
Southbank Centre was grappling with how its Imagine Festival should be positioned to encourage more families to make it a part of their Half Term plan. While the offer is broad and varied, they needed to understand the overarching USP that actually motivates families to participate.
Our research involved focus groups with families who had made intentional visits to the festival, as well as those who had unintentionally stumbled across it. We spoke to audiences with children of different ages and with differing relationships to the Southbank Centre.
We delivered actionable findings that gave the team an unequivocal steer and clear messaging hierarchy. This gave them confidence, not just on what messaging would successfully resonate with audiences, but also what ideas they could let go of – as the conversations with audiences were able to dispel some assumptions about what mattered to audiences.
One year later, this was smoothly and confidently rolled out for the following Imagine Festival, with a compelling campaign that tapped into audience motivations, communicating what they valued most about the Festival – and exceeded audience targets early on.
Because of this success, we’re now in conversation with the Southbank Centre team as this has kick started conversations around an wider audience-informed family strategy – aligning year-round opportunities to grow Southbank Centre’s family audience.
“Fly a Kite have more than delivered on the brief and our project is most definitely set up for success. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with both Jo and Lorna – they bring a powerful combination of skills: in-depth research understanding with real-life arts marketing understanding. This ensures research rigour – from ensuring we are asking the right question and all business partners are aligned to it through to designing the research to answer the brief effectively… AND effective, choiceful translation of audience insights into a clearly communicated presentation that can be understood and actioned by the business. Fly a Kite make it look easy – when I appreciate just how difficult it is to pull off.”
Claire Clutterbuck, Head of Audience Insights & Engagement, Southbank Centre
