On our recent trip to the Edinburgh Fringe, I was bemused by just how little effort performers put in to finding out why people had selected their show. Taking a show to the Edinburgh Fringe is ridiculously expensive with some performers paying tens of thousands of pounds. The way performers recoup the costs of performing is by getting people to pay to see a show.
Acts are spending huge amounts on flyers, posters, and other promotional activities. But is any of it worthwhile?
The performer Danielle Solof has a fascinating blog post "My Real Fringe Budgets, Line-by-Line" which details the actual costs of her taking two solo shows to the Fringe. She meticulously details the price of everything from transport and food, to advertising and graphic design. She says:
I paid for outdoor ads because absolutely no one in Edinburgh knew who I was. They did help, but you still have to grind to get an audience in.
My question to her - and all performers - is how do you know what drives an audience member to see your show?
It can't have escaped your attention that everything we do online is tracked. If you buy so much as a toothpick, the retailer knows which YouTube reviews you watched, which words you searched for, the other products you considered, and the specific adverts you clicked on.
In Edinburgh, no one knows nothing.
At the end of nearly every show the performer begged us to leave a review on the Fringe website and to tell our friends. In absolutely none of the shows did the performer ask why we were there, how we found out about the show, which poster or leaflet attracted us, or whether we followed them on social media.
All that money spent on posters and no one knows if they work. As the old saying goes "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half.".
So, in an attempt to bring a little data to proceedings, here are how we chose the 26 shows we saw. I don't claim this is representative of everyone, but I think it might be illustrative. In rough order of importance were:
Proximity
The EdFringe app has a "nearby now" feature. Click on it and you get a list of shows starting soon which are only staggering distance away.
I cannot stress enough how much of a motivator that was. When you've spent all day traipsing, the last thing you want to do is another 20 minute walk uphill to see a provocative new piece of challenging theatre told through finger puppets.
About 20% of the shows we saw were via that feature.
Roughly another 40% were because the show was close to something else we really wanted to see. We knew that we wanted to see show X, so we looked for shows which weren't too far away from that venue. Yes, Edinburgh is a compact city with decent public transport, but it is much easier to walk round the corner or stay to have a drink in the venue's bar.
You can really want to see a show, but if it is a 20 minute walk between venues and it starts 15 minutes after your last show ends, you'll skip it. I'd say that location was the key driver in most of our choices.
I guess my top tip to any performer would be to be as near as physically possible to a bigger act!
Friends
A quarter of the shows we went to were because either a friend-of-a-friend was performing, or a friend booked tickets and asked if we wanted to tag along.
You are morally obliged to go to your friends' shows. Similarly, if a mate says "Oh, my friend has a show on this year", you have to make the effort to go.
Perhaps it is a bit blasé to say that word-of-mouth works, but it's a cliché becausé it is trué.
Flyers and Leaflets
We collected approximately 5,374 different promotional leaflets during our week there. Most of the time we were handed a leaflet by someone paid to hand out leaflets. They were either wordlessly stuffed into our hands, or delivered with a monotone "wanna see improv comdy?" Bleh.
A few actually spoke to us about the show when we asked questions, which was a deciding factor in seeing a couple of performances.
The best flyerers were, undoubtedly, the performers themselves. Kat Ronson in her Millennial Girl guise drawled at us "You look thin and pretty. You're allowed to come to my show." Instant sale!
Similarly, one rather famous comedian walked up to us and said "You look like theatre people!" and proceeded to pitch their show - which was a delightful encounter and would have sold us a ticket if we weren't leaving that day.
Some flyers had a QR code or URl on them so we could watch a trailer of the show. We didn't watch any of them. Perhaps we should have?
Posters
Surprisingly effective at drawing the eye! The ones which were just a photo of the comedian looking a bit "whacky" were dull. The ones of performers in their most seductive poses were a little naff. The ones which were just a close up of someone's face only really work if that person is incredibly famous, otherwise you're just left thinking "who?"
But a few posters made us stop and immediately search for the show. Graphic design is a professional skill and one worth investing in.
Some posters were everywhere. I took an instant (and uncharitable) dislike to one poster featuring a smug-looking twat and I swear he followed me around town. Some posters only appeared near the performance venue.
Incidentally, there were a couple of posters which had clearly just been fed into an AI generator. Lazy and off-putting.
Reviews
The Fringe doesn't allow weighted star reviews - so you can't immediately see if the consensus is that the show is a hit or a miss. Several of the shows we didn't enjoy got excellent reviews (from morons) and some of the shows we loved were panned (presumably by the same morons).
In truth, I don't think the reviews influenced our decision to see anything.
What Stopped Us Going To Shows
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think it is important for performers to know what stopped someone clicking the "buy" button for their show.
Ticket Cost / Value For Money
Mondays and Tuesdays saw lots of shows doing a 2-for-1 promotion. I didn't mind spending £30 for two of us to take a risk on something. Come Wednesday, I wasn't prepared to pay £60 for a 45 minute show.
I know "surge pricing" gets a bad rap, but dynamic pricing of underselling shows might help. If you've only sold four seats for today, perhaps drop the price? I don't know if the Fringe software supports that - but it seems obvious to me that having 10 people paying a fiver is better than four people paying a tenner.
Crap Signal / Long Queues
We tried to get in to a circus show. My phone didn't have enough signal for the app to work and the nearest box office had a massive queue. So we bailed.
If the venue had WiFi (not a given, weirdly) it would have gotten them an extra sale. If the ticket staff could take contactless (lots of performers did) we'd have happily paid.
You have to make it easy for people to give you money.
Not Enough Time
This is completely out of the performers' control. We had 6 days and saw about 4 shows per day. We could have seen more, but we needed to eat, explore, and sleep.
Speaking of which, there were several midnight performances which looked excellent - but I also needed to get up the next day to see more shows. Sleep won!
Too Famous
I'd love to see that guy who's on the telly. But I can watch him on the telly. That show looks like a massive success, so I'm sure it'll tour round London soon.
Sell Outs
A few shows sold out before we could get tickets. Good for them! If that was your show, you probably don't need this blog post.
Better Art Through Commerce
Art should be driven by passion.
But every performer I know listens back to their shows to see what works and what didn't. If a joke falls flat, it's cut. If a riff gets a big laugh, it's incorporated. That's the essence of data driven decision making.
I wish every performer at the Fringe had a sell out audience and were able to recoup their costs. But that is never going to happen unless they spend time understanding what gets bums on seats.
So here are a few scattered thoughts on how they could do that.
- QR code at the end of the show leading to a survey. Literally ask people "what made you choose this performance?"
- In the queue before the show, or as people are taking their seats, hand out a paper questionnaire.
- Talk to the audience after the show. See if you can gain any insights about what made them attend.
- As people are coming in, have a poster asking people to tick a box based on how they heard about the show.
- Give each leaflet a unique code (or a code per person handing them out). Ask people to bring the leaflet with them so you can see which area/person/leaflet was most effective.
- Each poster can have a unique QR code on it. Track whether the one by the station led to more ticket sales than the one in the underpass. Did the one in the gents toilets get any scans at all?
Of course, all of the above rely on talking to people who made the choice to see you. This is classic Survivorship Bias. Sure, it'll help you work out what was successful, but you won't know why people looked at your show and chose something else. That said, it is hard. How do you find people who ipso facto aren't at your show?
- That could be as simple as asking people what they dislike about the leaflet when you hand it out.
- Each poster or leaflet can have a unique QR code on it. Which ones cause people to scan, but then abandon the idea of buying a ticket?
- Speak to people who came to the venue for a show other than yours. They obviously like the location, so non-confrontationally ask them why they didn't pick you?
Some of these are easier than others. By themselves, they might give you a slightly misleading view of the data. But surely anything is better than looking at a half empty venue and wondering if those huge advertising costs did any good at all.
