Newcastle Theatre Royal

Newcastle Theatre Royal is truly a North East icon. The grade I-listed building is one of the city’s best-known landmarks hosting a variety of musicals, drama, opera, ballet and pantomimes. It increasingly sells the majority of its tickets online via its site.

Background

When Newcastle Theatre Royal approached us in May 2021 to announce that their shows were back on, demand from consumers to get back out there was definitely high.

The pandemic hit events & hospitality particularly hard, and so the Theatre had the same challenge that the whole events industry had; how to convince consumers that the Theatre is safe to attend amongst the heights of the pandemic?

To get the message out quickly and effectively, Theatre Royal turned to paid media to push the messaging out directly to their target audiences.

The Challenge

There had been nigh-on zero ticket sales for nearly 18 months, staff furloughed and in all honesty, much like the rest of the world, the Theatre didn’t know if it was going to be the same again. We had to extinguish the uncertainty once and for all, and quickly as most shows have a tight turnaround time and demand for ticket sales.

It was vital that we let the North East theatre goers know that the Theatre was back, the shows were ready, and attending the performances was completely safe.

It was time for events to get back on their feet, but would ticket sales return to pre-pandemic levels?

The Work

Unsure how their regular Theatre-goers would react, the Theatre elected to return to business with a confident “The Curtain Rises” campaign, which kicked off in July 2021.

Be Found Be Chosen were recruited to run paid search, display, remarketing and crucially, paid social for the campaign. We worked closely with the Theatre’s in-house team, their web development, and creative agencies to make sure any messaging was aligned, succinct and inspired confidence in potential customers. The creative and messaging matched the theatre’s out-of-home advertising, bringing the campaign online and steering users towards the website to act on their interest.

As of writing, we’re working with the Theatre on an ongoing basis, to promote each show individually to potentially interested audiences, via Google Ads and Facebook Ads.  We’ve successfully promoted shows including SIX the Musical, Blood Brothers and West End favourite Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. When the world premiere of The Drifters Girl, starring Beverley Knight in the titular role, was transferred to Newcastle Theatre Royal from London’s West End, we were on hand to make sure it was a packed-out show!

We assisted the Theatre with:

• Google search & display ads
• Facebook & Instagram advertising
• Remarketing across both channels
• Email campaign monitoring
• Data analysis, tracking and reporting

The Results

The rip-roaring success of The Curtain Rises campaign even took us by surprise. It was clear very quickly that customers were ready and willing to get back out there.

The Curtain Rises search campaign picked up £45K in ticket sales from a mere £1k in ad spend. The search campaign was ably backed up by a successful display campaign which generated over one million impressions to interested theatre-goers.

Some of our paid social advertising results also speak for themselves – we managed a 14.7x ROAS from a spend of £800 for one show in particular. 

We’ve almost generated 5000 cost-effective ticket sales for the Theatre now, and we can’t wait to continue to see this figure rise as the show season really picks up towards Christmas.

The Future

We’re delighted to be continuing our successful working relationship with the Theatre Royal, as well as the other agencies involved. We’re currently working on the campaign for the 2021 pantomime season and doing everything we can to ensure that it’s the best yet!