Promotion Strategy
When I first thought of the idea back in August for a rave in Farnham, with there being an abundance of students and a distressing lack of nightlifeI knew it would have a good reception from the student population as the rave would refreshingly fill the gap in the recreational market that Farnham has so many holes in.
So with this idea in mind I got to thinking about how I would go about promoting this rave. Initially I told people who I thought would be interested in the rave about it's potential future fruition, the reaction I always got from people was positive and in some cases ecstatic. But word of mouth and collecting peoples phone numbers can only go so far, to achieve the largest market possible I knew I would have to incorporate social media into our promotion strategy. Unfortunately our inclusion of social media was responsible for both our fleeting success of relevancy within the conservations of Farnham students and also our terminal fate of establishment intervention.
Since I arrived in Farnham I've seen that a lot of students here go about promoting their art exhibits or installations via the medium of posters. I'd been to a couple that I'd seen reoccurring posters of and they had always seemed to attract a reasonable crowd. So I decided to design a poster for the rave that would capture the attention of students passing by them by striking a balance between ambiguity and mental representations of interest. For the latter I decided to make the words 'FARNHAM RAVE' the biggest on the poster and have them be a bright white with a colourful background. I chose this combination of words as the location of university would initially grab a students attention and the follow up 'RAVE' would draw them closer as it's a combination of words they've been desperate to read since their first night of disappointment at the SU. To maintain a level of mystery within the poster I decided to use the catchline "Something's happening in the woods, can you hear it 2?". This sentence is a direct quote from the final film and would've been used in a hyperlapse sequence of the posters all around uni, however without the film it still eludes to the location of the rave being in the woods (not too specific as we have no shortage of wooded areas here in the countryside) and also adds into the mystery of the 2 with the eye next to it. This is of course the visualisation of our sentient algorithm '2', however for the purpose of the rave promotion I thought it would be a recognisable logo for the rave that we could use for future promotional material, almost as if we were thinking about the longevity of the rave potentially becoming a brand.
So with an interesting yet enigmatic poster at hand I spent a regretful amount of money on printing 100 A4 black and white copies, 50 A4 colour copies and one A0 colour poster. Then at midnight on Sunday 18th of November, with my hoodie masking my identity, I embarked on my quest to 'scream the sound of freedom into every wall'. By 9am on the Monday the majority of the outside posters had been taken down by a receptionist, so to combat this misunderstanding (had it been posters for an art exhibit I believe the posters would not have had the same destructive treatment) I spent the morning putting quite a number inside university buildings. The building most noteworthy of our promotion was the library.
Simultaneously on the Monday we launched 'Farnham Rave' on facebook, an account that we used and abused to spam friend requests to literally everyone that appeared in our 'find friends' tab. We believed that when users received our friend request the combination of those two forbidden words would entice them like a Montague and Capulet rollercoaster to the raves facebook event. On the event page we had detailed the date and time of the rave along with the fact that the location would be coming soon. I also decided to write a witty advert for the rave that appealed and related to the students of Farnham, which was quite successful as it received 15 likes.
Ashleigh also decided that it would be smart to set Farnham Rave's birthday as the 24th of November so that on the day of the rave, all of its friends would receive a push notification reminding them of the raves existence, increasing publicity and hopefully therefore turnout.
Overall, our promotion strategies success determined our failure. By the end of that Monday we had plastered the university with our poster and harassed the students of Farnham and their mutual friends (ironically found using the same algorithm that we were shedding light on within our film) with our rave to a noteworthy degree. Farnham Rave currently has 650 friends on facebook, 200+ said they were going or interested on our facebook page and for that week we were the main talking point of students conversations. The people I had previously told about the rave were texting me telling that all their friends were talking about it and that the librarians were not happy with me using double sided tape for the interior posters (you can still see the remains of the posters in parts of university buildings).
Because of the viral and controversial nature of our operation, it didn't take long before knowledge of it fell into the wrong hands. We were threatened by our tutor that following through with the rave would "leave us open to being sued and probably expelled for bringing the university into disrepute" and we got outed by the cancerous facebook page 'Farnham Rants' who then notified the police of our existence. Because of these conditions we had no other option than to prematurely shut down our rave on Thursday evening, 2 days before it's intended birth.
What I have learnt from this fable of promotion is that if next time we were to organise this rave legally, then social media and posters are 100% the way forward as the reaction we received from the student population was immense. I have also learnt that there is most certainly a demand for this kind of night life within Farnham. From posthumously talking about the rave I have met other like minded people who are willing to help out next time we orchestrate such an event. I have also dangerously flirted with the limits of university guidelines and with the Farnham police department, hopefully next time they get the message and realise they aren't invited.
I will conclude this evaluation of our promotion strategy with an ironic dig at this units brief: we made this rave to bring the community together, but in the end it was the community that tore us apart.
-2
So with this idea in mind I got to thinking about how I would go about promoting this rave. Initially I told people who I thought would be interested in the rave about it's potential future fruition, the reaction I always got from people was positive and in some cases ecstatic. But word of mouth and collecting peoples phone numbers can only go so far, to achieve the largest market possible I knew I would have to incorporate social media into our promotion strategy. Unfortunately our inclusion of social media was responsible for both our fleeting success of relevancy within the conservations of Farnham students and also our terminal fate of establishment intervention.
Since I arrived in Farnham I've seen that a lot of students here go about promoting their art exhibits or installations via the medium of posters. I'd been to a couple that I'd seen reoccurring posters of and they had always seemed to attract a reasonable crowd. So I decided to design a poster for the rave that would capture the attention of students passing by them by striking a balance between ambiguity and mental representations of interest. For the latter I decided to make the words 'FARNHAM RAVE' the biggest on the poster and have them be a bright white with a colourful background. I chose this combination of words as the location of university would initially grab a students attention and the follow up 'RAVE' would draw them closer as it's a combination of words they've been desperate to read since their first night of disappointment at the SU. To maintain a level of mystery within the poster I decided to use the catchline "Something's happening in the woods, can you hear it 2?". This sentence is a direct quote from the final film and would've been used in a hyperlapse sequence of the posters all around uni, however without the film it still eludes to the location of the rave being in the woods (not too specific as we have no shortage of wooded areas here in the countryside) and also adds into the mystery of the 2 with the eye next to it. This is of course the visualisation of our sentient algorithm '2', however for the purpose of the rave promotion I thought it would be a recognisable logo for the rave that we could use for future promotional material, almost as if we were thinking about the longevity of the rave potentially becoming a brand.
So with an interesting yet enigmatic poster at hand I spent a regretful amount of money on printing 100 A4 black and white copies, 50 A4 colour copies and one A0 colour poster. Then at midnight on Sunday 18th of November, with my hoodie masking my identity, I embarked on my quest to 'scream the sound of freedom into every wall'. By 9am on the Monday the majority of the outside posters had been taken down by a receptionist, so to combat this misunderstanding (had it been posters for an art exhibit I believe the posters would not have had the same destructive treatment) I spent the morning putting quite a number inside university buildings. The building most noteworthy of our promotion was the library.
Simultaneously on the Monday we launched 'Farnham Rave' on facebook, an account that we used and abused to spam friend requests to literally everyone that appeared in our 'find friends' tab. We believed that when users received our friend request the combination of those two forbidden words would entice them like a Montague and Capulet rollercoaster to the raves facebook event. On the event page we had detailed the date and time of the rave along with the fact that the location would be coming soon. I also decided to write a witty advert for the rave that appealed and related to the students of Farnham, which was quite successful as it received 15 likes.Ashleigh also decided that it would be smart to set Farnham Rave's birthday as the 24th of November so that on the day of the rave, all of its friends would receive a push notification reminding them of the raves existence, increasing publicity and hopefully therefore turnout.
Overall, our promotion strategies success determined our failure. By the end of that Monday we had plastered the university with our poster and harassed the students of Farnham and their mutual friends (ironically found using the same algorithm that we were shedding light on within our film) with our rave to a noteworthy degree. Farnham Rave currently has 650 friends on facebook, 200+ said they were going or interested on our facebook page and for that week we were the main talking point of students conversations. The people I had previously told about the rave were texting me telling that all their friends were talking about it and that the librarians were not happy with me using double sided tape for the interior posters (you can still see the remains of the posters in parts of university buildings).
Because of the viral and controversial nature of our operation, it didn't take long before knowledge of it fell into the wrong hands. We were threatened by our tutor that following through with the rave would "leave us open to being sued and probably expelled for bringing the university into disrepute" and we got outed by the cancerous facebook page 'Farnham Rants' who then notified the police of our existence. Because of these conditions we had no other option than to prematurely shut down our rave on Thursday evening, 2 days before it's intended birth.
What I have learnt from this fable of promotion is that if next time we were to organise this rave legally, then social media and posters are 100% the way forward as the reaction we received from the student population was immense. I have also learnt that there is most certainly a demand for this kind of night life within Farnham. From posthumously talking about the rave I have met other like minded people who are willing to help out next time we orchestrate such an event. I have also dangerously flirted with the limits of university guidelines and with the Farnham police department, hopefully next time they get the message and realise they aren't invited.
I will conclude this evaluation of our promotion strategy with an ironic dig at this units brief: we made this rave to bring the community together, but in the end it was the community that tore us apart.
-2
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