Polka Theatre

The Challenge

The Polka Theatre is one of London’s leading producers of children’s theatre. Polka have worked with London Calling since 2010 on a range of campaigns for their key shows and season brochures.

With over 90,000 visitors a year the Polka Theatre work with London Calling on detailed family orientated campaigns and one of the most significant campaigns each year is for their Christmas show.

In 2017 we were given a brief for The Snow Queen that required sustained and targeted distribution of show print to family venues across the capital and local to Wimbledon. The campaign required a mixture of racked distribution and hand to hand work at researched family events within 30 minutes of the Polka Theatre.

Starting from early October the campaign had to generate interest in early bookings; as well as focusing on people that were making last minute plans for the Christmas holidays.

Quantities: 45,000 A5 flyers


The Strategy

In order to engage those with children under 12 we did a series of distribution drops on the following runs:

Kids South West
Kids South East
Surrey Families

Each run contains a selection of family attractions, family friendly restaurants, museums, libraries and play centres. Key venues included Brooklands Museums, Unicorn Theatre, Horniman Museum & Gardens, Putney Arts Theatre, Rose Theatre Kingston, Strawberry Hill House and Kingston Museum.

In addition to family centric venues, we also used a selection of neighbourhood runs, selecting venues with a community/family focus. These runs are designed to target locals with children during their day to day activities. Runs of 50 venues in each area were created in:

Tooting
Balham
Morden
Wimbledon
New Malden
Fulham/Putney/Barnes
Richmond/Kew
Clapham/Battersea/Wandsworth
Teddington/Twickenham
Kingston

Additionally we researched a number of hand to hand events that would have a high attendance of local families. Events targeted included:

Wimbledon Park Fireworks
Bishops Park Fireworks
Morden Park Fireworks
Richmond Athletic Ground Fireworks
Kingston Christmas Markets

The Results

Over 640 family centric venues targeted between October and December with 45,000 pieces of print.

High engagement with local families and sustained awareness built up across the key school holiday periods.

Top pick-up venues in the Kids South West:
Battersea Arts Centre
SW11
Ceramics Café Kew
TW9
Clapham Library
SW4
Landmark Arts Centre
TW11
Piccolo Play Centre
W4
Pottery Cafe
SW11
Putney Arts Theatre
SW15
Streatham Library
SW16
The London Museum of Water & Steam
TW8
Watermans Arts Centre
TW8