The Challenge
To promote the new gallery opening in Ilford to an audience in the local area and across London.
To also indicate the best areas to target audiences who would be most responsive to a new art gallery opening. We also wanted to target local areas within a commutable distance of Ilford.
The Strategy
We used our direct door drops services and targeted racked display to effectively raise awareness of the gallery opening. Using Audience Finder analysis, we selected six nearby postcode sectors with high proportions of cultural consumers, namely Experience Seekers and Commuterland Culturebuffs.
Racked display included our contemporary art focused networks and specials as well as a bespoke East London special focusing on specific venues.
To optimise reach, the print campaign was also supported with a targeted social media campaign, using paid promotion to target an even wider target audience.
The Results
Over 6,000 residential addresses were covered and high footfall venues across London had flyers displayed including National Portrait Gallery, Royal College of Art and Tate Modern.
Their social media campaign had over 8,000 impressions in two days and over 250 link clicks.
“SPACE Ilford is a new art venue in the heart of Ilford, offering an art gallery, event space and 36 artists’ studios. Located at the rear of Redbridge Town Hall, we were keen to attract a new audience to SPACE, one that may never have heard of or visited SPACE before, while at the same time trying to attract our current audience further east. It was therefore very important that our launch event not only attracted footfall on the day, but also served as a way of letting people know that we were opening a free public art gallery in a new location – it was both an exercise in brand awareness to a brand new audience, and a ‘change of gallery address’ ‘look at all the great things happening in the east of London’ to our existing audiences.
The event attracted more than 700 visitors over the two days we were open, the majority of whom were from the local community. Annecdotally, people reported seeing our message on social media, picking up flyers (which they then shared with their neighbours) and in the local press. We were very pleased with the turnout”
– Emma Guest, Space Studios –