Personalisation

“Now is the time to focus on re-establishing, reinforcing and reinvigorating

relationships with current customers by placing greater emphasis on the exploitation

and application of existing data assets.” The Insight Report, Experian (2009)

The Insight Report, Experian

http://www.experian.co.uk/www/pages/what_we_offer/insight-report-form.html

The recent Experian Insight Report highlighted the importance of making every

conversation count. Using scientific-like customer insight to anticipate and respond to

changes in each customer’s behaviour. Enriching the customer experience, knowing

what makes purchasers’ tick and responding at every opportunity to capitalise on

new trends emerging between the customer and brand. It all begins and ends with

data and analytics by tapping into a rich vein of customer data and augmenting it with

additional intelligence gleaned across every touchpoint.

Personalisation is just one part of this. In the corporate

world, web-based personalisation is used to target

different audiences is increasingly being used to

increase conversion rates to leads and sales,

particularly for so called e-retailers. As online competition increases it is surprising

that relatively few good examples of web-based personalisation practice exist,

particularly within the arts.

But amazon have been doing the classic

‘Customers who bought book X also bought book Y’

for nearly 10 years now, why haven’t other

companies caught on? It is apparent that even

those organisations implementing personalisation, it

is not without faults. An interesting feature which

Amazon operates as part of their web

personalisation is ‘frequently bought with items in your Shopping Basket’. An

application which could be readily applied to the arts in terms of event cross over,

encouraging repeat visits and increasing attendance at work that is difficult to

articulate.

Social Networking & Community Building

As well as the usual suspects – Facebook, Myspace, Bebo… The arts have been

creating their own Social Networks.

Example 1: Creative Spaces

http://bm.nmolp.org/creativespaces

Creative Spaces is just one of these – a new initiative that 'connects you with nine

UK national museums and galleries, allowing you to explore and comment on

collections, upload your own content, and build and share collections with others'.

Example 2 – White Canvas

http://www.whitecanvas.com

White Canvas, a social platform for the global creative community that is committed

to featuring the efforts of unique individuals from around the world with interactive

features, documentaries, and articles. Showcase your work alongside all users,

aspiring and established alike.

Digital Performance Broadcasting

While video is an obvious strand of content to make

people excited about their visit or relive memories

(see box), theatre companies are also sitting on great

banks of material in many formats. ENO's Digital

Opera Guide gives users a package of content

including ten free music downloads and 16 short

films. Video is particularly in demand and all the

major companies are experimenting with putting backstage footage, clips and full

shows online. The Royal Opera House's head of new media Rachel Coldicutt says

video allows people to familiarise themselves and become comfortable with the

venue before buying tickets.

Example 1: Berliner Philharmoniker

http://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de

The Berliner Philharmoniker is one of the world’s

greatest orchestras. But for the world to experience it

live has – until now – required a visit to its home in

Berlin or a trip to one of their tour venues. Since 17

December 2008, there is another way: the Digital

Concert Hall. This new internet platform enables

music fans all over the world to see and hear the

Philharmonic’s concerts – live or on demand.

The Digital Concert Hall is open to all interested

music lovers. You can access it via this website. The

red “Live” button on the Home page is your “door

opener”. The Berliner Philharmoniker will then be

right there. Anywhere. Anytime.

Example 2: Stagework

http://www.stagework.org

Stagework is a unique resource designed to make innovative theatre practice at the

National Theatre and selected regional partners in England more widely available to

new and existing audiences. Developed by the National Theatre and regional partner

theatres, and funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's

Culture:Online programme.

It goes behind the scenes to unpack the complex process of making theatre

performance for the general theatre-goer, the life-long learner, and curricular The

significance of this particular project is that it provides a massive source of

information for students and for general lifelong learners, and also offers teacher

support for the National Curriculum in English, Drama, Citizenship, RE and History.

Enabling the use of theatre practice to stimulate and enhance creativity and the

learning experience. It aims to increase the understanding of theatre as one of the

creative industries, and open up young people to new career possibilities.

During late 2008/2009 the NT-related material on Stagework will be transferred to a

new home on discover: online, where we will offer a more stable technical platform

and improvements such as higher-resolution video for certain clips. The four

productions from our regional partner theatres will be archived at

www.stagework.org, where we will also provide some of the technical improvements

featured at discover: online.

Case Study: Royal Opera House

Discover

http://www.roh.org.uk/discover/index.aspx

The Royal Opera House website encompasses web personalisation, digital

performance broadcasting, social networking and much more all within a very clever

multi-media hub called Discover.

Project Aims:

� To open the company up to new audiences and appear more accessible

� To banish elitist preconceptions about them. (An aspiration shared by the

likes of the English National Orchestra and the Royal Shakespeare

Company).

� To simply make people aware that they don't just do opera

The organisation has long cultivated audience loyalty through traditional methods

such as its Friends of Covent Garden scheme, established in the 1970s, now with

more than 27,000 members. But, Discover has enabled the company to engender a

new 21st century kind of loyalty.

Last year the re-launch of their site, created an average of 400,000 unique visitors

each month. The role of social networks in building audiences is growing as theatres

begin to see it as a way to have conversations with their audience and get feedback.

The Royal Opera House sees Facebook as an important part of its online strategy,

allowing it to connect with a younger audience and those it wouldn't usually be able

to reach.

The Royal Opera House's page on

Facebook has more than 14,000 fans,

three-quarters of whom are under 45.

The Royal Opera House can now add

the details of its Facebook fans to its

mailing list, alerting them of relevant

productions. Facebook provides an

alternative source of customer data to

its Friends of Covent Garden scheme.

"It gets people interested and you can

see from who's on there that the people

who come to the ROH aren't scary but everyday people," says Rachel Coldicutt,

Head of Media. She also says Facebook is a good way of getting feedback. By

watching the conversations take place, the Royal Opera House discovered many

people were interested but put off by expectations of cost. "Through Facebook we

found a lot of people were worried our tickets would to be too expensive for them, so

we can let them know we have tickets for £10 as well as those that go up to £150."

Last year there were 200,000 views of videos on the ROH site, include behind the

scenes footage like what is being shown behind me. In addition, it put its Italian opera

Don Giovanni (below) online for free, accompanied by listening notes and a podcast.

In the last three months of the year it had 35,000 views of the full-length show and

140,000 views of the shorter films.

Personalisation:

A huge proliferation of title choices – from Countess to French Ambassador:

Selecting contact method/contact type/areas of interest:

Enabling informed recommendations:

Case Study: Victoria & Albert Museum

Cold War Modern

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/cold-war-modern/

The Brief… To do something different as a way of reaching a new online audience…

The Strategy…

To tap in to the nostalgia of those alive at the time while exploiting the curiosity of

younger voices who would still be familiar with Cold War imagery and ethos…

“We wanted a collaborative campaign that would create tension, paranoia and

ideological clashes of the era”

“…people engage with experiences not theory. Excitement, intrigue…and a bit of

competition always help.”

Seb Robert, 1000heads (Word of Mouth agency)

The Execution…

• Fictional organisation was created: 7th Syndikate

The V&A recruited undercover agents to HEAT up the buzz surrounding its COLD WAR exhibition

The Game

• Identified online ambassadors: ‘voices’

• Staged email correspondence to potential ‘agents’

• Agents given codenames & unique URLs to track clues (ranged from

watermarked and geo-tagged images to on-line map references went collated

pointed to the location of the V&A exhibition)

• Cryptic emails “Grey squirrel goes south for winter” (directly related to direct

discussion in the blogs to avoid spamming)

http://www.7thsyndikate.org

• corresponded with revelations in the emails, creative treasure hunts

• challenges were sprung across a range of social ‘mediascapes to encourage

content creation, discussion and debate on social networks (facebook), blogs

and image-sharing repositories (flickr)

The page had a hidden link on the word 'bright', which opened up a new window.

The outcome:

� A hit list of 100 online voices was whittled down to a list of 75 core

participants

� A Facebook group dedicated to the 7th Syndikate was set up, unprompted by

1000 heads, that attracted 56 members.

� Through its monitoring, 1000 heads found that the agents generated 328

comments.

� This content was measurably exposed to a further 90,000 people

� “The more challenging we made it the more they engaged. They would have

lost interest if spoonfed”