GETTING NOTICED>>

There are 1,200 shows at the Edinburgh Festival each year, with 14,500 performances in over 200 venues. That’s rather a lot to cope with. Each of the Festival’s produce programmes of what’s on offer under their proverbial umbrellas, as do most of the venues, but how is the average Festival-goer meant to choose from four Macbeths, three Guys and Dolls and half a dozen student revues?

Despite having a huge audience on the doorstep, winning an audience at the Edinburgh Festival is a real challenge. For this reason you should dedicate plenty of time (and some money) to marketing your show.

Unique Selling Points

Marketing your show should start with unique selling points – you need to work out just what it is that will make your show stand out and encourage audience members to part with eight quid (or whatever). The best way to identify your selling points is to get key members of your cast and crew together and ask your self the following questions:

- Are there any particularly interesting / unusual / controversial themes covered in your play?

- Is the playwright famous / interesting / unusual?

- Has the play or playwright any specific connections with Scotland, Edinburgh or the Edinburgh Festival?

- Are any of the cast well known, or do they have any connections to Edinburgh or the Fringe?

- Has the play or playwright got any anniversaries coming up?

- Is the production eligible for any awards?

- Who will this production appeal to in particular?

From the answers to this question you should be able to piece together a positioning statement for your play – a statement on why your show is important / interesting / worth seeing. This statement should shape your show marketing – that is to say the job of all your marketing activity is to communicate this positioning statement.

Fringe Programme Blurb

The first challenge is to get this positioning statement into a snappy 40 word blurb to include in the Fringe Programme. This needs to be submitted to the Fringe Society by the end of April (see the Fringe Forms section) so it should get you thinking about your positioning statement nice and early. Your forty words include the show title, so you are probably playing with something nearer 35 words. Selling your show in such a concise blurb is a real challenge – but it is a useful exercise in forcing you to work out the biggest selling points of your show.

There is no set formula to crafting a winning 40 word blurb – but try to get in any famous names, any interesting / controversial themes explored, whether or not this piece is funny, any anniversaries or connections to Edinburgh, and quotes on past successes for your company, playwright and / or director.

After the stresses of getting your positioning statement down to 40 words you will have to supply your venue with a slightly longer blurb for their programme. Now that you have 100 or so words to play with you can flesh out your positioning statement.

Once you done all this you are ready to start work on your print publicity and press campaign...