This week, we sorted out what roles we would all take for the showcase. This means it will run as smoothly as possible with everyone knowing their positions and what to do leading up to the event and even on the night. Event management is important as this means we will be able to put on and produce an event involving the creative industries. We as a group need to organise a venue, work on promotion, find an audience, make sure everything is perfect on the night, and even more.
I and Tom were given the promoter/ticketer role; we are supporting the event by encouraging people to get tickets. This includes advertising the show in a positive light to show our talents that you will see on the night. This means our initial job is to set up different social media sites, create daily content for these, make posters to put up around college, and create the ticket site. Our main mission is to create an audience that would be willing to come to the show, using both a physical and online presence to interest viewers enough to get tickets. This is how we are getting on so far:
This Week’s Progress
Poster
This week, Tom and I finalised the poster design, so it is ready to be printed and stuck up around college and perhaps further afield if possible. This week, I focussed mostly on putting the information and important things onto the poster, rather than the actual design and aesthetic. First, I obtained QR codes for both the Linktree page and ticket site and put them on the poster. This is so people can scan these and it will take them straight to the sites. After discussing and agreeing on a charity, I grabbed the logo and put information about donations on the poster as it is extremely relevant to the showcase. Finally, we put the Bradford School of Art logo on it and changed the social media username to what we actually used for all of our social media’s. However, I came across an issue after finishing the poster; the online software I was using to create this would not let me save the work. After a lot of troubleshooting and trying to find the best way to save the final design, we had to just leave the site without saving changes, therefore restarting from where the poster was left off before we added all of that. This was annoying, but it didn’t take long to recreate as I took a photo of the poster so we could use this as a reference.
Now, we need to take the design and print copies out, prefer]abely using high-quality paper and ink, so they look the best they can. To make more use of the design, we could make flyers out of it to hand put on reception desks in college or even handing them out to students and people in and around Bradford City Centre. Here is the final poster design:
Live Wire Logo
After finding an overall aesthetic for the showcase and the promotional features, we had to make a logo quickly that can be suitable for a social media profile picture. All in all, I would say the aesthetic for the showcase is very minimalist, taking inspiration from Bauhaus and modernism movements. it keeps things uncomplicated yet engaging by using primary colours and simple shapes, combined with contrasting fonts. This logo came about after an experiment with said shapes and the same colour scheme, but just with a bolder typeface so it stands out more in the profile pictures. Everyone liked the logo, given its simplicity and authenticity to the poster design, so we ran with this as the final logo for Live Wire (see picture below). I like this logo as it can be used both as a square and a circle, meaning it is very versatile in its uses.
Setting Up Social Media
As well as finishing the poster, Tom and I set up all the social media sites. This included Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook and Youtube. I set up Instagram first, using the logo above, a brief exclamation of who we are, and a link to our Linktree in the bio. Then I started work on TikTok, and Tom created the Twitter account, using the same username and link for every social media. Finally, we set up a Facebook page and Youtube Account. We created an event for the Facebook page so people could easily share it and say they’re ‘interested’ or ‘going’. On Facebook also, I put a ‘buy tickets’ button on the very top of our page, making it easy for viewers to find the ticket site. After setting up the social media sites, I made a Linktree that includes all of the social media sites below, and also the ticket site and course information website:
TikTok 
Twitter 
Facebook 
Instagram 
YouTube
Photoshoot And Gathering Content
One of the most important parts of promoting an event is actually creating engaging content for an online audience. Social media is great but it’s only effective when you post on it and people like what they see. So, we had a photographer come in this week to take some shots of the students rehearsing, some solo pictures and band photos in the Green Room. These are high quality, high-resolution photos that we can use to promote the event. As well as this, I and Tom have been taking some videos of students and bands rehearsing for the performance; this is important as it gives an audience an insight into our talent and what they will be hearing on the night, further influencing them to buy tickets. Here are some examples of the videos Tom and I took, some of them being bloopers we can also use for social media, as I feel that showing funny and behind the scenes moments is one of the best ways to get people interacting with your media as it is authentic and shows what we are like as students and the relaxed environment we are in.
As well as this, we have been working on creating photo templates for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook posts and stories, to further emphasise the aesthetic we are going for from early on in our promotional campaign. This shows we are organised as an event management team and we have a good idea of what our brand wants to look like. Here are some examples of the templates we have been working on:
Image Template Example 
Text Template Example
Story Example
Ticket Site
Without a place where people can buy tickets, we wouldn’t be able to put a show on. This was one of the most important tasks we had as a promotional team, as we had to make sure all of the information was 100% correct and the tickets were available ASAP, as the longer we took to make the site, the less time we would have to spread the link around. This procedure did not take too long, and during this, we decided as a group to raise some money for Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice as I and a few other students had previously worked with/raised money for them before, and they are a local charity. Tia, the event manager, is in contact with the charity so they understand our intentions and know that we want to raise money for them. The tickets are free, as we did not want money to be an issue for any student’s families or friends; we want this concert to be open and available to everyone. However, we have asked on the site that we are taking on the door donations and proceeds which will go to the charity.
Currently, we have sold 53 tickets, and the site has only been active for just 3 days, so both me and Tom are impressed with the number of tickets we have sold already, and this shows that our promotional campaign is already working very well. We sold 24 tickets on the first day, and 17 yesterday, and 12 today averaging at about 18 tickets a day. If we can carry on selling tickets at this rate as more people are discovering the event and our promotional campaign is getting bigger as we put up posters and flyers, we will have the venue full in no time! We have had 9 tickets sold from the Eventbrite Channels (such as the discover Bradford page), and 44 from external channels like the Linktree site, and most people are buying tickets in bulks of three. Almost all of our tickets are being bought by people in and around Bradford and Leeds, meaning we are hitting our target audience. However, we are also getting a few buyers from down south! (This data is true as of 02/10/2021, 22:19pm)
Next Week’s Targets
-Carry on promoting the ticket site, aiming for over 100 tickets sold by next week.
-Keep gathering content to post on our social media sites.
-Print out the posters to put up around college, and perhaps make flyers out of the poster design too to hand these out around Bradford.
-Contact BCB radio and T&A as a potential way to promote the event.
-Organise a busking session or a small performance on the college campus.