Marketing

Marketing

We at NZ Fringe market the festival as a whole but the promotion of individual events is your responsibility as the event presenter. You all make kick-ass art, but there are just so many events that we don’t want to play favourites. Marketing your show to the best of your abilities and capacity in the competitive Fringe environment is as important as the presentation of the work itself if you want to get an audience!

On this page you will find information about:

  • Posters
  • Poster Distribution
  • Phantom Billstickers
  • Flyering
  • RadioActive.fm
  • Reviews
  • Publicity
  • Media Release
  • Social Media
  • Social Media Asset Pack
  • Direct Marketing
  • Decoding Printers' Terms

Posters

2024 NZ FRINGE POSTER FRAMES - REQUIRED ON ALL POSTERS. SHOUT ABOUT YOUR FRINGE INVOLVEMENT ON YOUR POSTER.

Posters and flyers can be great ways to get your show seen by potential audience members. Make sure to include your show name, dates and times, venue, and any other details you think your audience will need.

NZ Fringe Poster "frames" are required on ALL show posters. Since 2016, we've created Fringe poster frames for all Fringe shows to use in their design. This unifies all Fringe shows and helps break through the noise of the numerous other festivals on at the same time and celebrate your inclusion in the festival. They look great and they really work. If you do not include the frame on your posters, your show will not be eligible for Fringe awards, so don't forget it! 

We’ve refreshed them again for 2024 ready for you to use. Please find a link to the 2024 NZ Fringe Poster Frames here.

Our designers have created templates so you can select what works best for you. If you have any trouble with downloading the files, please let us know and we can help you out. They are provided in landscape and portrait. All you need to do is select the frame for the venue you're in or use the 'generic' frame if you're not at one of our flagship venues. 

Poster Distribution 

Think about where your target audience might congregate or frequent. You might choose to approach businesses that fit these descriptions. Examples include cafes, restaurants, bars, halls and clubs. At all times, you need to gain permission from a staff member or manager of the venue before displaying your poster.

Talk to your Venue Manager about how many posters they can put up for you.

Wellington City Council Rules About Posters

Before putting posters up in public places, you need to get the property owner’s or the Council’s permission if it’s on Council-owned land or fixtures.

Council property where you can’t put up posters include:

  • Public street furniture 
  • Poles 
  • Poster bollards and holders (contact Phantom Billstickers - see below)
  • Seats 
  • Signal cabinets
  • Bus shelters (contact Adshel) 

What you can get permission for: 

  • Posters for community and charity events 
  • Posters on poles for community and charity events may be permitted - contact the Council to discuss.

Phantom Billstickers are the recommended poster distributors in Wellington City. We've secured you a pretty sweet deal for Fringe Artists with Phantom Billstickers - info will be available on the artist perks page and emailed out to current NZ Fringe Artists.

Phantom Billstickers

Phantom Billstickers offers Fringe rates (these rates are weekly, starting on Sundays) to participating artists for printing and placing posters (make sure you've added the Fringe frame!), and distributing flyers. Check out the artist perks page for more info on this deal. 

If you'd like them to place your posters, you must also get your posters printed through them as well. If you order through them, they will give you a deadline by which you must provide your artwork and payment; make sure you make the deadline, or your posters may not be placed! Note that you cannot place your own posters on designated Phantom Billstickers posts and boards.

Flyering

Frames are not required on flyers, but make sure to include the name of your show, the NZ Fringe logo, your venue, show dates and times, and fringe.co.nz so people know where to buy tickets!

Chat to your venue and see if they have a place for you to leave your flyers, and if they can help you with distribution.

Wellingtonians can be pretty suspicious of flyers as it's not really a culture we have here. The best places to flyer are around the Fringe box office, Wellington waterfront, Courtney Place, and on Cuba Street. Flyering works best for customers looking for a show to see that night, but there is also some benefit to flyering a few days before your show starts, in order to raise awareness of the event and encourage customers to consider seeing your show on a future night - remember that Fringe customers see multiple shows over the Festival. 

When you are handing out a flyer to a potential customer, you need to combine the hard copy material with a verbal message that will convince the person to see your show. This is referred to as an 'elevator pitch,' a short, 1-2 sentence description about why your event and why people will like it. Here are some examples:

“It’s literally Pulp Fiction with strings attached”
“It’s Playschool meets Californication”
“A racey musical comedy about Aliens speed dating in London”
“It’s been nominated for/won (insert award here)”

RadioActive.fm

RadioActive.fm is Wellington's community radio station. 

Reviews

Reviews are a great way to give potential audience members context for your show and help them decide if they should spend their hard-earned money on a ticket. Reviewers in Wellington are often amazing volunteers and are VERY limited in numbers, so here's a guide on how to contact them. A reminder that NZ Fringe will not organise reviewers for you.

Be Timely and Proactive - Reviewers need time, more than you think. Often reviewers will have to reject your request unless you're at least two weeks early. As we move into Feb we heavily suggest your request for a reviewer 3-4 weeks in advance if possible. Because of the sheer amount of arts festivals in the city, reviewers and going to be stretched thin so get in there quick!

Please find the media and reviewers list here. Please note that some revi

Set Aside Tickets - Reviewers will need comp tickets to see your show. It is standard practice to allocate two comp tickets per reviewing media outlet that you invite. They may come back to say they only need one.

Supply Them Everything They Need in Advance - Reviewers will require your show information, blurbs and images for their listings, understanding and crediting info so they aren't hunting you down form names or context. A standard list of info includes:

  • Up to date production information (blurb, dates, ticketing link, prices, genre etc.)
  • Credit listings (in Word or Text File) as per your programme for:
    • Creatives - Writers/Devisers, Directors/Choreographers, Designers
    • Cast - Actors + roles, Dancers + roles (where relevant), other performers
    • Crew - Production, backstage, admin, Front of House etc.
  • 1-3 unbranded high quality jpeg images - we suggest supplying a landscape, a square, and a portrait image if possible.

Sell Your Show When You Contact Them - There are hundreds of shows all pitching to be seen so make sure you sell your show in your approach - give them a sense of the experience and what it's going to be like watching your show and link them to your website listing and assets to back it up.

It's Your Choice - If you receive a positive review, you can use it to spread the word about how awesome your show is. If the review is not so positive, this could have a negative impact on ticket sales and could be quite disappointing for you and your team who have worked really hard on the show. It's completely your choice if you'd like your show reviewed so please consider both scenarios when requesting reviews. If you have received an unsolicited review, please contact us.

Publicity

The arts journalism environment in NZ is very competitive and increasingly hard to break through, with many journalists overworked and overwhelmed. If you do want to give publicity a go, make sure you are clear and concise in ‘selling’ your show in any communications with journalists and do not ‘spam’ their inboxes. 

We suggest starting your publicity campaign January 10 onwards. Here is the link to the NZ Fringe Publicity list which includes Wellington arts reviewers and recommended media to contact both locally, regionally and nationally.

Media Release

A media release is your prime vehicle for getting the media interested in covering your production. It's worthwhile spending a reasonable amount of time writing your media release (and getting friends/colleagues to proofread it) and then figuring out which journalists to send it to.

Write your release as if it's an article going into a newspaper. The most important information needs to be in the first or second paragraph. Make sure it's clear, factual, and fascinating. In basic terms, your media release should include:

Date - The date that you're sending out the release.

Headline - Catchy, interesting, and summarising the key points of the story.

Lead - The lead paragraph is the key part of your release and contains the most important information. It must be interesting, and succinct, and explains the main unique selling point of your show. It should answer the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Keep it to 2-3 lines long.

Body - The next paragraph should provide further information, written in the inverted pyramid structure, where the most important information is at the top of the release and the least important at the bottom. Use short sentences and short paragraphs with active language, in third person. Use quotes, like positive reviews, to make your writing more interesting and credible; remember that all assertions or opinions must be attributed to a particular person or organisation.

End - The last paragraph contains the least important information, for example, background on the artist. It is customary to finish the release with -ends-.

Contact information - At the bottom, put "For further media information contact:" and include a contact name, email, and phone number.

Boiler plate ("About us") - The boilerplate is 1-2 paragraphs about the event, artist, or presenter of the media release. This provides an overview and isn't necessarily needed in the body of the release.

Social Media

Digital advertising and social media is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and accessible marketing tools at your disposal. And even though digital fatigue is real and a rejection of social media would be a utopian dream for many of us, a lot of your audience and fan base will be checking their phones and browsing social media in their downtime where they can be introduced and reminded of your show.

The most useful thing to do before you jump on any social media and do some research. No, this doesn't mean Wikipedia-ing "How to social media” this means looking at what other artists are doing to promote their show. Look at what platforms they’re using, are they using images? What do their images look like? Are they writing long or short posts? What information have they included in their posts? Talk to artists as well and see what they recommend. This is a great place to start if you are lost for what to post. Look to some of the biggest arts promoters in the world for inspiration. Sure their content and resources are much MUCH larger than your own, but they will have some great content ideas to get your own content strategy in motion. Broadway/West End plays, musicals. Global Theatre companies and leading houses like National Theatre or even local theatre companies, artists and theatres you admire here in Aotearoa. 

Create a social media marketing plan. Look at your show date(s) and begin promoting your show on social media way ahead of time. You could also invest in a super fancy social media management tool that gives you the ability to schedule posts across multiple social media platforms. 

The most popular social media platforms to use to promote your show are Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. Across all of these platforms create profiles that are consistent with your brand, create similar usernames, use similar images, and make sure you’re promoting the same thing on each platform too. Try to make all your pages cohesive with the same look & feel, name and tags and keep your pages up to date, pushing people towards your ticketing page to convert tickets. 

Each year, NZ Fringe will be posting and sharing photos and reviews of shows as well as bitesize chunks of the program. Our marketing coordinator will highlight a wide selection and enable as many events to benefit from these promotions as possible, but given we are an open-access festival, our promotion of specific events on our social media accounts will be limited and this means we cannot cover the entire programme at a perfect equal rate. However we will do our best to promote weekly lineups and highlights!

Social Media Asset Pack

To help you market your event under the NZ Fringe umbrella, we’ve put together a Social Media Asset Pack with branded assets for you to use on your online content. Inside, you’ll find stickers like our iconic lip-eye combo and a couple of different versions of our Fringe logo that you can slap on your content to make it pop!

Under the folders “Instagram Posts” and “Stories”, you’ll find tutorial videos on how to add all these bits to your images. When it comes to Instagram stories, you’ll be able to do a lot of editing through the app’s built-in tools. To add Fringe assets to your posts, we’ve found the easiest way to do this on your phone is through Canva. 

Direct Marketing 

Direct Marketing is the best way to bring in a crowd quickly. Contact groups or organisations that have a connection to your show and offer them a discount (you can set up a promo code, find out how on the ticketing page). Prompt them to organise a group booking.

Some ideas:
 - Facebook groups
 - Online Meet-up groups
 - Businesses your family or friends work at
 - The cafe that you go to every day
 - Your old school/university 

Decoding Printers' Terms 

  • DPI (dots per inch) refers to the number of ‘dots’ of the colour displayed per inch of printing. Printers will normally require a DPI of 300, to ensure printing is of high quality. 
  • Bleed refers to additional printing that goes beyond the edge of a sheet of paper.  This is because sometimes large printing presses can be slightly off in trimming by 1 or 2 millimetres.  While this won’t affect your image in any discernible way, it may mean that you have a thin white line on the edge of your printed artwork. This is why printers normally ask for your image to be 3mm larger than the finished product around the edges to accommodate this gap.
  • Trim marks, or crop marks, are used to show the printer where to trim the paper. These are normally in the corners of the artwork and are for the printer’s reference only.
  • CMYK is generally the best colour formatting for print, as it coincides with the colours that most printers use (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). RGB is best for digital. 

PDF is the best file type for printing.  This is because it is a universally recognised file format and maintains the quality of the original artwork. It also means that if you are using a font that the printer might not have when they open the PDF the font you want will still be displayed.