Marketing, PR and Distribution Key Terms

Need help sorting your vox pops from your PS swaps? Do you think "crop marks and bleed" sounds like a threat? And is "embargo" a press term or a Pokémon?

Arts comms loves a bit of jargon, so we’ve pooled our collective lexicons to clarify what we mean when we say "Marketing, PR and Distribution Agency". 

Marketing 

Any business activity related to the selling of products or services – in the event of theatre marketing, it’s about convincing audiences to invest their money and time in a show. Can include sales, research, promotions, advertising and tracking. 

ASSETS – the things we use to sell your show! This covers all content so includes videos, images, photos, artwork, trailers, vox pops etc and is built into digital ads as well as organic socials. 

CONTENT STRATEGY – the tactical creation of a content schedule, considering what you will create, the audiences you want to reach and the channels, language, visuals and concepts they will best engage with. 

BRANDING – creating a unique identity for a company/show: can relate to visuals but also language, experience and general behaviours.  

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO) – making sure your website’s visibility in organic search engines is as high as possible using key terms and structural elements. The higher your search ranking, the more likely you are to reach your audiences. 

CLICKS/REACH/IMPRESSIONS – the metrics used in digital ads, including Meta and Influencer reporting. 

• Clicks – the number of times someone has clicked on your ad (including people just clicking to see all the copy or watch the full video ). 

• Reach – the number of unique individuals who have seen a specific piece of ad content.  

• Impressions – how many times your ad has been displayed on a screen (could be multiple times to the same user, hence impressions generally being higher than reach).  

AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION – dividing up your general audiences into smaller chunks based on their behaviours, demographics, locations etc. Once you’ve split them out you can adapt your content to best suit the specific segment you’re trying to reach.  

PAID vs ORGANIC SOCIALS – all part of the Metaverse: 

• Paid social media ads have money behind them and are often also dark ads, meaning they’re not included on your general public facing feed and are managed in the back end of the ads manager. 

• Organic social posts have no money behind them but will appear as standard posts on your page or grid. (You can also boost these to put money behind them, but it is better to do this separately as a paid ad.) 

SEEDING – a grassroots style of outreach targeting communities with direct emails, Meta group posts, forum posts and relevant meet-up group contacts, spreading news of an event organically. 

TALKING HEADS – a style of content where cast, creatives etc talk straight to the camera about the show as if in conversation with them. 

VOX POP – a short and snappy to-camera video made up of clips from audience members giving opinions of a show. It’s usually captured as soon as people come out of a show to convey the energy of being there. Famous faces help! 

TITLE TREATMENT – the visual identity of your show’s name. Maintaining consistent font usage, layout, design elements etc throughout your visual identity can make your general awareness stronger. 

PS SWAPS – also known as reciprocal marketing, this involves two venues swapping pieces of info about their shows for each other to include as a From Our Friends note at the bottom of a mailing or on their socials channels.  

PIXEL – or tracking pixel is a piece of code embedded in a webpage, email or advert which is used to track and collect data from people engaging with it. It allows you to run digital ads far more efficiently by retargeting people who have previously engaged with a post.  

PR 

The press-facing side of reputational management, helping craft narratives of an artist or company’s work, reaching out to journalists, and promoting coverage across different forms of media to raise the client’s profile. 

PRESS or NEWS RELEASE – a document that’s sent out to a broad spread of journalists that gives the details of a show, season of shows, or other news such as an initiative or new appointment. 

MEDIA ALERT – shorter than a news release, it’s usually announcing a shorter piece of information such as new dates on sale or new images available.  

EMBARGO – a blanket ban on media publishing news until a certain date and time. We say a piece of news is ‘under embargo’ if we’re talking to journalists ahead of the official announcement time. Basically, keep schtum until the embargo has been lifted!  

BOILERPLATE – a paragraph that gives an overview of a company or venue’s mission statement and key projects: an ‘about us’ paragraph that can be added to a press release or website.  

PHOTOCALL– a set time for photographers to come in to get shots of a show, either during the dress rehearsal, or with the company purposefully staging a few key moments specifically for the photographers. 

LINES AGAINST ENQUIRY – these are pre-written responses in answer to expected queries that press (or the public) may raise pertaining to elements of a project that are difficult, sensitive or controversial. 

SYNDICATED INTERVIEW – a pre-prepared interview that can be used in multiple publications. Whilst many publications will prefer to have content that is exclusive to them, some will accept syndicated content provided by the PR.  

SOLT DIARY– the Society of London Theatre (and sister organisation Society of UK Theatre) have a calendar of press nights and photocall dates. PRs and venues submit their press night dates to the calendars, and will check what other shows they might be clashing with. 

Print Distribution  

The process of getting print and marketing materials seen by the public: sending them to businesses, putting posters up outdoors, and flyering members of the public. 

STREET TEAM – the freelance/casual staff who carry out the distribution, hired based on their personability, passion for the arts and ability to talk to strangers with ease. 

FLYER/POSTER DROPS – giving posters and/or stacks of flyers to local or targeted businesses according to a specific brief (e.g. ‘near the venue’ or ‘LGBTQ+ venues’), allowing for passive engagement from members of the public passing through. 

HAND-TO-HAND (H2H) – giving flyers directly to members of the public at relevant locations/events, usually trying to target a specific audience profile/crossover audience and ‘activating’ the print with conversational prompts. 

DOOR-TO-DOOR (D2D) – distributing flyers/print materials to residential addresses in a given area, usually done via Royal Mail. Works best for targeted local campaigns, e.g. local discounts of ‘meet the team’ events. 

OUT-OF-HOME (OOH) – usually large-scale print/marketing displays in locations that aren’t the promoting venue, e.g. billboards, Tube ads, digital screens. Often more expensive than indoor poster display but the prestige and impressions rate can be very high. 

FLYERPOSTING– the (usually) unauthorised placement of posters in public spaces, e.g. under bridges, on the sides of buildings. It’s a form of guerrilla marketing that incurs some risk but can be highly effective for the right campaign – if the brand aligns. 

CROP MARKS – the marks at the edge of a poster/flyer design file that tell the printing machine where to cut the flyer. 

BLEED – an extra area of the design’s background/image that runs over where the crop marks are set to cut to make sure that there is not accidentally white border if the machine cuts slightly over the line.  

MARGINS – a border of extra space that runs around the edge of a poster/flyer image where there should be no text/detail (to make sure that nothing important gets cut off). 

DIRECT MAIL – sending flyers, letters or print materials directly to the addresses of your target audiences using the postal service, a mailing house or hand-delivery. Useful if trying to reach out to a specific business type.  

Influencers 

Public figures and content creators who help to promote brands within a given industry, sharing information and opinions on products or experiences to their audiences, usually online. 

USER-GENERATED CONTENT (UGC) – content created by the user of a product or experience: the content usually has user experience at the forefront of its messaging and is about resonating with other potential users.  

EARNED CONTENT – content created and posted by an influencer secured by their interest in the brand or experience. These are unpaid collaborations earned through relationships and pitching to the creator.  

KEY OPINION LEADER (KOL) – a key spokesperson within a group or community who shapes the taste of both their following and other influencers in similar fields. These people help start trends.  

NANO/MICRO INFLUENCER – an influencer typically with a smaller follower count. These creators tend to exist within a specific niche and have very strong engagement rates, providing a direct line to a specific audience.  

AFFILIATE – a creator who partners with a brand and promotes their work using a unique tracking link or code, earning a performance-based commission when their audience makes a purchase, rather than a flat fee for a post. 

ENGAGEMENT RATE - a way of measuring how actively an audience interacts with an influencer's content as a percentage of their total audience, showing content quality, audience interest, and influence beyond just follower count.  

REACH - The total number of unique individuals who see an influencer's content, representing the breadth of audience exposure, unlike impressions, which count every single view. 

CALL TO ACTION (CTA) – a prompt to encourage the viewer of a post to interact or engage with the messaging. Some examples can be buying tickets, sharing the post, contributing thoughts in the comments, or creating their own post in response.   

AMPLIFICATION – a way of boosting an influencer’s post by putting some advertising spend behind their content to increase its reach.  

CONTENT DROPS – a way of creating a big splash with an announcement, teaser trailer or on-sale by sharing content widely with creators to all post at the same time. 

Any terms you hear used a lot that don't make sense - do let us know, - always happy to add to the list!

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