PPP - Research - Collaboration Brief - PPP

Royal Opera House

Encourage culturally engaged young people to experience ballet for the first time.

Brief

The Royal Opera House and AKA, the international entertainment marketing agency, are challenging you to create a campaign that will encourage culturally engaged young people aged 20-30 to experience ballet for the first time.

Why Ballet, what can it bring to young peoples’ lives?

Ballet exists in many forms from the lyric narrative beauty of a Swan Lake to the abstract modernism of Wayne McGregor’s Chroma. Like opera it deals with the big human themes – life, love, death, loss, passion, joy, anger and humour – all things that we deal with in everyday life.
We believe in sharing this beautiful art form as widely available as possible, which is why we bring world-class composers, conductors, dancers, writers, artists, technicians, craftsmen, and administrators together in our iconic theatre to make it happen, and publicise what we do as broadly and inclusively as we can. 

The Problem

While some young people might attend the ballet once a year as a special occasion, we find that in some areas our audience is not as diverse as the population as a whole, and, in particular, young people are under-represented.  We want to change this and engage and inspire more young people to be part of our audience if we are to ensure the long-term survival of ballet as an art form.
To quote The Royal Ballet’s founder, ‘Somebody must always be doing something new, or life would get very dull.’ We are always doing something new on stage and we want you to help us do something new off-stage to communicate it to young people.
The people we’re talking about for the purpose of this brief are those aged between 20 and 30 who already attend plays, gigs, and exhibitions, but who don’t consider ballet. Why? Because they simply think it isn’t for them.

We want to challenge this perception, and to invite these young people to give opera a try – which is where you come in. 

The Creative Challenge

We – that’s the Royal Opera House and our advertising agency AKA – would like you to come up with a creative concept or idea that dispels the preconceptions and celebrates the beauty and emotion that ballet brings to the stage, something that challenges our target audience to look at ballet as an art form that could be a new love in their lives. Break down those preconceptions that have become a barrier to attendance. We’d like to you show them that ballet as an art form isn’t what they think is it – and moreover that it is for them.

Our target audience currently think that

• Ballet is old fashioned, filled with tutus, musically dry, stuffy, formal and traditional and not relevant to contemporary life
• Ballet is for the wealthy middle England and old people, not ‘people like me’
• You have to understand the language of choreography to understand or enjoy it
• There are certain accepted opinions about ballet, and open interpretation or appreciation of it is not welcome
• Ballet is just men in tights and ladies en pointe pretending they are in a fairy-tale
• Ballet is mainly for girls

We would like to communicate to them instead

• Ballet can be exciting and alive and a thrill to watch - it’s everything from graceful and beautiful to violent and passionate
• Ballets may have been created for the Royal Courts of Europe many, many years ago, but new ones are being created all the time – it’s a modern and energetic artform
• Because it deals with the big human themes – life, love, death, loss, passion, joy, anger, humour – it’s relevant to everyone, and everyone can understand it
• Ballets can draw from a wide range of influences from fashion to literature and rock/pop music to full orchestral work. There are no rules. 

Creative Considerations

You need to show how your idea will work as an advertising campaign – across digital, print, out of home and social media advertising.
Creative needs to feature the Royal Opera House logo.
You can download the logo and the brand guidelines here: roh.org.uk/for/press-and-communications/branding.

Deliverables & Additional Information

Find out more what the Royal Opera House does and to see for yourself how we talk about ourselves:

www.roh.org.uk 
www.youtube.com/user/RoyalOperaHouse
www.facebook.com/royaloperahouse
instagram.com/royaloperahouse/
uk.pinterest.com/royaloperahouse/
@royaloperahouse
@TheRoyalOpera
@TheRoyalBallet

Please adhere to the Deliverables outlined in the Student Awards section of the YCN website.
Any supporting information referenced in the brief can be found in the accompanying Project Pack at the YCN website.

Key Words & sentences

• culturally engaged young people
•  first time.
• aged 20-30
• Why Ballet, what can it bring to young peoples’ lives?
• Wayne McGregor’s Chroma.
•  life, love, death, loss, passion, joy, anger and humour
• Somebody must always be doing something new, or life would get very dull.
• ispels the preconceptions and celebrates the beauty and emotion that ballet brings to the stage
• preconceptions
• composers, conductors, dancers, writers, artists, technicians, craftsmen,

Notes 

• Website has very outdated feel to it. 
• Behance could be a great place to attract additional audience through beautifully presented project
• The creative process behind the dance is extremely interesting and relatable to other creatives. 
• Music could be a great way to target audience
• Looking at the creatives behind the ballet corography 
• We connect the ballet to old photos. 
• Lots of advertising campaigns seem to be aimed at women
• We need to speak to the public 20-30 uni students to get an idea of what there pre conceptions of ballet is, this could be in a survey form possible. maybe use redit 
• I think its important to get the message of ballet could be a number of possibilities, it is not only one thing. 
• Social media should be a part of the advertising maybe
• Maybe create a concept which can target individual performances in a range of ways.