Which are the crowdfunding tactics that theatre campaigns may implement in order to succeed in the online platform? The point of view of seven millennials.

Abstract

Crowdfunding can be considered as an alternative to traditional fundraising, but it is also an instrument that could influence or be influenced by audience development and engagement (Buckingham 2015). The success of a campaign can be measured in many ways and according to different combinations of criteria (Buckingham 2015). The following study concerns the tactics that campaigners may use to influence people in order to achieve three main objectives: reach their funding goal, build a wider audience, and improve their reputation within an existing audience. For this research two participant groups had been organised in order to understand and gather opinions and reactions of seven 'millennials' who were observed and interviewed about theatre campaigns in crowdfunding. According to statistics millennials represent the largest group in crowdfunding (Art of the Kickstart 2016). It must be clarified that the purpose of this research is not to deliver the 'right formula' to guarantee the success of a crowdfunding campaign but rather to give some recommendations on how to increase the chance to create a successful campaign. Considering that most of the findings are related to the importance of video and images and their ability to create emotions and increase the audience engagement, in this research 'tactics' is referred to an appropriate use of the tools within the website such as: videos (that includes storytelling and sounds), images and text. It must be underlined that crowdfunding videos and pictures alone do not guarantee the success but increase its probability (four times more) (Indiegogo 2015) of achieving the target (Balitski 2016). Unfortunately, crowdfunding is not as well-known as Facebook or Twitter. Although its popularity has been rapidly increasing in recent years (Taylor 2016), statistics show that around 36% of the population in America do not know about the existence of crowdfunding (Smith 2016). On the other hand, it was demonstrated that a crowdfunding campaign can gain visibility and catch people's attention (as well as friends and family) through the support of other online platforms (Lu et al. 2014). Therefore, this research will take for granted that there is an active crowdfunding community ready to explore new campaigns. It must be also said that the crowdfunding campaigns which were selected are all related to theatres that adopted keep-it-all or all-or-nothing models. This means that debt and equity crowdfunding models will not being examined as in these two cases funders receive something 'in exchange' (Frydrych et al. 2014). Most of artists and creative projects ask for funds because they create an 'intangible product' that cannot be physically shared and most artists sell 'experience' such us exhibitions, performance or emotions etc (Irvine 2009).