During this unit I was asked to help out with the marketing for an exhibition/event called SLUMBER PARTY. This involved me curating the digital space on the instagram, as well as generating content and documenting the show. It was a really fun and stressful experience and has really helped me develop my social media skills further, while also helping to add to my experience of working in this field.
For the instagram, I decided to curate it in a similar way to how I curated the curation team instagram by posting in 3's to make it cohesive and look aesthetically pleasing. I was happy that I could take what I learnt from advertising Curve and put that into use for this exhibition. I first broke up the poster image into 9 squares as the first images to post to start to generate hype and interest in the event. I then created infographics in the style of the poster, using the same font and colours and trying to mimic the square outline around the border. The infographics would include all of the information that is on the poster, but in a simpler format so people can get what they need to know straight away.
The theme of this instagram was a lot different to the instagram marketing I did for Curve as it's a much more relaxed and social event as opposed to a high quality exhibition like Curve so I had a lot of creative liberties that I could take advantage of, and it was a fun challenge to advertise something in a different way that I am used to. We sourced some images of slumber parties which I could use for more hype and promotion of the event, which I posted after the poster grid, as well as used emojis and drag slang to highlight the casual nature of the event and promote the main performers which were Colleen O'Brien (Taz Cobalt) and 'Drag in the Gallery' organised by drag queen and fine art student Liv.
As well as creating infographics in photoshop, I also decided to use the catalogue texts for the artists, to highlight who was involved in the show without being too formal. For the captions I made it seem as if it were sleepover gossip, by saying that each artist was something but that it was a secret. I felt that this kept in line with the theme of the event and it was fun to try something new with captions. I also took photos of the posters around the university as content to post, as well as creating a countdown, similar to what we did for UNDER CONSTRUCTION as I felt this was a really successful tool in increasing hype and interest in the event.
I also made sure to advertise the selling points of the show, being the bar and the snacks provided, as well as the performances, and made infographics advertising these, as well as promoting them on the instagram stories. Overall I wanted to make sure that everything looked cohesive and worked together, while selling the event well and successfully. The turnout in the end was incredible and I was still posting on to social media via instagram stories throughout the night, showcasing the performances as well as the crowd.
There was a few issues with captions needed to be tweaked for additional information, but there was only one problem with one of the posts being as 'rude' but was read out of context. The word TONIGHT was spread over three images, and unfortunately the 2 image spelt NIG, which some saw to be offensive which was not my intent. We did put out a comment explaining the situation and apologising to people, but after seeing the reaction and looking back at the posts I decided to make the creative decision and pull the posts down and replace them with behind the scene images of the show being set up, and an infographic with the information about the show which seemed to work better, and made me feel more at ease. I also made a small and quick statement on the instagram story apologising for the misconception and thanking them for bringing it to my attention.
Overall I was happy with how the marketing for the event turned out, and I was happy that we were able to get such a big turnout for the event. We hit capacity of around 90 people which was amazing. The only thing I would have included in the marketing was to be more clear about which artworks were to leave the space as we found that some of the smaller pieces were taken when they should not have, which was unfortunate. However this could have been due to the fact that people were under the influence of alcohol and not aware of what they were doing, and therefore more monitoring would have been better but that is something that the curators can potentially take into account if they ever did this again.
I'm glad I was able to take part in this through social media advertising, and that I was able to use and develop skills that I have started to develop from previous marketing duties for Curve and UNDER CONSTRUCTION. I hope to continue to find opportunities like this and to pursue this as a career alongside curation.