Charity Art Auction

niggy2

Hi. Does anybody have any ideas of how to publicise a Charity Art Auction.

Joss Searchlight is a young children's cancer charity. We are staging our first major event on 14th March at Blackall Studios, Shoreditch EC2.

We have received donated works by over 100 Artists, including: Dan Baldwin, Mr Brainwash, Julian OPie, Thierry Bisch, Brendan Neiland, Patrick Hughes, Ben Allen, Zachary Walsh, Pure Evil and many more.

We really need to publicise this event - we tried an Ad in the Evening Standard which was hopeless. We really!would be very grateful for any help or advice you can give.

Thank you.

jackomdj

Have you tried FB or Twitter? Great wom (word of mouth) advertising methods.

niggy2

Thanks yes we've tried that. On twitter we have quite a good following @josssearchlight but they don't seem to be Art Lovers.

Savvy_Sue

Presumably the studio can put it on their social media: can you contact other local galleries and studios and get all of them to tweet etc?

Also, if any of the artists have lots of followers, see if they will publicise it for you. The charity I work for had a concert by Ed Sheeran for anyone who raised a certain amount of money for us, and once he and his mates started tweeting about that it all took off!

Granted your artists may not be as well known as him, and their followers may not be as social media minded as Ed's, but you've got to get at the artlovers somehow!

whitewing

How are you deciding that the ad in the Evening Standard was hopeless? Ticket Sales? Visits to website?

niggy2

The Evening Standard Ad was Hopeless in so far as we had no call and had no hits our website link (Using Analytics software). Actually that' not entirely true - we did have one call from The Big Issue - trying to sell us ADvertising space.

Savvy_Sue

niggy2 wrote: »

The Evening Standard Ad was Hopeless in so far as we had no call and had no hits our website link (Using Analytics software). Actually that' not entirely true - we did have one call from The Big Issue - trying to sell us ADvertising space.

Not suggesting you spend more money this time, but it is worth thinking carefully about who's reading the various publications you might pay to advertise in.

Evening Standard: probably much larger circulation, but not focussed at all (except towards commuters?)

Big Issue: people with a social conscience ... they also have a regular slot for artwork, so some people may be buying it for that.

You've still got time to get interest up: I think it is inevitable that people won't buy tickets or commit to events this early in the year, so I'd concentrate on social media and local news - can you get yourself interviewed on local radio / in the local paper? Have you done a press release?

niggy2

Thanks. I really need art blogs I guess. Having lost a sizeable chunk of money advertising I think I need to spread the word more organically - but quickly.