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Mad Hatter’s Tea Party arrange and host club nights in South London venues, based around the theme of Alice in Wonderland. They aim to offer something different from run-of-the-mill parties in the area, with fancy dress, games, live bands, djs and most importantly, a good cause. A different charity receives the proceeds from each event.

The challenge:

Previous events have enjoyed small success, selling out in less than 24 hours, but the event is about to get a lot bigger and they’re in need of a small-scale marketing strategy that will reach a wider audience than word of mouth alone. Being a charity event, funding is minimal. The date of the next event just over a month away, so time is short too. With a team of only, any advertising needs to be cheap, effective and quick to do.

The solution:

We suggested that the easiest way of reaching the local target demographic might be to direct advertising towards places where similar nightlife activities are already happening, ie; local pubs and clubs. As a great flyer has already been designed, making postcards which people will pick up, absorb and circulate is a cheap and easy way of spreading the message.  Independent local cinemas such as the Roxy and Picturehouses (Greenwich and Clapham) will soon be screening Tim Burton’s ‘Alice In Wonderland’, which will naturally create interest around the theme. Leaving flyers/postcards in their foyers would target people who already have an interest in the theme.

Whichever charity is to benefit from the event should be encouraged to advertise the event on their website/newsletters. We identified that the current lack of web presence of the organisation needs to be rectified as soon as possible. We strongly recommended that they start utilising social media spaces such as Flickr, MySpace and Facebook to start an online buzz, and provide a forum for club-goers to share their experiences/listen to music, etc. Press (local and music) should also be sent guest passes to the event, so that it receives proper coverage, ensuring a following for future events.

Local charity shops could be tapped to build a dressing-up wardrobe, which could be hired/sold at events to generate yet more money for the charity.  Photos could be taken and sold to customers for a small fee.  Going forwards, a festival presence might also be an avenue they want to explore, as fancy dress is always a hit at these kinds of events. We suggested they get in touch with local festivals to enquire about getting involved.

Lots of small-scale, locally-targeted initiatives applied within the realms of a tiny budget could have a big effect on this fledgling events organisation, and together we helped troubleshoot some of their concerns and come up with some easy ways get the word out on the street without breaking the bank.

The Herne Hill Society is an amenity group for the Herne Hill area. Now, it might just be me, but I had no idea what an amenity group did.  Apparently they do a whole bunch of things including: organise talks on topics of local interest, write books about Herne Hill history, monitor planning applications, encourage improvements in local amenities, etc.

Their problem was that their membership was skewed towards older, white, middle-class residents – and so wasn’t representative of the local area.  They wanted to broaden their membership base and encourage more active involvement from their members.

We suggested that the first thing they might think about doing if they wanted to broaden their membership base was get rid of the word “amenities”.  You’re not going to find many people who, on a sunny day, suggest “exploring the local amenities”. It seemed an old-fashioned way to talk about what they did.  Which was a shame because what they did – bringing people together to learn about and improve the local community – wasn’t old fashioned at all. It was something very relevant to people’s day-to-day lives in the area.

Currently the Herne Hill Society promotes itself and seeks out new members by distributing leaflets.  They also send out a newsletter 4 times a year. Rather than just passively tell people what they did through leaflets and a newsletter we recommended they enter into conversations with people, so people became involved right from the beginning:

We suggested they:

Foster good relationships with local estate agents – who could then tell prospective Herne Hill residents about all the great things the Society was doing for the neighbourhood.

Donate some of the books they’d written to local cafes as coffee-table pieces – in exchange they might be able to leave membership leaflets in the cafes.

Get the community to talk to them about what they’d like to see happening in the area – this could be through postcards left in cafes.

Get local schools involved: get kids to write short pieces on local history and this publish it in the Herne Hill Society newsletter.  Every parent wants their kid published!

Compile a list of case histories of interesting projects they’d done. Pitch some of the best case histories to local papers like Lambeth Life.

www.hernehillsociety.org.uk