An annual treat

‘Kids Week’ takes place in August every year. It is a simple ticket deal: a child aged 16 or under can go free to any participating show when accompanied by an adult paying full price, and up to two extra children’s tickets can be purchased at half price. Customers can also book a range of free pre- or post-show activities. Children can delight in the thrill of being on a West End stage, the magic of meeting the cast or the chance to “unleash their inner dancing queen” with the creative team. Others prefer backstage tours, exploring technical wizardry or attending creative sessions with top West End marketing agencies.

The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) has been running Kids Week since May 1998, following the launch of Kids Night on Broadway by the Broadway League (our sister organisation in the USA) earlier that same year. It was on a very small scale compared to today’s promotion, and it was slightly tricky to persuade producers to give away tickets for an initiative whose benefits were still to be proven. However, with a good take-up for the ticket offers and events, and a productive media partnership with the Evening Standard, that first Kids Week was a huge success.

Over the years, Kids Week has grown and developed with its key audience. SOLT’s box office figures suggested that the last week of August would be the best time to run it, so the dates were moved. Promotional activity was stepped up to provide the theatrical family feeling that Kids Week still embodies today, using t-shirts and balloons to create a warm and recognisable welcome. As Kids Week operates on a small budget, we don’t book advertising but rely on our in-house media and marketing team, fantastic word-of-mouth and support from the participating shows. Embracing the opportunities of social media, we also have active Facebook and Twitter communities: as well as using these to build relationships with our loyal customers, we take great joy in seeing them talk to each other about our shows and activities.

Many other factors have also contributed to our success. Producers are very generous with their ticket allocations, we have an excellent working relationship with our ticketing agency, Ticketmaster, and our experienced and passionate in-house team know Kids Week inside out. It also helps that television programmes such as ‘Over The Rainbow’ and ‘Glee’ have been making musical theatre ‘cool’ again for the demographic we’re trying to reach. Indeed, many producers are now programming in even more family shows in the West End, particularly in the daytime when their theatres would have been dark.

As a result of continuing demand, we extended Kids Week to two weeks in 2004 and to three weeks in 2010. With such strong brand values and a community of engaged customers, the interest in the initiative just keeps growing. This is great news for a not-for-profit organisation such as SOLT, as Kids Week fulfils all of our key objectives raising the profile of theatre, selling more tickets and developing a theatre-going habit from an early age.

To mark our fifteenth birthday in 2012, for the first time ever, Kids Week will run for the whole month of August. A memorable launch event is being organised to enable 2,012 children to celebrate this milestone for an initiative which is so very important to us.