For the past year, thrive have been building the brand HERE from scratch and running two new social channels for all things arts, culture and heritage in Derry, Strabane and Donegal. 

We loved this challenge for two reasons, the first being that it came out from audience research thrive delivered in both regions (that’s music to our ears), and secondly because it was an honour. There is a massive creative offer across the North West, and we got to talk about it, celebrate it, and have a lot of fun with it. 

This also felt very different from anything that had ever been done before. Donegal shares 93% of its land boundary with Northern Ireland. Yet, when it comes to arts and culture, there is very little cross border research or audience development on this island. Derry City and Strabane District Council and Donegal County Council saw that gap. So we’ve spent the last five years learning about audiences in the region through our North West Audience Project. 

The very first piece of research we did confirmed what we already suspected. 26% of North West residents we interviewed had crossed the border to engage in arts, culture or heritage in the past year. Audiences in both regions looked the same in lots of ways, behave in similar ways, and really really love their arts and culture. 

Both councils wanted to increase awareness of cultural opportunities and experiences in the NW as a whole, and to grow and embed the idea of one cultural brand across the region. This wasn’t just about selling tickets to events, it was about giving people a place to share their local creativity. So the HERE for Arts and Culture channels set out to bind this creative North West world into a clear visual identity, a bit like the Wild Atlantic Way. This tourism trail is massive- 1600 miles in length, and passes through nine counties and three provinces. But branding it as “a sensational journey of soaring cliffs and buzzing towns and cities, of hidden beaches and epic bays” made it felt like a whole experience, a defined journey. We wanted to do the same.  

And we knew we wanted to create more than just a what’s on listing for what was happening, we wanted to make something genuine, creative, and good craic. 

How did we do it? 

We created a communications plan that set objectives, pinned down the key dates and details, and looked at what kinds of content or messages would be posted, and when. A key part of this was deciding how to measure success, so we created clear targets and KPIs so we cold track our progress. 

When building audience personas, we asked who these channels were for. We didn’t just mean demographics. Our research helped us segment potential audiences based on attitudes and behaviour. 

The cross-border culture seekers were an obvious segment. The second were ‘arts and culture beyond four walls’ explorers, based on research that a large amount of engagement with arts and culture in the North West happens outside of dedicated venues and spaces. 

A ‘young people who are here for now’ segment was set to respond to lower feelings of positivity and belonging after young people (16-24) engage with arts and culture, despite their high rates of attendance.  

The content plan was structured using the four themes of the HERE brand: 

• Renewal, 

• Heritage, 

• Bridges, and 

• Movement. 

We created ‘Here, chat to me’ short videos to feature highly engaged local audiences, artists, shop owners, venue volunteers and local tour guides. Venue, artform and artist spotlight content were important to showcase the breadth of types of offering across the region. 

‘Day in the life’ videos included footage from a number of spaces or locations, to make the audience feel as if they are experiencing the North West first-hand. We were already regularly holding events with cultural organisations across the region, so we could consult with them and get feedback and ideas for the channels. 

What we learned 

The project had a limited life span as there only was funding available for one year. This immediately created difficulties. We knew building a brand up from scratch took time so putting a deadline to it was challenging. Long-term planning was difficult. 

The cultural organisations were new to the brand itself, and understandably weary of any initiative that created more work for them. Our Communications Executive Candice travelled from Belfast to visit organisations across the North West throughout the year, with the aim of uncovering stories that the HERE audience would find interesting, and making some great content highlighting North West organisations so they could feel supported, instead of burdened. And the messages and emails started to come in. Many organisations got into the habit of tagging the page in a lot of their content.  

We knew the channel would change and evolve, and we tried to be flexible and reactive.  

Some bits worked straight away. The balance of content exploring venues vs non-traditional spaces was working. Analytics showed us the balance of content in both regions was showing a good mix of audiences in Derry, Strabane and Donegal. 

But analytics also showed us that one of the segments didn’t work, ‘young people who are here for now’ was struggling. On Instagram, the main audience age group was 35-44 year olds (with 25-34 year olds following closely behind). We increased the amount of video content, but decided against TikTok- a famously young platform. We always advise organisations to focus on a couple of channels rather than having them all- we knew that our effort was best concentrated on what has the potential to really have an impact and build genuine audience engagement. So we focused on the other two segments, particularly on Instagram, which continued to have the highest engagement, and increased reach in terms of exposure to non-followers. 

Our recommendations 

• It starts with the audience rather than the product. The need for HERE came from getting to really know audiences in the North West.
• It’s about more than just having a presence online or selling tickets.
• Build a relationship with your audiences.
• You don’t have to be on every platform. Each one has its own audience and pros and cons for how to engage them. Focus on the segments and channels that work, and let go of what doesn’t.
• Digital engagement can’t be all things to all people – different audiences want different things.  

Our year with HERE was full of learning and joy- the North West division of thrive as we called it (Eve from Donegal, me from Derry and Candice from Castlederg), were so proud to give voice to such class creativity from 12 months. 

HERE… we’re pure lurred. 

To hear more about our year with HERE and what we learned, sign up for this online Arts Bites event with Arts and Business on Wednesday 15 October.