Breaking the rules of social media

As arts marketers grapple with algorithms, dwindling reach and the pressure to produce ever more content, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures comms team is quietly redefining its approach to social media. Juliette Barber caught up with Lucy Fox, Director of Audience Engagement, and Kaasam Aziz, Head of Content, and discovered what happened when they hit reset—and rewrote the rules

What made you pause and reconsider the role of social media within New Adventures? Was there a specific moment that triggered a shift?

Lucy Fox (LF): I’d just come back from maternity leave, which had given me space to reflect on our social media strategy. We were working incredibly hard on Sleeping Beauty, creating loads of content for Instagram—bespoke videos, filming with dancers, jumping on every trend. But it wasn’t working. We were trying to drive sales through organic posts, even in places where our following was tiny. Sometimes posts would fly, sometimes they’d flop. And that inconsistency became exhausting. We were living or dying by the performance of individual posts. That made us stop and ask: What are we actually doing here?

Kaasam Aziz (KA): Yes, we were completely locked into this grind of chasing the same goals as our paid marketing, but without the budget. We were measuring organic content against metrics that didn’t make sense. And I wasn’t enjoying the work anymore—it didn’t feel meaningful. It was especially hard coming out of COVID, as the industry was fragile, and we were still just regurgitating the same approach. But the world had changed, and we hadn’t really stopped to question if our approach still made sense.

Around that time, Lucy and I started having these massive, energised conversations—often at midnight. We looked at football content during the Euros, at what Red Bull and Nike were doing, fashion brands, and more commercial companies. That was a turning point. We were throwing everything in and seeing what felt right. We asked: Why can’t arts marketing be more like that? It wasn’t about copying their style—it was about shifting from performance to purpose. 

We were also doing a lot of our own learning—courses, conversations, podcasts. Seth Godin [the marketing entrepreneur] really shaped my thinking—he helped me understand the value of having an opinion in a room, of bringing creativity even when you’re nervous. I also found real inspiration from Oren John and Alex Garcia, who talk a lot about brand strategy and storytelling in fashion and commercial campaigns. Their approach—capitalising on zeitgeist, building campaigns with bite-sized but meaningful storytelling—really stuck with me.

LF: We also did a short course with Strong Brand Social. It was so affirming and felt like everything we’d been talking about—everything we’d felt instinctively—suddenly had structure. I’d recommend it to everyone.

And from there, we started seeing our social media followers as an audience in their own right—not just people who might buy a ticket. A lot of them are overseas or won’t see the show live. So why are they here? To get a taste of New Adventures. And sales posts don’t give that. That’s what pushed us to start talking about our brand. We don’t use that word much in the arts. But it became the core question: what does our brand feel like to someone consuming content on their phone?

KA: We started asking: What do we actually love about social media? As audience members, what draws us in? The answer wasn’t “book now” posts. It was storytelling, curiosity, going behind the curtain. That’s what Matthew Bourne’s work does—it connects to universal truths: desire, identity, vulnerability. Why weren’t we doing the same on our digital channels?

And what did that look like in terms of structure?

LF: We decided on a three-pillar framework: Why, What and How. It gave us clarity and permission to make different types of content.

•  Why: Visibility and awareness. Reaching new audiences with universal stories.
•  What: Promotional. A clear call to action.
•  How: Community engagement. Speaking to our existing audiences, building relationships.

KA: We’d come from a place where strategy was all about content types—five behind-the-scenes posts, three dance videos, that kind of thing. It was restrictive. We couldn’t tell proper stories. Over time, and through a lot of late-night chats, books and finding people online doing this differently, we moved towards a more purpose-led approach. That’s where the Why, What, How model came in. It wasn’t about volume—it was about vision.

And that also gave us a better way to communicate internally. We weren’t going into board meetings listing the next ten videos. We were coming in saying: this month is about building equity around this theme. Here’s how we’ll build engagement, and here’s when we’ll make the call to action. That was a much more empowering way to collaborate.

LF: It really changed the pressure we were putting on ourselves. We no longer needed every single post to perform brilliantly. One post might have mass appeal—a beautiful clip from Swan Lake, for example—but another might be about a take-part programme which probably won’t perform as well. But both matter. And we tell the whole story now. 

KA: And it’s liberated us. Every new project isn’t about “ten dance videos” anymore. It’s: what are we trying to achieve—do we want a save, a comment, a share? It’s made us feel like we’re in the room with the audience, not just broadcasting to them.

And how does that affect your approach to planning?

LF: It’s been transformative. We used to plan week by week. “What’s happening this week? Let’s post that.” It was chaotic. Now we map out our stories in advance—we already know the narratives we’re telling through to the end of the year. That takes the stress off.

It’s how we stay connected year-round. We might only visit a city every 12 or 24 months, so if someone follows us after seeing one production, we want to show them there’s more to explore—not just Swan Lake, but also Nutcracker, Cinderella, and beyond. That’s how we build a relationship, not just a one-time engagement.

KA: One of our biggest moments came when we mapped our digital audience locations. We were targeting social posts to places like Bradford or Nottingham—but discovered that less than 0.3   per cent of our followers were in those cities. Meanwhile, LA was one of our biggest audiences. That kind of basic audience insight was huge. We used it to bring stakeholders on the journey with us, showing that we had the facts—not just assumptions.

LF: And we don’t obsess over post-by-post results anymore. We set quarterly objectives. Some content will hit; some won’t. But we’re building a narrative. That’s the goal.

KA: Early on we even developed ratios around our pillars—if visibility is the goal, we’ll look at reach; if it’s about community, we’re tracking comments. Our reporting is centred on brand, engagement and building trust.

Can you give an example of a campaign that reflected this approach?

LF: The Becoming campaign for Swan Lake: The Next Generation was a good example. It ran from September 2024 to spring 2025 and explored the different characters: Becoming the Swan, the Queen, the Prince. It was planned in advance and matched our pillars perfectly. And it performed brilliantly: we posted less than the during the same period the year before but increased engagement by 23 per cent, video views by 19.4  per cent and our online audience increased by over 18,000.

KA: And each piece had its own value. One might have 600 shares. Another might get a thousand saves. That tells us so much more than just a “view count”. 

We’re now thinking about those deeper metrics. Saves, for instance—that’s someone saying they want to return to it. It means we’re in their library of things they value: recipes, memes, life advice. If our work’s in there too, that’s a big deal. And it also signals to platforms that our content matters, which can improve ad delivery down the line.

How do you balance this with paid advertising?

LF: We don’t run the paid ads ourselves—our marketing agency does that through venue accounts. That means we don’t always see the benefit in terms of our follower growth. But we’ve started influencing how and where they spend. We know that when campaigns run through our own channels, our following grows.

KA: There’s much more dialogue now. We’re not duplicating content—we’re complementing each other. We’ve started using organic data to shape paid decisions, especially during tours. And we’ve got a clearer role: they handle the tactical sales pressure, and we bring the brand value.

LF: I think we’re now respected for having this structure. Before, everyone felt like a social media expert. But we’ve got something built on understanding our audience, our brand and our data. That gives us perspective—and people now come to us for advice. They listen.

Any final words?

LF: We’re no longer asking, Why didn’t this post perform? We’re asking, Did it serve its purpose? And that’s a much healthier and more empowering place to be.