Creative testing: making sure your campaigns hit the spot

When was the last time you tested a campaign idea with your audience before it launched? If your answer is “never”, you’re not alone. In our sector, creative testing has rarely been part of the process. Most of us rely on instinct, internal discussions, or perhaps instruction from a show director. But ignoring audiences can mean missed opportunities to connect more deeply and achieve more success—especially with those who don’t already come through our doors.

That’s why we built Campaign Test, one of the new services available through Indigo Share: Discover. It’s designed to give arts organisations a simple, off-the-shelf, low-cost way to sense-check creative ideas with audiences before pressing “go”.

In the business world, pre-testing is standard practice. It reduces risk, highlights blind spots, and can even spark new ideas. But in the arts, where marketing teams are often small and budgets tight, testing can feel like the last thing you can manage.

But it doesn’t need to be. With our templated approach, you can quickly test anything from campaign visuals and straplines to brand identity or messaging. The results can reassure your team that you’re on the right track or highlight adjustments that could make your creative land more powerfully.

And because the service uses the Indigo Share Audience Panel - a 15,000-strong pool of current and potential attenders to your organisation - you get insight not just from the people who already love you, but from those you’re hoping to reach.

Laura Arends and her team at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre used Indigo Share Discover's Campaign Test service for a final check of their new branding. Sending a short survey to the Indigo Share Audience Panel allowed the team to test final decisions with a large number of current and - crucially - potential audiences. 

Using our templated Campaign Test format (which has options to customise) we asked audiences to share their brand perceptions and express preferences between different visual brand executions. 

We also gathered demographic details and previous attendance at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre to help interrogate the results. 

Within 72 hours, we gathered nearly 2,000 responses, which we supplied to Laura to share with the rest of the senior leadership team, ready for a successful brand launch.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that research is slow, complicated, and expensive. Campaign Test is designed to be the opposite. With ready-made tried and tested templates and our engaged national audience panel, you can go from “what if?” to “we know” in just 72 hours.

And because it’s part of Indigo Share, the cost is deliberately low (with big discounts for Indigo Share Subscription users!), making it accessible even for smaller organisations. In fact, we’ve seen teams use it as a final sense-check on big projects, but also to test things as simple as campaign taglines or seasonal brochure covers.

Imagine making big creative decisions knowing they’ve already been road-tested with the very people you want to reach. It’s a small step that could make a big difference to campaign confidence, audience connection, and that challenging bottom line.