Les Marionnettes

Not every post has the same job.

We started organising communication around different roles. Programme content answers the practical question: What’s happening? Experience content helps someone imagine what being there actually feels like. Character and storytelling content builds familiarity and personality. Human content introduces the people behind the business. Commercial content gives additional visibility to services such as birthdays or Mobile Theater when they become priorities. Together, these create a communication system flexible enough to move with the business. But the more interesting part happens after something is published. Because that’s when the audience starts telling us what worked.

We stopped treating reach as the whole story.

A post can reach thousands of people and still create very little action. Another can reach fewer people and lead to considerably more profile visits, follows, shares or clicks. Those are different outcomes. And they should lead to different decisions. July gave us several good examples. An organic What’s On post generated 11,223 views and 53 profile visits. Guignol Goes to Dubai, using a character-led narrative, generated 56 profile visits, 37 follows, 12 shares and six saves. At the same time, one boosted What’s On post reached 6,336 accounts but produced only 24 profile visits and one follow. None of those numbers is inherently ’good’ or ’bad’ on its own. They tell us different things. The July analysis consequently identified practical programme content, character-led storytelling and human-led communication as valuable directions, while also highlighting retention as an area to keep improving. The important part came next.

We used the learning.

One of the emerging conclusions was that content could become more effective when it helped audiences experience Les Marionnettes rather than simply promoting an activity. So the next content cycle tested that more deliberately. In August, an experience-first storytelling piece reached 6,608 accounts, generated 11,556 views and 61 profile visits, with additional follows and engagement. A boosted Programme post generated 170 profile visits and 67 external link taps, demonstrating another role for practical content when paired with the right distribution objective. The August analysis also reinforced the value of collaborations and giveaways for audience growth while continuing to identify retention and conversion opportunities for future content. That’s why the reports matter. They’re not the end of the month. They’re the beginning of the next one.

Turning performance into percentages.

For the case study, percentages make the strategic learning easier to understand than large view totals alone. Guignol Goes to Dubai generated 37 follows from 56 profile visits – equivalent to a 66.1% profile-visit-to-follow ratio. A boosted August Programme post generated 78 profile visits from 3,076 reached accounts, a 2.54% reach-to-profile-visit rate. It then generated 18 follows, equivalent to 23.1% of those profile visits. The July Programme results make the comparison even clearer. The 27 July post generated 69 profile visits from 2,055 reached accounts – 3.36%. Another Programme post reached 6,336 accounts but generated 24 profile visits – 0.38%. That is almost a 9x difference in profile-action efficiency, despite the second post having substantially more reach. This is the kind of evidence we want the case study to show: the strategy is not optimising for the biggest number on the screen. It is learning which creative and distribution choices create the action the business actually needs.

Create. Measure. Learn. Adapt.

That loop now sits underneath the communication. If a format works, we understand why. If something generates reach but not action, we don’t automatically call it successful. If audiences respond to a character, an experience, a practical programme format or a particular type of storytelling, we can use that information deliberately. And when the business changes priorities, the communication can change with it. At one stage, a particular show might need attention. At another, birthdays. At another, Mobile Theater or a new concept. The system isn’t built around forcing every month into the same template. It’s built around giving Les Marionnettes a communication framework that can keep evolving.

Social media is the visible layer.

What sits underneath is an ongoing decision system connecting business priorities, communication objectives, content, audience behaviour and learning. That’s why we see the project as more than ongoing social media management. We’ve been accompanying a growing business and helping its communication grow alongside it.