Woking Theatres & Cinema
BRAND STRATEGY FOR THEATRE & CINEMA VENUES: WOKING, UK
Woking Theatres & Cinema brings together three distinct cultural venues under one roof: Woking Theatre, Rhoda McGaw Theatre and Nova Cinema. Together, they offer everything from major touring productions, emerging creative work and a state-of-the-art multi-screen cinema experience.
Following the rebrand of Ambassador Theatre Group to ATG Entertainment, the existing venues brand structure no longer reflected the organisation behind it. Good Noise was appointed to clarify the relationship between the brands, define what each venue stood for and create a strategic framework that could guide a new, more cohesive identity.
The challenge
The existing brand architecture had evolved over time, leaving the relationship between the destination and its individual venues difficult to understand and communicate, while their separate visual identities made them feel more disconnected than they were in reality.
Each venue also presented a different strategic challenge; Woking Theatre, formally known as The New Victoria Theatre, had an established reputation for bringing major West End and touring productions to the town. Rhoda McGaw Theatre was a much-loved community venue with an expanding role in supporting new performers, ideas and creative experimentation. Nova Cinema had undergone a significant refurbishment, but its brand did not yet reflect the quality of its facilities or its independently minded approach.
Our challenge was to bring the venues together under one umbrella without losing what made each venue distinctive.
Defining the audience
We began by reviewing the existing audience research, local context and competitive landscape before working with the WT&C team to define the role and positioning of each brand.
A key opportunity was to build a stronger relationship with a younger, culturally engaged audience living in and around Woking: people who value theatre, film, art, design and memorable shared experiences, and who are naturally drawn to brands with an independent spirit.
This did not mean excluding WT&C’s established audiences. Instead, it gave the organisation a clearer point of focus: a useful benchmark for decisions about its offer, communications and future audience development.
Creating a shared strategic foundation
Using our Brand Key framework, we defined the target audience, customer insight, benefits, reasons to believe, values, personality, discriminator and essence for the overarching destination and each of its three venues.
The process revealed that the brands had more in common than their existing identities suggested. All three shared a commitment to inclusion, creativity, forward thinking, innovation and creating a genuinely warm welcome.
We captured this shared personality through a set of traits: passionate, creative, contemporary, stylish, modern, warm, welcoming, cultured, inclusive and confident.
This provided a common foundation for the whole organisation while allowing each venue to express those qualities in its own way.
One destination, three experiences
The new architecture positions WT&C as the destination brand,
with three clearly defined experiences beneath it:
Woking Theatre:
A premium, purpose-built theatre bringing established, world-class productions to Woking.
Rhoda McGaw Theatre:
A space for fresh ideas, creative development, new performances and experimentation.
Nova Cinema:
A modern, state-of-the-art, multi-screen cinema experience delivered with an independent spirit.
This thinking led to a clear overarching proposition:
One destination, three unforgettable experiences.
Each individual venue was then given its own messaging:
Woking Theatre:
Experience World Class Theatre. Bringing the West End to Woking.
Rhoda McGaw Theatre:
Experience Fresh Creativity. Where performance comes to life.
Nova Cinema:
Experience Cinema. So much more than film.
Together, the messages create a consistent structure while giving audiences a clear reason to engage with each venue.
The outcome
The strategy transformed a collection of separate venue brands into a connected cultural destination.
It established a clear role for Woking Theatres & Cinema, created greater distinction between its three venues and provided the foundation for a more joined-up customer experience. It also created opportunities for stronger cross-promotion, helping audiences discover more of what is available across the destination.
Most importantly, the work gave WT&C a practical benchmark against which future decisions could be assessed, from identity and messaging to campaigns, signage, programming and the experience audiences receive at every touchpoint.
The result is an brand architecture that celebrates the individual strengths of Woking Theatre, Rhoda McGaw Theatre and Nova Cinema while making the collective offer more powerful than the sum of its parts.
The strategy has since been brought to life through a new identity, venue naming system, signage, campaign communications and audience-facing applications across the destination. View the WT&C brand concept
“This is a hugely exciting moment for us and for Woking. Bringing our venues together as Woking Theatres & Cinema gives us a clearer identity and reflects the important role we play at the heart of the community. Alongside this, we’ve been investing in our spaces to ensure every visit feels even more welcoming, comfortable and memorable. We’re incredibly proud of what’s to come, and we can’t wait to share this next chapter with our audiences.”
Laura McMillan, Venue Director.
Services Included:
Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Positioning, Audience Definition,
Brand Architecture, Brand Messaging
Photography: Ellen Richardson and Good Noise
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