“I was working as a woodwind teacher in a school in Bromley and started with twelve pupils. I am proud of the fact that by the time I left there, 250 of the 300 pupils there had taken up an instrument.”
“Following working in St. Albans I decided to go private. In 1976 I started working as a private music teacher, teaching woodwind instruments in my front room to five budding young musicians. When my pupil number grew to 22, I hired a room at the local Methodist Church and from there it snowballed. The father of one of my young stars in the making funded me to apply for the Business Expansion Scheme and following this we grew to 1,000 pupils during the 1980s. In 1986 we rented the Bourne Concert Hall and when the lease came up for renewal in 1991, we were bought out. With the money we had Homecroft built which is a centre dedicated to musical achievement.”
“Our aim is to infuse children to enjoy music making, and provide musical experiences and enjoyment for anyone from 3 months to 90 years old. Babies and Toddlers go to Monkey Music. We also provide one to one music lessons for individuals of all ages, and more recently we started Musicale Holidays around the country and summer music courses for five to eighteen year olds.”
How would you describe your marketing promotion?
“Over the years we have produced a range of marketing materials of varying sizes and colours. All the formats have proved to be successful. Now we tend to use the simpler two colour A5 leaflet which offers a free introductory session .We raise awareness of Monkey Music twice a year and Musicale Holidays as and when we need to.”
What did you want to achieve?
“In 1985 when local newspapers became ‘freebies’ we noticed that advertising became less useful at generating new pupils and competition was growing. Fifteen years ago one of my first pupils took the initiative to start up her own music franchise for babies called Monkey Music. We worked alongside and then became franchisees. We wanted to promote the classes and fill our building with melody makers.”
How many households and which areas was your material delivered to?
“We tend to market to around 16,000 households in the areas of Harpenden, Wheathampstead and Redbourn. This year, we had some other distributions to towns where we were hosting the Musicale Holidays. Each campaign was to approximately 20,000 dwellings.”
Over what time scales was your leaflet distributed?
“The delivery takes place over a 2/3 week period and we have a fairly flexible arrangement.”
What results did you see?
“We receive so many ‘phone calls after one of Jeff’s leaflet campaigns. Monkey Music is now well established and running at near full capacity. There are always fresh intakes as new babies are born. This year Jeff has been promoting our summer music courses.”
How would you describe your D2D experience?
“We first worked with DOR-2-DOR fifteen years ago. The service is absolutely brilliant and very efficient, and now it is the only marketing we do, other than directly with schools.”
Would you recommend DOR-2-DOR and/or use our service again?
“Yes, because they offer a total package and they are exceedingly efficient. Jeff is very prompt in responding to my marketing requirements.”
Looking ahead, how do you see DOR-2-DOR helping your business achieve its future objectives?
“We want to increase numbers for our summer music courses, and market our one-to-one tuition to a more varied audience. We have now started to promote ‘lets make a musical’ courses across the country for summer, and I very much hope DOR-2-DOR can be instrumental in helping us to achieve a good take up.”
