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In an article that originally appeared in The Stage, Circus Mania author Douglas McPherson asks big top insiders about the changing face of circus advertising.
Posters have been the main form of circus advertising for as long as big tops have travelled the land. In the middle of the last century, brightly painted pictures of snarling lions and ornately made-up clowns whetted appetites for the arrival in town of Billy Smart’s or Chipperfields.
Today, animals have almost completely vanished from British circuses, and clowns have toned down their make-up to nearly nothing. In an increasingly online world, are posters also about to fade into history?
Paulo’s Circus is believed to be the first in the country, and probably the world, to have stopped using posters, along with leaflets and physical tickets, in a drive to go completely paperless.
“Our decision to stop using posters stemmed from a number of reasons. Chief among them, waste,” says showman Kenny Darnell Jr, whose family has been in the circus business for seven generations and traded under the Paulo’s brand for more than 120 years.
“Posters aren’t reusable, they’re wasteful, they make a mess when fly posted and are often slapped onto anything sticky tape will cling to, just so the biller can be rid of them quickly. Personally, I was done with the whole thing.”
Darnell’s memories of billing – as putting up posters is known – are less than happy.
“It was hard work, traipsing around town all day, going shop to shop, asking the same question, ‘Can we pop a poster in your window?’. Rejection was part and parcel of it. Not every shop wants a circus display in their window and then there was the circus politics, other circuses tearing down your posters, and occasionally things getting a bit... physical. Tedious, wasteful and to be honest not a terribly dignified way to advertise.
“I knew there had to be a smarter, more efficient way. Surely circus could tap into this new market online?”
As proof of the power of purely online marketing, Paulo’s in 2024 sold 1000 tickets to a venue Darnell hadn’t even booked – he announced only the county and dates. “And yep, we sold out 14 shows in a row at that venue, two months later. That to me is the power of innovation.”
One reason circus posters were once so visible is a clause in the Town and County Planning Act that specifically exempts circuses and funfairs from needing planning permission to display advertising for limited periods.
They need permission from property owners, but that has left some grey areas such as telephone poles where a poster may have served its purpose before the owner of the pole requests its removal.
Empty shops are another popular target. Billers have long perfected ‘door dropping’ by which posters attached to sticky tape are slid over the top of a locked glass door to hang down on the inside.
“I was rather skilled at that,” says Darnell. But in retrospect, he says, “I’d hazard a guess that it’s illegal. It certainly looks dodgy. Not a great look for the circus.”
Postering the wrong places can cause complaints from residents and sometimes leads to prosecution. In 2022, Exchange Events Ltd twice appeared at Liverpool Magistrates Court, fined £1500 and £2000, for illegally promoting Gandey’s circus.
“Fly posting is a serious issue,” says Darnell. “I’d be in favour of stricter penalties, or even a licensing system to regulate poster usage. At least that way there’s accountability and some of the revenue could go towards cleaning up the mess left behind over the years, that many shows, us included at one point, have all contributed to.”
The circus industry's reliance on posters has declined over the past 20 years as online advertising and social media engagement grew.
When Martin Burton founded Zippos Circus 40 years ago, he distributed 5000 - 6000 posters per venue. Today it's around 2500.
Although Burton says he lacks the courage to dispense with posters altogether, he believes they no longer catch the eye on a high street plastered with advertising, and foresees a day when they will disappear completely.
In another break with tradition, Burton has stopped buying local newspaper adverts, having noticed that nobody redeemed the discount codes anymore. Instead, he spends the money – and more – on social media ads, with a full time member of staff dedicated to online marketing.
Another former mainstay of circus advertising that has fallen out of fashion is leaving piles of leaflets, with discount coupons, on the counters of shops and petrol stations.
Since Covid, says Burton, “Nobody would pick them up.”
Big Kid Circus, by contrast, still relies “heavily” on local newspaper advertising and believes that posters will always have a role to play alongside online marketing.
“From our market research, posters still have a big impact. People still expect to see them,” says artistic director Julia Kirilova. “We are a business which depends a lot on feelings and nostalgia. Everyone knows circus and has a distinct memory of it. Our job is to find a way to make them remember that feeling, whether that is through a short video clip on TikTok or a poster.”
While some big top bosses may welcome a future without the chore of billing, circus historian Dr Steve Ward regards circus posters as an important part of our cultural heritage.
“As a child growing up in the 1950s, circus posters were very much a part of everyday life,” Ward says. “They seemed to be everywhere – shop windows, telegraph poles, walls, fence panels etc. Brightly coloured and often quite garish, they offered entry into another world of excitement, danger, and fun.”
In his book Nineteenth Century Circus Poster Art, Ward recounts how innovations in printing technology during that time saw posters evolve from a list of acts to a fully illustrated art form.
“As the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words,” says Ward. “The second half of the 19th century could be referred to as the early golden age of the circus with some very fine posters to match.”
Since then, poster art has evolved with the circus itself, from paintings of headline acts in the mid-20th century to photographic images, and the more abstract designs used by some contemporary companies.
“Social media cannot replace the impact of a brightly coloured circus poster that elicits a feeling of childhood nostalgia in many people,” Ward concludes. “For me, circus poster art will continue to adapt to new trends, as it has done so over the last 250 years, but it will survive. It will be a sad day for us all if it does not.”
