Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) said "Hell is full of good intentions." 

You really did mean to go that exhibition… weeks later you find the publicity leaflet at the bottom of a pile of junk. Your beautifully designed, expertly crafted promotion shot has disappeared down the great black hole of marketing called Forgetting. What’s to be done?

Number one. Improve the frequency of your marketing communications – people need constant reminders. Drip-feed information, not Big-Bang, works best.

Number two is more subtle. Get people to make a psychological ‘commitment contract’  with themselves. An article in Sports Psychology sums it up. “One way to help you become more self-motivated is to set goals and stay committed to reaching your goals. You can do this is by creating and signing a commitment contract. It’s is a written statement …that you promise to follow.”

Guess what? There’s a Commitment Contract website called www.stickk.com, another brilliant idea from a bunch of Yale super-geeks. Here you set your goal and publicly pledge to achieve it. CC makes good psychological sense being grounded in Goal Theory, a key element that underlies Motivation.

Back to the theatre, Birmingham based company Stans Café has developed its own commitment contract through sheer intuitive brilliance.  What you do is to sign up to www.iliketheatre.co.uk and pledge to attend three or six shows in the coming year. Having filled in a pledge form you get email reminders and can do a range of fun activities like ‘surprise two people by inviting them to come with you to the theatre,’ give some feedback to a theatre company, and get your pledge form signed by an actor (which is really an excuse for you to be able to say Hello to them).  Finally, in a year’s time you get invited to a theatre awards ceremony: “everyone who has completed their pledge will be invited. Please invent a category, decide who should win the award for it, fill these in and return the card.” It’s not the Oscars, but it sounds a whole lot more fun.

Stans Café Director James Yarker who came up with the idea, says the scheme is light-hearted, but adds, ‘Who knows - it might just make a few extra people to get out a bit more instead of just sitting in front of the TV every night.’

There’s a Facebook Page (ILikeTheatre) and Twitter @iliketheatre.