Performing Analysis on Kickstarter data to uncover Trends (Bootcamp)

#Introduction We are analyzing kickstarter data to help optimize a upcoming campaign for the Play "Fever". Utilizing data from successful, canceled, and failed campaigns around the world we explore factors in successful campaigns, as well as focus on campaigns that have a similar goal as well as category.

##Summary Based on our analysis, we can conclude that opening the campaign in May would give the best chance of success. Theatre campaigns do their best starting in may, and begin to lower their success rate from June through the end of the year; of he 166 theatre campaigns launched in May, 111 of them were successful.

Fever has a high chance of success; There were 525 Successful Theatre campaigns, and 412 of those were Plays.

Fever’s goal of $10,000 - $12,000 can lower the chances of success. Most of the successful play campaigns were for amounts closer to $5000. A Goal of $10,000 may be tough, but is not unobtainable.

Many of the failed campaigns have a lower median pledge amount. In order to maximize success, Fever will need to appeal to individuals who are willing to contribute higher amounts.

In conclusion, the best chance of success will fall in setting a reasonable pledge goal, starting the campaign in the month of May, and working to appeal to contributors with a higher spending power.

The Kickstarter Fever by Louise was able to achieve a measure of success in a very short amount of time. Based on this, We want to analyze how common this rate of success is, and how time affects the overall success of a campaign.

Utilizing data from before the campaign, as well as further analysis after the campaign started- it can be concluded that.

1. Campaigns started during the month of May are the most successful campaigns. This trend is the same in both the global and United States markets. The trend also follows suit when only looking at Theatre campaigns in both the global and United States markets.

2. The effect of the goal of a Theatre/Play campaign roughly follows a reverse bell curve. Campaigns of $1000 or less have a 80% success rate; Past $1000 the success rate declines to 20% for campaigns between $25,000 and $30,000. At that point the success rate rises to about 67% between $35,000 and $45,000 before declining sharply once again. This means that the overall sweet spot for campaign goals is less than $1000 or between $35,000 and $45,000

3. The effect of the Length of a Theatre/Play campaign roughly follows a bell curve. Campaigns of less than 7 days have an overall success rate of %40, and rises to over 80% for campaigns between 15 and 21 days. From there the success rate lowers as the length of the campaign gets longer. This concludes that the best chance of success falls on campaigns that are 15-21 days long.

This overall report does not take into effect any outside influences that are typical of a campaign. There is no comparison to the overall marketing power of each of the campaigns, as well as other intangible factors such as popularity of the campaign originators, or the brand of the campaign. It can be concluded that a theatre campaign by a well known producer will automatically have an advantage in the Kickstarter field.

Another factor that is unknown at this time is the demographics of the pledges. Its unknown if certain types of campaigns appeal to certain types of demographics, and if that has an influence on the success of a campaign. Does appealing to a demographic of a certain financial level affect the success rate of a campaign?

In other to dive deeper in the given data, it might be useful to correlate the date success rate with other factors. How has the success rate changed from year to year? Does the trend of a may success rate correspond year over year? How has it changed?

In addition to the year, can we compare length of campaign to the months and see how the trend holds? Does a short campaign in May do as well as a longer campaign in may?

Lastly, what is the average campaign pledge by month, are there higher median pledges in may which contribute to its success?