What to expect when you're expecting

I just noted this on Nico Muhly's blog, and I thought I would be more specifically helpful here. There is a great firm in Philadelphia that does arts marketing -
http://www.dfsi.org

There is also a great photographer in Philly who does lots of work for arts organizations -
http://www.jjtiziou.net/jj/

Just team them up and they'll do you right!

If Annodyne is reading this, I would suggest going back and finding some examples of people who are audience currently of the Philadelphia Orchestra who took a chance doing the unexpected - trying the Orchestra - and loved it. Maybe they did that instead of going to the Jersey Shore? Or they picked a night at the Orchestra as part of some great night out in Center City? The campaign is salvageable, if you find real people who - god help us - unexpected themselves for real or whatever.

Ooh ooh!  I got there first! (and noticed the Mahler/Tchaik thing--which, rather than fixing, thy have now simply removed)
http://seatedovation.blogspot.com/2010/02/expect-worst.html

Annodyne, the creators of this advertising effort are pretty clueless. They fell back on "branding" and "web diagnostics" when they should have been focusing on selling tickets. Putting warm, paying bodies in otherwise cold, empty seats should have been their focus.

Trying to talk marketing and audience development to orchestra managements is difficult under the best of circumstances. (I spent time doing just that at the Boston Symphony) and handicapped by constant interference from long time contributors who know little about the craft.

This effort misses the mark in so many ways it should be used at Harvard as a case history of how NOT to market the arts.

I generally follow the Occam's Razor of Human Behavior: "Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence" but I wonder if there's actually something fantastically clever going on here:

Perhaps we're all unwittingly helping them to create a new Internet meme: "Unexpecting" - like Rickrolling but with Mahler 6.

You're expecting Tchaikovsky, but the link goes to Mahler 6. You're expecting Martha Stewart, but you get Mahler 6. You were expecting porn, but you get Mahler 6. It's almost retahded enough to be huge.

Thanks for linking, Amanda.

But even beside the point of a mismatch in execution and audience/objective, the site itself is, quite frankly, quite pointless.

I believe the site will be accompanied by an ad campaign throughout the city, but I think the real missed opportunity here is social media.

What about a dedicated Facebook page and Twitter account where they can show different cases of unexpectedness and share fun, spontaneous things. Social media is perfect for this!

Instead, we get a static, one-page Web site with bland marketing copy. A site that doesn't offer me anything of real value. Like I said in my blog: sign up for a newsletter? Why should I? Buy tickets? But why?

My trip through social media world has been full of unexpected opportunities. This campaign seems to naturally fit in that world.

But that would involve actually interacting, sharing and engaging. I suppose a static Web page seems much safer.

And to further confuse the point - are they staying relevant by doing new ("unexpected"!!) things, or are they "timeless"? Doesn't one cancel the other? The whole thing almost seems like satire, or a lesson from an arts admin program in what NOT to do as you try to build your audience. How did every single person involved miss the whiteness factor?

The copy leaves a bit to be desired as well. Though I love "Listen below to preview the Orchestra's unexpected sounds". That's just straight up hilarious, however unintentionally.

McManus wrote about this as well: http://www.adaptistration.com/2010/02/11/unexpected-bear-traps-in-philadelphia/

On one hand, the use of white people doesn't bother me so much since it seems fair to assume that the orchestra will be more successful targeting Caucasians since that's where their primary audience has been all along. I'm not saying that's what they should do but if the goal is an immediate bump in single tix sales, that will probably do more in the short term.

@Ben Wyskid: I don't entirely agree with the notion that you can't use stock photos. If there's no money for photo shoots then there's no money but I would be surprised that a group as old and ans big as the Philadelphia Orchestra would not have a number of in-house photos to use.

This will sound superficial, but whatever, they're supposed to be advertising: they should have made the people in the ads look like the type of people you'd want to see when you go to a concert. Not these Plain Jane boring suburban types. For the part that asks 'When's the last time you tried something new,' for example, they could have had a photo of people you WOULDN'T expect there, like cool looking people under 35.

...and this weak marketing campaign to make classical music accessible is so not unexpected.

Ben here. The campaign was forwarded to me by a friend. I assume they took the site down because it's horrible!



What I'd like to know is this:

(1) What firm did this to them?

(2) What did it cost?

(3) Why would you use stock photos of fake people when there are
probably (one hopes) real actual people in Philadelphia who tried the
orchestra on a whim and had a great time. I see what they were doing
and there was a way to do it, but they totally missed the mark.



Let's review Ben's fourth rule of good marketing:

NO STOCK PHOTOS

NO STOCK PHOTOS

NO STOCK PHOTOS



who are those people in that car?



I lived in Philly for 5 years, and this doesn't feel right to its audience at all. What a mess.





According to the blog 'Proper Discord', the firm is called Annodyne. Their post about the project is here. -AA

Hi Amanda. I do agree, and wanted to note that the orchestra campaign sounds a lot like a decades-old Village Voice poster campaign: "Expect the Unexpected."