Results tagged “advertisting” from Life's a Pitch

I was en route to Molyvos last night and, even though I was extremely late and exceedingly hot, I stopped to look at the striking, massive images lining Carnegie Hall's 7th avenue wall. Just one other thing in the four years I've lived in New York (two of which were spent working next to Carnegie Hall) has stopped me outside that building, and that was when I was inexplicably, over-the-top attracted to one of Thomas Adès' press photos. Oh, here it is:

(I sleep with a copy under my pillow every night.)

Carnegie has been running a "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" ad campaign around the city this summer (most notably on subway platform walls), and frankly I'm thrilled to see them hemorrhaging money on such a worthy endeavor. The ads are eye-catching, contemporary and aesthetically appealing while not compromising Carnegie's existing image and what the institution stands for. Now, they've blown up the performance shots used in the campaign for the 7th avenue Zankel wall, and it really looks fantastic. Wallking by the building, you actually get a sense of what goes on in there, which is as it should be. Great things do go on in there! Great things that are not so much expressed by press shots of pianists in front of their pianos.  It's not TV screens or music, but I'll take it.


From the Hilton Corridor of Penn Station:

Is the New York Philharmonic threatening me with their ad budget prowess?

In an e mail blast from last night:

Is it strange to be advertising your advertisements?

I'm on a use-me-and-abuse-me kick. I want to be pitched more when I'm inside venues, in case you didn't get the message here and here.

I saw the movie Sunshine Cleaning two weekends ago, and for the first time was interested in every single film that was previewed. They were, in order, Sleep Dealer, Brothers Bloom, Cheri, Adventureland, 500 Days of Summer, The Soloist (but only because I spotted the back of Esa-Pekka Salonen's head in the preview and got excited), and The Limits of Control. I anticipated that the "Feature Presentation" would be great because the previews were all so intriguing, and I was correct.

Remember the first time you saw commercials in the movie theater? SO ANNOYING, I remember thinking, but in retrospect (and now that I'm used to it), why not? We're all sitting there with nothing to do before a movie starts; why wouldn't you advertise the soda audience members can easily go out and buy right in the lobby? Why wouldn't you advertise...just about anything? We can't go into the kitchen and wash dishes while the commercials are on if we're in a movie theater.  [Particularly disturbing to me are the G.I. Joe-esque Army "music videos" that often appear before action films, but unfortunately, those, too, make a lot of sense in that spot.] Movie previews are certainly advertisements, they're just entertaining and in the spirit of your afternoon/evening plans so you don't notice them as much. You also expect them, just like you expect TV commercials, and no one is terribly bothered. Except when there are circa twenty of them, but that's another matter entirely.

Why aren't there previews at performing arts centers? Depending on the amount of programming, venues could produce a different preview reel each month, or perhaps just one for the fall season and one for the spring season. Video editing, while I realize is an art form in its own right, can be done fairly simply and quickly on most computers, and consequently preview reels could be done in-house at a lot of places. Would it be irritating to watch footage of upcoming performances while waiting for a concert to start? I don't think so; you can still talk to your friend or read your program, there will just be background noise/visuals. As Dan Johnson commented here, the trailers in The Met lobby - and if I may add, the trailers in lobby at New York City Ballet performances - are effective; why can't those be shown on big screens in the houses?  Additionally, programs advertise upcoming concerts already, so it would be hard for patrons to complain. Sometimes I think that we forget we work in the performing arts, that we're in the business of genres which are meant to be seen and heard, not printed flat in brochures.

A huge problem with this idea is that managers and publicists, myself included, often don't have good video footage of their clients performing. Again, at a time when most computers record video and Flip cameras cost $59.99, there's really no excuse.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but archival footage taken by an orchestra should be usable within the venue with the soloists' permission, correct? There wouldn't be union problems with that? If Hilary was playing with an orchestra she'd play with in the past, they could use their footage to preview her next appearance in-house with her permission? Venues with multi-genre programming, like BAM - the Brooklyn Academy of Music - or The Kennedy Center would also be great places for previews using in-house archival footage, because they could showcase theater, opera, dance and music programming to audiences who might not go to that section of their website or those pages in their season brochure.

And typing of the movies, The Metropolitan Opera has outdone themselves again with their new New York Times banner ad:

The video embedded in the ad features both clips from past productions and interviews with audience members in the lobby about their experiences, a la many movie television commercials.

I've always wondered how products get placement within other products' ads. For example, 30 Rock is in featured in both Netflix and Hulu ads:

Can someone please explain to me why organizations that actually have awesome programming like the Brooklyn Philharmonic still manage to make themselves look completely lame?

Don't you knock-out Rosewood font/drop-shadow me, Brooklyn. Also, what is that item in the top right corner - a speaker? Why?? Take that nonsense out and increase the size of the artist photos so we can see who we're dealing with. And what is this "BP Presents"? Is that a branded thing, a new series, or just something someone thought would look good on an e-blast?

The point is, this marketing piece makes their concert look neither cool nor fun and, presumably, it will be both.

I took a gander at the website and came out of the viewing experience totally nauseated. The icons spin and you have to stop them by hovering your mouse over the one you want. Nothing on the homepage says "This is an orchestra." Rather, it looks generic and empty; we all know orchestra concert tickets don't look like cheap door prize tickets, come on. Also, 1959 called; it wants its TV back.

If you couldn't read "Brooklyn Philharmonic music director Michael Christie" on both the site homepage and the e-blast, would you know they were marketing materials from the same organization? No you would not, because the aesthetic is completely different.

I seem to remember a Brooklyn Philharmonic poster campaign from maybe a year ago that was hot pink and had Michael Christie's press photo all Andy Warholed-out. I thought, yes, good, use pink and evoke Warhol: that's how to get the kiddies to the symphony in the 21st century.

Groan.

First, a note about the silliness of the classical music industry:

The Gramophone Magazine Awards are being announced across the pond today - perhaps even AS I TYPE THIS BLOG ENTRY - and I'm expected to write a press release about the winners. Fine, fine - just tell me how many people voted, give me the list of the awards, etc.. What am I told at 6 am this morning? "This information is under embargo till today's lunchtime". UNDER EMBARGO!! Am I waiting on the Gramophone Awards winners AND Bush's solution to America's financial crisis? Under embargo. Give me a break. How much of the population woke up this morning - giddy with anticipation - leaped to their feet and Googled GRAMOPHONE ARTIST OF THE YEAR? ~Nobody. Whatever. I know who the Artist of the Year is already. And if I know, you should be able to figure it out.

I have been thinking a lot lately about anticipation. I started seeing Iron Man DVD previews on The TV last week, and was like, September 30th - yes - sign me up. This year, however, I will not tell everyone I know that I want a copy, since a similar announcement last year resulted in not one but four Ratatouille DVDs for Christmas. I was actually giddy with anticipation about (and then devastated by) the Sex and the City movie this summer; I wasted a truly embarrassing amount of time trying to find different versions of the trailer online. ((LAME)). I'm seriously excited about the new Deerhoof CD, since I've been hearing about it and seeing it everywhere since July.

When was the last time you were really excited about a classical CD? Was anyone in this wide world like, "I hear Hilary Hahn is recording a definitive Schoenberg disc...can't wait!" No, they were not. They learned about it when I or the Director of Publicity at Deutsche Grammophon sent out a a press release, maybe two months before the release. No one leaked recording sections, Hilary never performed sections live on the radio, I never offered any blogs exclusive mP3 downloads. I'm not complaining about the response to the disc, but how amazing would it have been to really gear people up for it?

The Metropolitan Opera does an excellent job via their posters around the city getting folks excited about productions; the Satyagraha posters are especially memorable. But why don't they videotape Atomic rehearsals and "leak" them on YouTube? The people who know what Doctor Atomic is about/sounds like are...few. Perhaps if folks saw clips of rehearsals, the "not your grandfather's opera" point would be driven home. I already asked Eric if I could come to a rehearsal. Maybe I'll sneak in a Flip camera.

You also don't see teaser ad campaigns often in classical music. I wasn't going to bring this up, but I thought the "ad" "campaign" (me hanging up flyers at like, Collis Commonground) for our production of Pippin at school was pretty good: basically, we pulled quotes from the musical ("Sometimes the fornicating I'm getting isn't worth the fornicating I'm getting." "Think about your life."), typed them up in big, bold white letters on black backgrounds, printed 8.5/11 sheets and on the very bottom in small type said "Pippin the Musical" and the date (which I have since blocked from my memory). Then, the week of the show we printed flyers in the same font that had the actual performance and venue information. The "Be Kanye" ads (for Absolut Vodka) and the bus ad campaign for the recent Die Hard movie ("Yippee Ki Yay Mo - John 6:27") are real-world examples of this. In retrospect, I should have come up with a banner ad or window card campaign using the "unplayable" tag on the Schoenberg concerto.

Incidentally, the more creative you are with your teasers, the less money you have to spend. The "Be Kanye" ads are made to look cheap, and the Die Hard ads were simple white text on a black background (perhaps they saw Pippin at Dartmouth...).

HIlary Hahn is Gramophone Artist of the Year, by the way. One down, one to go. Was this entry enough pre-buzz for that announcement?

It's that time of year: the city is completely covered in Metropolitan Opera opening night ads. Buses, bus stops, banners, phone booths...you can't swing a dead Venus worshiper without hitting one. This year, the campaign has a slogan: "Let yourself go", which I think is rockin'. It paints going to The Met as a guilty pleasure, a message that the sultry Renée Fleming Thaïs photo completely supports.  "Come on, you know you want to...buy tickets to the opera," Ms. Fleming seems to suggest with the one eye that isn't covered by kinked blond hair.

I've been thinking a lot about how, when a blockbuster movie comes out, you see imagery and actors from the film everywhere. If there is a feature on the movie in a magazine, there are also ads in the magazine. If an actor from the movie is on Letterman, the movie is advertised during the commercials of that broadcast.

Until recently, I thought that ads and press were interchangeable; that is, if we can get a feature on an album in this publication, we should put our ad dollars elsewhere. I don't think that's correct, though. Better to advertise in the publication in which the feature appears, so when readers flip the page, they see the ad and feel familiar with the product. The same is true in reverse: if they've seen an ad and then see the profile, readers/viewers feel like they "have seen that somewhere" and actually read the piece.

In classical music, we don't always (*ever?) have the luxury of ad dollars, but this can and should be done in some places. Local (and some national) blogs, student newspapers, etc. all still offer ad space within most presenters' and labels' budgets. Pitch stories to the outlets at which you can afford advertising, and also run ticket/CD giveaway contests. That way, your product will be visible in at least three spaces, so even if the publication or blog is not uber high-profile, you build a consumer base that recognizes your brand and is exposed to it repeatedly.

New Zealand's national airline is attempting to pay bald men to advertise on their heads. There's creative thinking and then there's good old-fashioned weirdness. Although...

Thanks to Bill Kirby for the link!

Apparently, the Broadway Godspell revival ad campaign wasn't as good as I thought it was. 

Oh bless the Godspell Broadway revival ad campaign my soul:



Creepily religious, straightforward and smart. Gets people who already know Godspell excited and people who don't, intrigued. All for the best.

I realize core-classical music doesn't have lyrics to pull from, but I would love to see an ad campaign for a presentation of The Rite of Spring (I know I've used this example before) that uses quotes from all the terrible reviews and then just says "www.carnegiehall.org/ichoserite" at the bottom. Or, "I am delighted to add another unplayable work to the repertoire." - Arnold Schoenberg, 1936, and at the bottom "www.hilaryhahn.com/playable2008".

I (heart) ad campaigns that make you go "hmmm" and check the site for clarity.

Unfortunately, the awesome Godspell ads led me to their lame-o website. Alas, alas, ALAS for you, blind fools!