I went to…brace yourselves…Mary Poppins on Broadway yesterday, and it took all strength I had left on a windy Sunday night to stop my 20-something sister from buying a Mary Poppins bird-head umbrella. Granted, the umbrella was pretty cute (if not slightly creepy), but, come on now.
The joint was filled with merchandise! It is, after all, a Walt Disney production, so the amount of merch was to be expected. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious t-shirts, Mary Poppins dolls, Mary Poppins mugs, a signed poster from the cast (those sales were going toward Broadway Cares, props for that), a Broadway Christmas ornament (also for Broadway Cares), souvenir sippy cups (a la the circus and sporting events), the obligatory snow globe…you name it, it was Poppinsed-out.
Do classical musicians sell merchandise? Other than a (possibly signed) CD, what souvenirs can people bring home from their classical concert experience? Even the smallest bands manage to print posters and t shirts to sell in addition to their discs, so why wouldn’t/shouldn’t classical folks?
Now I for one don’t especially want/need Hilary Hahn’s mug on a mug (although some people might…), but I would buy a tour poster. I wouldn’t have minded a mug or whatever from Doctor Atomic, actually. We (and by “we” I actually mean “Josh’s team”) had beautiful posters created for Hilary’s tour with Josh Ritter two summers ago, and I don’t see why we (and by “we” I mean “I”) didn’t do the same for her recent tour of China with the Vancouver Symphony, or for her upcoming US tour.
Also, who was buying the merch at Mary Poppins last night? Mostly parents for their kids. And who comes to a lot of classical concerts? Parents with their kids. If I may digress for a moment, one thing I love about classical music CD signings is all the little kids waiting in line. Signings seem to attract kids, their parents, and then the older crowd. ((Gross Generalization!)), but something happens when kids stop taking music lessons. They go to college, cease attending concerts, and then come ’round to classical music when their culture/”should” instincts kick in. Again, generally.
So kids who take music lessons are coming to concerts. What can venues or individual musicians sell to support that? Custom-made violins (The Joshua Bell)? Music stands? A music book of artists’ favorite pieces to play as children? Practice advise books?
Even the most basic, framed glossy headshots with pre-printed signatures would probably sell.
Back to Disney: my mom reports that when we would go to Disney World as kids, she’d get us these Disney-produced “Passports”. Apparently, one had to run around collecting all the characters’ signatures, and this would keep us occupied for days (it’s the little things in life for me and Aliza, apparently). Wouldn’t it be cool for Deutsche Grammophon, or iTunes, even, to put together Passports for venues to sell (or for download, in iTunes’ case)? Kids could bring them to concerts and have the soloists sign them. Each page could have a photo of the artist and some basic info: hometown, age, favorite piece, etc.. There could be a violinist passport, a pianist passport, so on, so forth.
Kids like collecting. And everyone likes souvenirs.
And the recently completed Passport to the Arts run by The New Yorker and benefitting Friends of the High Line does the same thing for art galleries! It’s pretty awesome.
http://www.passporttotheartsnyc.com/
I think merchandise being sold at any show can help enhance the theatre going experience and allows that person to have a fond memory of that show. I have a Wicked poster hanging in my room (so cliche, I know), but I really did enjoy that show and it is one of my favorites. If a child has a t-shirt or an umbrella from that show, they can remember when they saw that Broadway musical. It gives them something to remember for a lifetime.
How about a passport for entire symphonies? Entire ballet companies? It might be a great way to begin to communicate with the audience and to inspire a generation of kids to the arts, with the added benefit of a bunch of signatures being available in one place.
The idea of bobbleheads was brought up on another blog as a way to show that people in classical music/theater can have a sense of humor: http://blogs.wnyc.org/culture/2008/06/20/i-went-to-the-theater-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-bobblehead-doll/
Well, opera companies and orchestras DO do this – many of them have shops or tables in the lobby selling T-shirts and umbrellas and fleeces with their logo, as well as non-branded items like books, CDs, jewelry.
I still use a keychain in the form of a brass ticket that I got at the Santa Fe Opera in 1983, after my freshman year in college.
Sure, but you don’t often see classical musicians bringing their own merchandise on tour like bands do, which I think would enhance the concert-going experience as well. -AA
Great ideas. As a publicist myself who works with alot of arts orgs, corporations, and record companies, I have found you need a big overall sponsor to make these marketing ideas work, as well as a central marketing strategy. It can be a very expensive undertaking for an individual artist or arts organization and efforts have tended to fail from lack of PR, lack of marketing, disjointed approaches, or lack of interest by the consumer.
In the past, record companies actually have tried some ideas like this but they were more difficult to get off the ground because of all the logisitics of each artist’s needs, the cost of production, and performing arts organizations (typically orchestras) seeing the record company as a for profit and so therefore wanting some donation to participate, etc.
Elizabeth raises a great point about the importance of a sponsor, an overall marketing plan and solid PR to support merchandising. I’ve been at 3 different arts orgs now that have SO many branded tchotchkes (some awesome, some lame) left over from various campaigns. Literally thousands of stickers, posters, novelty glasses, t-shirts etc that patrons didn’t buy, either because they weren’t interested or because they weren’t properly marketed. Waste of money, waste of storage space.
At one org, we scaled back on merchandising for logistical reasons and because it seemed not enough patrons were interested. Right or wrong, the judgment was made that selling posters, keychains, etc. wasn’t worth the effort. And you know what happened? Patrons started saying “what happened to the xyz that I used to be able to buy?” A couple different times, patrons desperately wanted to purchase the advertising posters that were hung in the performing arts center….and then the posters ended up being stolen! Cracks me up….
So I do think there’s potential demand, it just has to be stoked regularly to make it worth while. At the end of the day, needs to make good business sense.
Correction: You girls ran around autograph hunting with genuine autograph books, the real McCoy. Favorite autographs? Chip and Dale, by a Disneyworld mile!