Mysteries of Publicity

Throwback Sunday?

• I'm reminded of an older post in which I lamented that I'm much more likely to attend a concert if I know what you're playing. I've now received two emails from a small chorus that not only don't tell you what they're performing, except in general terms, but which don't contain a link back to the group's web site. And if you look up that web site, it doesn't even contain a list of composers whose works will be performed. This...is not a way to get people to your concerts.
• Email from a different small organization identifies it as "the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier professional chamber choir." Did this come from Volti? SFCA? the chorus of PBO or American Bach? No, it came from a chorus that has not yet performed in public. This, too, is the kind of publicity that makes me want to stay home.
• Lastly, I received a Facebook invitation to a concert, but the page for the concert.... doesn't appear to mention who the performers are. Come ON. 

This is really basic who/what/where/when stuff, ya know?? Check out my publicity basics page for basic information about publicity!

Innovation?

Well....when a new professional chorus sends out its first email and uses the phrase "a commitment to artistic innovation," you naturally look at the repertory that they have decided to perform.

And when you find that they're performing music by eight white men, six of them dead and the two living ones 60 and older, you wonder what "innovative" means to them. The composers are from six different countries (good!) and the particular works do look interesting in and of themselves. But still: it's as though the group missed much of the discussion about innovation and diversity in the music that gets performed.

There's time for this to change, though: their first concert will be next February. Best of luck, of course, and I look forward to hearing more about what "artistic innovation" means to the music director.

Vagueblogging

Just saying, if you're an organization that someone donates to and you want to show your appreciation with a special offer, be as flexible with it as possible.

Sigh.

I've been to two live events in 2021, and as I started to get a ticket to a third, I was reminded of a....benefit (?)...of not having bought any tickets in the last year-plus: I spent just about no time in a state of annoyance at terrible organization web sites, ridiculous ticketing policies, and outrageous fees.

I was most of the way into buying a ticket to an event I would really like to attend when I hit one of the latter: $12 to buy an individual ticket on line ($20 if you're buying a subscription). Ticket prices for the event in question range from $25 to $105 and the fee you pay is $12 regardless of whether you're upstairs or downstairs.

So you could pay from 12%-ish to 50%-ish as the fee for your single ticket. I do not think that it costs the organization in question $12 to produce and send you the electronic version of your ticket. Maybe the fee was determined by taking the cost their ticketing system and dividing it by the number of tickets they might sell?

I can afford to pay the $12, but I'm really affronted by it. It's also not in the best interests of the organization to charge this: That $12 fee could keep someone from attending, if they can only afford to buy one low-priced ticket at a time. And of course annoying any of your patrons isn't a good idea: why  annoy audience members, the people you want to buy tickets and give you money and maybe get charitable matches from their employers?

I would really like every organization to reconsider their fees and the potential impact of these fees on ticket sales and good will.

JFC: In 2021, Accessibility Should Be Automatic

I love it when I receive a "video preview of our season" from a major arts org that is so ham-handed that it is all visual, print and film combined, meaning that if I were, say, a person with no or reduced vision, I would hear a perky soundtrack but learn nothing about the season. 

JFC, it's 2021, major arts org, do better, will you?

Also, the visuals are...bad. There's a list of the season's presentation that is so short you can't read the whole thing even if you can see it; for each presentation, there's a visual that is too damn busy and piles on too much too fast.

Note to Publicists

After I've told two of your publicists that no, I am not going to post about your organization, product, or service, I'd rather not hear from a third.

I'm also going to suggest that you be careful about whose endorsements of your organization, product, or service you quote. If I have a justifiably low opinion of the endorser or that person's institution, well, you might find me writing a blog post about that.

Survey Joker

Personal to anyone constructing a survey: when a question that is irrelevant to a person answering the survey, and you make it a required question, and you do not have a "Not Applicable" option, the person who is taking some time out of their day to answer your survey is stopped dead.

Make sure that you always have this out for your survey respondents. Provide an N/A option, or don't make that question required.

I can't answer a question on a particular org's survey because uh that question isn't relevant to my role in a particular ecosystem.

Blind Faith

It's best if your web site lists the works you are playing on a particular concert. I can't begin to tell you how much I won't buy a ticket if you don't even tell me in advance which composers are on the program.

How to Construct a Press Release

I have in my hot little hands a press release that is making me slightly crazy. It's got the usual copy about how fabulous the organization is, plus various bios and a fair amount of information about the works to be performed.

But - and this is a pretty big but - I had to scroll through about four and a half screens of text to get to the most critical information in the press release: dates and locations of the performances.

Put that stuff at the top! I read performer bios in programs! A mere listing of the performers at the top of the press release is sufficient, with maybe two lines of bio at most! The more I had to scroll, the more I wondered how far I'd have to scroll until I found what I was looking for.

Noting in passing that this is the second time I've blind-itemed this org in the last year, and there was a third post I never wrote, when a press release of theirs let slip information that I hope they had permission to let slip.

A Little Early?

It's February 19. What organization is already advertising tickets for its New Year's Eve Gala?

Blind Foolishness

What Bay Area performing arts organization does not have a place in its ticket purchase flow to make a donation?

I'm not necessarily going to tell you, but let me just say that this is one of the dumbest moves an organization can make. You have the attention of a subscriber or single-ticket buyer, a person who perhaps appreciates what you do, and you are not making it as easy as possible for that person to give you money. Moreover, it's the most wonderful time of the year, when people are figuring out their charitable deductions, and are most likely to give you a few bucks.

And yet, if you want to donate, you have to initiate a second process, and if you didn't save your payment info five minutes previously when you bought tickets, you have to enter it all again.

I suggested to this organization earlier this year that perhaps this was a mistake, but things are the same now. (I bought my tickets on the late side.) Le sigh. I donated; will others?

Why???

I got a rather odd email this morning, one that is unique in my experience, from a Bay Area organization whose mailing list I've been on for a long time. Years, not sure how many.

Here's the text of the email:

We're tuning up for the new season and we noticed that you haven't opened one of our emails in several months.


We understand that everyone needs a break sometimes, and that you probably get a symphony of emails, so we've made it easier for you by taking you off of our email list. 


We would love to welcome you back if you'd like to continue hearing about our phenomenal concerts, performers, educational resources, and music. Just click here to resubscribe:

They must consider the information they will get about people who re-up to be more important than the downsides. But this isn't something I would do, for these reasons.

1. Every email sent by Constant Contact or Mail Chimp or other mailing list management software has an unsubscribe link. Presumably, people who really don't want to receive the emails will click that link.

2. It costs the sender little or nothing to send the email. I admit, I have not checked to see what the paid versions of mailing list software cost, so maybe I am wrong about this.

3. It definitely costs the recipient nothing to receive; email providers don't have quotas on mail you receive, though they may have storage fees.

4. Honestly, they really don't know why someone isn't reading their marketing emails. If the situation is that a family member is ill, or someone has died, or the person is traveling the world and can't attend concerts in the Bay Area, well, throwing them off the mailing list is a big mistake. The mind-reading, we-know-better-than-you-do aspect of this is mildly disturbing.

5. Describing your own concerts as phenomenal: quote a critic or it's not true. I would find complimentary quotes much more persuasive than self-description.

6. Possibly most importantly, does it make sense to call attention to the fact that these emails phone home? I know perfectly well about this function, and even I got that creepy "YOU ARE WATCHING ME" feeling from receiving this email. It is possible that most of the other recipients of this morning's mail don't know that the emails they receive send status back to the sender.

7. If you're sending email like this, an org might as well ask why its emails aren't being read, the equivalent of the question you get when you actively unsubscribe. Wouldn't that be useful to know?

I'm actually somewhat surprised to have received this particular email, because I've read plenty of emails from the org in the last year - but those were probably all press releases. I think it's a while since I attended one of their concerts, alas, but one does have to make choices. 

I don't think I'd do an auto-purge of this type myself; it seems like a gamble to get a response, or attention, or something, from your potential audience. I don't remove people from my dojo's mailing list because I send email to it only three or four times a year, and I figure people can unsubscribe if they don't want the mail - and they do, too: I get three to five unsubscribes annually. (Okay, if I knew someone had died.....)

So, in short, this seems like a gamble and not necessarily one that will pay off. Anyone else have thoughts?

It's Mildly Embarrassing....

• ....when the photo caption in a preview mentions a performer who isn't in the photo.
• ....when a leading artist's name is spelled differently on consecutive pages of a glossy item mailed to subscribers.

How Does a Musician Know It's Time to Quit?

That's a serious question. We've all heard singers who were still on stage years after their voices had become threadbare; we also all know of singers who retired, tantalizingly, when they were in prime form, apparently with years of good work ahead of them.

I'm raising this question because of a concert I attended by a veteran ensemble where it quickly became evident that one member of this ensemble was having serious, and all-too-obvious, technical problems. The player couldn't play in tune in high and medium-high positions, which ruined one movement of one piece the group played. The player had bow-arm problems as well; there were all sorts of extraneous sounds and problems with articulating the music as written. The bow was not under good control at all.

This player is a member of an ensemble; the other members must have noticed these issues, and after a look around, reviewers are noticing exactly the problems I heard. (The reviews I looked at noticed problems with a different member of the ensemble as well.) So....how does one go about conveying to a player that it's time? that the technical issues are dragging down the entire ensemble? What do you do when it's more than one member of the group? Who raises the issues? Other players in the group? The group's manager?

Do the ensemble's written agreements include a process for dealing with this kind of problem? In a perfect world, the contracts would cover these potential issues when an ensemble is new and everybody is in top form. If reviewers are noticing the problems and nothing is happening, it's a problem for the whole group.

What to Wear When Conducting

A couple of points, regardless of your sex/gender.

• If you're wearing black, but the top and bottom are not from a set, for heaven's sake, make sure the blacks match.
• In no event should the audience be able to tell anything about your under garments because of the fit of your outer garments.

Advice for Young Composers Everywhere

1. Let your music speak for itself.

2. Learn the purposes of a program note: to provide information that locates the work in history and illuminates its background; to provide musical guideposts for those who desire or need help in understand the music.

3. Remember that thanks to the magic of search engines, anything you say or write that makes it on to the Internet will be discoverable when you're old enough to embarrassed by what you said at 16, 20, or 23. Yes, I am grateful that my youthful follies are on paper only.

Public Service Announcement

Don't leave purses and other objects on the floor where somebody might trip on them.