Sure, we do the pre-theatre announcements, usually done in a funny way, (Rock of Ages says it “it makes you look like a douchebag.”) I’m just not convinced that the “Please take this moment to shut off your cell phones” is enough for audiences. We need to do more. Check cell phones in the lobby? Or get the community together for an ad campaign!

Buy some television commercials, Do a live social etiquette lesson on ustream.tv, create videos and throw them up on YouTube. We can get the Ad Council and the FCC in on this. We need a public message that is funny and will stick. (Sure, there are more important things like Teen Dating Violence Protection and quitting smoking, but cell phone abuse is out of control, right?)

I think it would be great if we did a video series of regular life incidents where the cell phone is involved and throw in one of our theatre celebrities.

Scene 1: A family is enjoying a lovely conversation over a beautiful dining room table. Amidst light-hearted chatter, a cell phone goes off. Everyone is looking at the eldest kid who answers it. Kid says “Oh hey Bra, yeah, no, it’s fine, I can chat.”  Mom looks at Dad, Sister looks at younger sister. Then they all turn to brother. They know what’s about to happen. BOOM! Patti Lupone BUSTS in. She screams, “Who do you think you are? This is a dinner table. Everyone at this table has respect except for YOU. Get ‘em out of here (then an usher comes in, all dressed up, escorts the douchey kid out of the house.) Then, Patti sings “Here she is boys! Tell the world! Heaaaaz Patti!” Cue ad message.

Scene 2: A crowded, quiet subway. Next stop, Broadway/Lafayette. A super cute girl walks on and gets a call. She gets service! She picks it up and snorts and laughs “Omygod, I know, O-M-G-W-T-F, I knah! Omygod, I hate her! I knah! I knah!” Everyone on the subway gets quiet…you hear a rattling of the car; There’s a roar coming, but, it’s not the train. From the sea of passengers barges through a very angry Hugh Jackman. He grabs the cell phone and crushes it with his hands. He gazes at the shell-shocked girl. All he says is “You’re annoying everyone on the train.” Then runs out, Wolverine style.

What do you think? Do you have any other suggestions of ad ideas for this theatre cell phone problem? Leave your ideas in the comment sections below.

One girl seriously wanted to be Sherry and wanted to know her chances of getting the part. I think we should let Kerry Butler do the job first.

We are doing a tweetup tonight for the fans of Rock of Ages at 5:30 at B. Smiths.

I wonder if the girl who wants to be Sherry will be there. I wonder if her dream will come true of being Sherry? Hey, Don’t Stop Believin’, right?

We are working on a few promotions that are in the pipeline. In the meantime, watch the Live Stream of the dancers who will teach a Master Class at Chelsea Piers today at 10am.

Live video by Ustream

1. Buy domain names. You can do this cheaply through godaddy.com or Network Solutions. If you can, buy as many variations of the domain name as possible. Do this before the show is announced to avoid squatters. Remember to get the domain name of the show and also reserve ‘nameofshowTICKETS.com’ – Domize is a great site to help you get started.

2. Reserve your Twitter name. The popularity of the tweet has caused a lot of the Twitter user names to be taken. Read my earlier post about this.

3. Create a splash page and add some content, be sure to add the title of the show to this page for search engine optimization.

4. Add a mailing list. There are a lot of free services that allow you to host the collection of names and it’s easy to set up. Try Vertical Response, iContact, PatronMail, Campaign Monitor or even Feedburner.

5. Add Google Analytics to the site and track how many people have come to the site.

Here are a few tips:

- Avoid using underscores in the name and using too markety terms like “Buy” or “Tickets”
- Try and reserve the name of the show so it’s easy for people to find and identify you.  Twitter only allows up to 16 characters for the domain, so if the title is too long, shorten to the most important words in the show’s title.  It has to be longer than 4 letters.
- Twitter is not case sensitive but it will show up as the way you set it.  So if you pick “Twitter.com/SoundofMusic” that is the way it will be officially
- If the name of your show or brand is already taken, shorten your title and add ‘play’ or ‘musical’ or ’show’ to the end of it.  – If you plan on sending the show out on a tour, do not use “Broadway” or “NYC” as it’s location specific and Twitter is global.
- Do not pick an obsene name or use “XXX” into the title

If you pick a name you end up not liking, there is a way to change it. After changing it, make sure to let your followers know so you’ll continue receiving all of your messages with your new user name. However if people if people @reply your old username, you won’t see it in your stream.

Twitter names are going fast so go to Twitter.com and reserve it!  If you are already on it – follow AMC here.

1. Avoid pesky spam filters by avoiding trigger words like “click here,” “once in a lifetime opportunity,” and “free.” Spam filters assign points to “dangerous” words and suspicious punctuation and formatting.  The more points you accrue, the more likely it is that your email will get thrown into the recipient’s spam file.

2. Underline all links for easier identification by users, and DON’T  underline anything other text.

3. Dont send an eblast that is one big image, since many email clients, including Gmail and AOL, don’t automatically load images. Your message won’t even by seen by the user.

4. Avoid large fonts and the colors green and red.  (Sorry Christmas shows!)

5.  Do create a good subject line that makes the reader curious to open email (name the discount, use names of stars in the cast, etc) and, remember, urgency drives action: if a show is closing in two weeks, put that fact in your subject line. Don’t, under any circumstances, use three exclamation points in a row!!! Your message will be flagged and sent to spam.

6. Keep your offer clear and simple and don’t hide your black out dates and other restrictions in the mice type at the bottom of the blast. Users don’t want surprises once they click on the buy tickets link.

7. Keep the entire eblast under 150 kb. Larger messages take too long to load: If the user waits as little as 8 seconds for your email to appear, you will lose them.

8. Avoid using CSS, image maps, javascript, flash, animated gifs and background images or white-on-white text.

9. Have a clear and precise call to action. Spell it out and make it easy:  “Click here To order your discounted tickets.”

10. Do not use all caps. This is like YELLING. Don’t do it. Ever.

For more info on best email practices go to email-standards.org and clickz.com.

This is from an email from Telecharge.com: With the incredibly rapid adoption of the iPhone, as well as the growth of other “smartphones” such as the Blackberry and the Palm Pre, Shubert Ticketing wanted to ensure that customers had a quick and easy ticket buying experience, no matter how they were arriving at Telecharge.com.

Here is a screengrab of what the optimized site looks like on my iPhone: (Screengrab of Telecharge.com):

This will definitely spur Broadway shows to become more mobile, and I predict we’ll soon see shows using optimized sites to accommodate the ‘ticket-buyer-on-the-go.’ This is something we’ve been doing for ROCK OF AGES for a while–here’s the screengrab of the ROA mobile site on my iPhone (Screengrab of ROCK OF AGES mobile site):

Since ROCK OF AGES is a Ticketmaster show, we’re not able to offer users a buy tickets option from their mobile device. Instead we encourage users to call for tickets. Call. For. Tickets. C’mon Ticketmaster! Get on it!Tick Tock Tick Tock.

On the other hand, Telecharge.com, this is great! It gives users the same purchasing convenience on their mobile devices that they are accustomed to on their computers—and it allows us an increased ability to CAPTURE THE SALE! It also lets advertisers and marketers include this feature in their collateral, especially outdoor and flyer campaigns: “Buy Tickets on your phone! Go to Telecharge.com!”

A video diary is a great way to show the personalities of the dancers and give users that golden ‘backstage pass’ to see the lives of dancers. We sent them 6 flip cams while they were working on the pre-Broadway engagement in Perth. The footage they came up with was amazing! Over 5 hours of footage of dancing, talking, laughing, playing their ritual hacky sack, making fun of each other. After much editing we launched with a pretty nice starter to the series.

Nielsen released some news that video usage is up by 53% since last year. Another impressive fact is that the number of people watching video via cell phones is up by 52 percent!

Be sure to subscribe to all the Burn the Floor videos:

If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing (just get through the first 40 minutes), it’s a demo of the new Google Wave; a system created by the developers of Google Maps that will revolutionize email and social networking.

Here are a few key features:
Wiki-style functionality – The video above can show you how this will work
Wave Extensions – Open source, third-party applications
Drag-and-drop file uploads
Wave Embeds You can put these conversations on your social networks or website
Playback – Allows for you to see the evolution of an email
Open-source – allows developers to improve the existing code

The most exciting part of this will be the Wave embeds. Imagine a community on your site that allows fans to contribute to the conversation, uploading pictures, videos and opening the door to collaboration.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are an extremely effective way to not only capture a fan base, but also to start a dialogue between your fans and the product associated with your fan page. For example, Rock of Ages (full disclosure: Art Meets Commerce runs the fan page) posts new status updates like  YouTube videos of old 80s commercials, and other similar articles to keep fans entertained and informed. Posting song lyrics, fun facts, etc. creates an instant conversation. That interaction not only occurs between fans and the show, but between fans themselves: some ask questions, others answer. The goal is to create a sense of community with the show and let people voice their thoughts and views. In addition to a lot of fun–and positive–comments about the show,  people also talk about things they didn’t like (an understudy played in the performance they saw, for instance). Although we have the opportunity to delete posts at will, we don’t. The point is to facilitate conversation, not control it.

I bring this up because I am a fan of  a lot of pages, many of them theater related. One, The Tony Awards, posts videos, links, articles, anything and everything relating to the awards and theatre. It really is a great resource. I noticed  something recently, though, that gave me pause.

The Tony Awards page posted an update announcing that the touring companies of Jersey Boys, Legally Blonde and Mamma Mia would be performing on this year’s show (along with the currently nominated musicals). Several people commented negatively, asking why Jersey Boys would be performing once again at the Tony Awards or saying that Mamma Mia is “stupid.” All negative comments were deleted.  In my opinion, unless a commenter makes a threat, engages in hate speech or posts spam, the post  should be allowed to stand. To use social media well, you must be authentic, open and transparent. Deleting negative (but not harmful) posts sends a message to users that they are partipating in a “canned” discussion, i.e. an extended advertisement, which not everyone wants to do. This kind of Pollyana editing will, in my view,  ultimately diminish the brand and will cause users to turn away.

I’m with Hillary on this, “I can’t wait to have this in my house! I CAN’T WAIT!”

It’s really fascinating to watch the rapid-fire evolution of social media that is happening all around us. Mark’s fellow commentator Pete Cashmore from mashable.com referred to something called the Gartner Hype Cycle, which describes the rise and fall of technology applications and led to some interesting discussion during the segment.

To me, it’s like living in a real-time time lapse photo. “Now they’re twittering . . . now you’re lame because you’re not . . . now you’re twittering . . . now they’re not . . . now you’re lame because you are . . . now they’re fill-in-the-blanking . . . ” You get the idea. And that whole cycle happens in about a month. Mayflies have a longer life expectancy.

What struck me most , though, was Mark’s observation that Twitter is fundamentally  antithetical to what he does at The Critical Condition, which is  devoted to criticism of popular culture. In his blog, Mark offers thoughtful analysis of everything from music to movies to advertising to books, and he does a terrific job of making the links between all of those things and the larger society that they are not only all products of, but that they are  producing. That can’t be accomplished in 140 characters.

But he does use Twitter to point followers to whatever conversation he’s facilitating on any given day, and that, to me, is the best use of a micro blog. Not as an end unto itself, but as  a means to an end, whether that’s highlighting an ongoing interaction or sowing a seed for a future interaction.

And that’s kind of a relief.  Fragmented thoughts that aren’t anchored to  more complete exchanges feel chaotic to me, like a radio that is picking up two different stations simultaneously. Discrete tweets leave me bemused, but looking at the Twitter application in a larger context shows me its place our cultural conversation. And that’s good (for me), because Twitter—or whatever the next big thing turns out to be—is here to stay.

“We are going to rewire the entire experience at Yahoo to make it social in every dimension,” said Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s chief technology officer. The open platform is a concept that already has been embraced by Google, Facebook and MySpace.

The new feature will give Yahoo’s roughly 500 million users greater flexibility to customize, including the ability to pick from a variety of widgets for placement just about anywhere on the site, including a personalized home page.

Will this be good for marketers and advertisers? We’ll see: I’ve gotten used to targeting ads based on interest and demographic, which works. For example, What if Betty White and Rue Mclanahan wrote a show about their relationship with Bea Arthur called Rue and Betty about Bea on Broadway.  (Hint, hint, ladies—and producers!) I want to target people with “Broadway,” “Off Broadway,” “The Golden Girls,” “Maude,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “Bea Arthur,” etc. in their profiles and send them a hot message about the new hit show. On Facebook, I can now target users down to age and location. (Hello, 45 year old ladies in New York!) Yahoo is now making this possible, too.

We haven’t had much luck using search ads on Yahoo: I have tried it with a few shows, but I can’t match the high ROIs I get on Facebook and Google).

Will this makeover make Yahoo a more effective place to advertise? I hope so and I will certainly let you know. Yahoo’s search, chat, music and email are already great, and if this will help me reach the audiences I want, I’m all for it.  C’mon, Golden Girls fans, get your wallets out!

Who could blame them? The number is prominently displayed, it’s understandably a bit of an ego boost when a new person signs on to receive your updates (let’s call it the “You Like Me, You Really Like Me” syndrome) and bigger numbers just look cooler (case in point: infinity+1). But if you’ve got something to market, it’s a big mistake to focus on this.

It’s about goals, really

If your goal is to get a ton of followers, well, that’s easy. There are dozens of services that create fake Twitter accounts to follow yours, and you can reach 10,000 followers in a couple of days without breaking a sweat. They’re reprehensible, and not worth linking to, but you can find them if that is truly your goal (and if it is, you can stop reading here).

But why the heck would that be your goal? Don’t you, uh, have something you want people to buy? Isn’t that the point? If it is, and your follower list looks remotely like this, you’re doing it wrong:

If you’ve got a show to market, a product to sell or a site to promote, millions of fake followers will be just as effective as never joining Twitter in the first place, and every minute you spend getting fake followers is a minute lost from focusing on the bigger picture. In Machiavellian terms, Twitter is not the end, it is the means. What you want is to cultivate a highly-interested, dedicated and engaged group of followers—real people who will interact with your brand, spread positive word of mouth, participate in contests, respond to requests to rate your stuff and vote for you in polls, and, more than anything, actually buy whatever it is you’re selling.

Lead, Don’t Follow

Rock of Ages (a Broadway client of ours) has seen incredible success from the Twitter account we created for the show. When we pose a question to our followers, we get dozens of responses. When we post a discount, we sell dozens of tickets. When we hold a contest, we get hundreds of entries. And yesterday, when we expressed (faux) outrage over being tied with Shrek The Musical on this NYTimes poll of Tony Award Nominees, the vote total in all five categories shot up dramatically (and ROA now actually leads several of the categories!). No hacking involved, simply motivating the most dedicated fans to spread the love on behalf of the show.

It’s a lot harder to build a community like that, which is why so few are doing it—especially in the marketing world where it’s relatively easy to impress clients with big numbers that mean nothing. But the payoff is real. Focus on leading, sharing, communicating, teaching and learning, and actual live people will find you and start to make your job easy.

Winner 2009 Lortel Awards
Outstanding Musical
Outstanding Choregrapher: Bill T. Jones
Outstanding Costume Design: Marina Draghici

Drama Desk Award Nominations
Outstanding Musical
Outstanding Actor in a Musical: Sahr Ngaujah
Outstanding Choreographer: Bill T. Jones
Outstanding Orchestrations: Aaron Johnson and Antibalas

Drama League Nominations
Distinguished Production of a Musical
Distinguished Performance: Sahr Ngaujah

New York Magazine: Best Play 2008

TONY Award Nominations
Best Musical
Best Actor in a Musical: Constantine Maroulis
Best Direction of a Musical: Kristin Hanggi
Best Costume Design: Gregory Gale
Best Sound Design: Peter Hylenski

Outer Critics Circle Award Nominations
Outstanding New Broadway Musical
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical: Wesley Taylor

Drama League Nominations
Distinguished Production of a Musical
Distinguished Performance: Constantine Maroulis

]]> http://artmeetscommerce.net/blog/2009/05/05/awards/feed/ 0 http://artmeetscommerce.net/blog/2009/05/01/cat-on-a-british-tin-roof/ http://artmeetscommerce.net/blog/2009/05/01/cat-on-a-british-tin-roof/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 14:55:23 +0000 Jim Glaub http://artmeetscommerce.net/blog/?p=629

We are so excited that the sold-out Broadway run of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is headed to London. We’ll be handling internet marketing and spreading the word to fans that the show is coming to the UK. This marks AMC’s first West End show, and we couldn’t be more thrilled! Check out the website and join the email list!

Aren’t those photographs wonderful? These two are hilarious, edgy and, in the way of all great comedy and social commentary, their humor is informed by a craftily observant eye on the universal experience. Think George Carlin. Think Lenny Bruce. Plus, spend five minutes with them and you’ll see they are in loooove, which adds a wonderfully gentle underpinning to their razory repartee.