Monday, November 16, 2009

Fairness Follow-Up

Great minds, goes the cliche, think alike. Like, say, me and The New York Times?

A story in last Thursday’s Times begins, “Business owner, you might want to friend Facebook.” Sounds like one of the points I tried to hammer home in last week’s post.

Matter of fact, an author quoted in the article’s third paragraph makes my point precisely: “You need to be where your customers are and your prospective customers are. And with 300 million people on Facebook, and still growing, that’s increasingly where your audience is for a lot of products and services.”

Such as, maybe, jazz performances?

The story doesn’t address jazz specifically, but cites a theatrical play whose Facebook page “has 300 to 600 interactions every week” and is “one of the show’s top sources of new ticket sales.” It also cites a musical’s Facebook ad campaign which “generated 18 million impressions, more than 5,700 clicks and $40,000 in ticket sales - all for $4,400 spent on advertising.”

The article takes on much more, including the best ways for a business to utilize Facebook. It’s a good primer for businesses still needing to tackle one of the essential elements of new media. It can be read here.

*****

A comment following my last post (thank you, Burnett Music) makes excellent points on marketing jazz in 2009. One of them: “You also have to bundle things together - concerts, clinics, tv interviews/stories, radio and web technologies.”

When I helped stage Kansas City jazz festivals, TV and radio interviews were one of the most effective forms of event promotion. They still are. We knew who were the media jazz fans and would provide us a forum. For instance, back then Stan Carmack co-hosted channel 5’s noon news. Each year, we knew he would give us a slot on the show to plug the fest. Likewise, a then-afternoon host on KMBZ (whose name now escapes me) knew more about jazz organists than did I (much to my embarrassment) the year we brought in Jimmy McGriff.

I haven’t promoted a jazz fest in two decades. I don’t know who the jazz fans, ready to help, are amongst KC's broadcast media today. But surely jazz promoters (or their PR firms) do know and call them when there’s an event to promote.

While the many-tentacled media octopus has grown some new media limbs since my festival years, the traditional PR and promotional avenues remain every bit as viable today as they were way back when. Today, though, there’s more tentacles with which to tangle.

*****

In Cincinnati, a 30-year old jazz club has promoted a 23-year old marketing major to general manager as a “key to attracting a younger crowd and growing the influence of jazz in the region.”

What’s one way she’s accomplishing that? “I started marketing more. I made Facebook and Twitter accounts to bring it up to electronic times.”

Imagine that.

(Another way: “I want to find bands that infuse modern music with jazz.” I suspect that’s an approach Plastic Sax will heartily endorse.)

The full article can be read here.

1 comment:

  1. Speaking of which... While I've failed to mention it at Plastic Sax (although it's on my jazz calendar)- DJ Logic is at Crosstown Station tonight, 11/17. He's the remix guy of choice for jazz artists including Eldar.

    http://myspace.com/projectlogic

    ReplyDelete

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