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April 04, 2004
Tactical strikes of the marketing kind.
Looking at the times of the past entries I can see a pattern emerging: small hours of the night, mostly drunk. Does that say something about me? No real social life to speak of since I'm cruising in the net in the middle of the night all by myself? A zimmer frame, honorary AA membership (no relation to the automotive assistance service) and a liver failure by the age of 30? Who cares?
Another first night is history, the champagne is on ice and I'm drinking whisky. The few reviews I've stumbled across have all been five- or four-star affairs mostly due to the brilliant 4Temps and the general genius of the programming, all credit to Mr Page.
I've seen the show myself and it's rocking. The posters and billboards are all over the town and still there's hardly any audience! What is it with anything with even a slight whiff of something modern? The Nutcracker proved that we can pull the crowd in, we have an existing audience, but trying to get some new faces in just isn't working and the lovely old ladies are in too much of a shock to dust up their primal urges and admit they actually quite fancy the new stuff. I dragged all of my obscure friends from their respective drinking holes to watch the show and they loved it! There's a huge potential audience in the 20- and 30-something population but the message isn't going through. For the price of a couple of pints you'd get a full nights entertainment and for a price of a half decent lap dance you'd get to oggle a load of beautiful bodies with a bunch of your mates as well! "Challenge that for marketing is... hmmm..." would a little green guy with pointy ears say.
'The Herald readers offer' and stuff like that is all well and good but building a new clientele while retaining, and encouraging, the existing one is the name of the game. Expand and prosper with focus and initiative or shrivel in the shadows of perceived elitism for ever. The future audience is studying in the universities, sweating in the health clubs and letting their hair down in the clubs and bars. Get in there and drag them kicking and screaming to enjoy themselves in the theatre with eye catching flyers, leaflets, postcards and ticket offers. As any self respecting drug dealer knows the first time's always free and when the silly buggers are hooked you crank up the price.
At the moment we seem to be in a limbo of sorts between the classical ballet loving traditionalists and the rock 'n roll youth. The feedback I've got from the few representatives of both sides has been overwhelmingly positive so I hope it's just a question of giving the grapevine enough time to work it's magic... In the meantime I'll be employing all methods of emotional blackmailing and general bullying to get some bums on the seats. I don't care if they hate me as long as they fear me enough to pay the price of the first ticket!
A bit of determination, a beer gut and
the butt end of a snooker cue is all it takes.
Photo by Lexie©
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