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Advertising the ballet


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Since the topic of advertising came up tangentially in the thread on NEA funding, I thought this was a good time to say that, yet again, the Joffrey's new publicity person has more than earned her salary. :wink:

Her previous campaign, for Romeo and Juliet, involved a blood-spattered pair of pointe shoes and the words, "Love. Passion. Murder. Nightly."

The current newspaper ad pictures an upright football being steadied by one finger, and a pointe-shoe-clad foot (nicely arched, I might add) about to kick it. The copy reads: "How to SCORE on Valentine's Day! Take her to the ballet!" The ad advertises the company's Feb. 11-22 run, an Ashton Anniversary program featuring Les Patineurs, Monotones I and II, and A Wedding Bouquet.

I'm sure some curmudgeons will lament the fact that it doesn't stress enough about what the ballet IS, but I think it's brilliant. :wacko:

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As a curmudgeon who used to write advertising, I think the visual of the flexed, pointe-shoed foot about to kick a football is very clever. But I would have liked the copy better if it had just said "How to score on Valentine's Day." I think the unnecessary second sentence just reinforces the stereotype that ballet attendance is for ladies.

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Yes, and coupled with the new MSN commercial, where the Butterfly gives Joe Sixpack two tickets to the ballet after he and his wife quarreled with the line, "It works every time" and then cuts to Lincoln Center to see the wife covering him with kisses (ABT poster nicely in background; Butterfly liked the ballet), we know what SCORE means.

They're not selling the art form, they're not saying the production is good. They're saying you'll be able to score if you take a woman -- and, I agree, FF, the persistent stereotype that ballet is for women is very harmful to ballet.

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Oh, Alexandra, I knew I could count on you!

There really is so much tied up together here. In plugging the arts, do you fish where the fishing is good, or move to a new spot and try new bait? Is it a stereotype that ballet appeals mostly to women, or an unfortunate truth?

The Joffrey needs to fill the seats. Apparently they feel they've tapped out the arts cognoscenti and need to reach out to a wider audience. Plugging the art form on its merits isn't going to reel in the bodies. I mean, really, how many people reading the Sunday paper would sit up and say, "GOSH!! Monotones I and II! That sounds like an exciting ballet. Let's get tickets!"

SLIGHTLY more topically, the ads could show a dozen roses with a slash through them and the copy, "Give your honey a different Bouquet this Valentine's Day." (Can one copyright ad copy? If so, I claim copyright.) But that still wouldn't sell the merits of the ballet.

So, here's a challenge. How would YOU structure the ad campaign for this program? Who are you trying to entice? How will you hook them?

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But they haven't tapped out the arts cognoscenti! In DC, many of the arts cognoscenti (ballet subscribers from the 1970s) have moved to opera and need to be wooed back, but they won't come back to a program aimed at people who equate ballet with footbal.

Ballet is in the hands of the marketeers, and we're going to have more and more of this, and will only drive away people who might go to the ballet to, gosh, see ballet! (Thanks for being a good sport! I knew I could count on that, too :thumbsup: )

I hope we'll hear from people on all sides of this issue, including those for whom ticket sales are a real, rather than theoretical, concern.

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So, here's a challenge. How would YOU structure the ad campaign for this program? Who are you trying to entice? How will you hook them?
Nice gauntlet, Treefrog - and not an easy one to pick up.

I had sort of liked the blood spattered pointe shoe for Romeo and Juliet...

How does one show what the ballet is all about in an ad? Certainly not through ABT's naked torso approach that we discussed last year. Ideally a nice video clip that newspaper readers could click on and watch?

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But they haven't tapped out the arts cognoscenti! In DC, many of the arts cognoscenti (ballet subscribers from the 1970s) have moved to opera and need to be wooed back, but they won't come back to a program aimed at people who equate ballet with footbal.

With all due respect to both towns, DC & Chicago are very different cities. I haven't lived in Chicago since '96 but I can't believe the city's psyche could have gone under too great a transformation since then (although I think perhaps it's dance culture has grown). I'll always remember being at Ruth Page's (at that time Chicago's premier ballet center) the day Nureyev died. I looked mournfully across the dressing room at a fellow student and mentioned the loss. The student's response was "but what really sucks is they fired Mike Ditka!" [football coach]. Chicago was a sports-mad city, more so than any other city I've lived in. Perhaps the ad wouldn't play well in DC, but it probably hits a note in the windy city.

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Potential customers have to see an ad before that can be sold by the ad. A challenge for advertisers is that each individual ad competes with hundreds of other ads for the attention of potential customers. Many people just don't see every ad in the sunday paper. Usually just the full page ads and the occasional ad adjacent to an article. It takes something unusual to grab attention. Perhaps the incongruous pairing of a football and pointe shoe?

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Thanks for reviving this topic, Kyra. And Welcome to Ballet Talk. I hope you'll introduce yourself to your fellow ballet fans on the Welcome forum, and that you'll feel free to comment on a great variety of threads. The Joffrey -- and ballet in Chicago generally -- have some excellent and loyal posters. I hope you'll join them.

In the meantime, now that we end the 2005-2006 season, does anyone have other thoughts about the advertising campaigns they've seen this year? Are you willing to give awards? Or toss a little spoiled fruit?

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ABT has received press attention in recent years for its unusually strong crop of male dancers. I know about the PBS special/DVD Born to be Wild, but has the company attempted to appeal to sports fans in its advertising by portraying its men as the remarkable athletes they are? I wonder if any companies have had success with that approach.

On a side note, I find it heartening that here in Charlottesville, where for professional ballet we've been limited to two nights of Nutcracker and two nights a year by a regional troupe that brings mostly contemporary rep, a newly re-opened theater has chosen Miami City Ballet for this year's Spring Gala. And their ad copy is just a straightforward description of the company.

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Now here's a twist for you.....

I'm a guy who loves ballet and have since my early twenties. I also love skiing, mountain climbing, back packing, and fly fishing. I'm a rough and tumble outdoors kinda guy. However, I never followed professional sports (they always seemed pointless to me -- like, one of the 2 teams was going to win, duh).

Well, this all changed about 10 years ago when my best buddy and I were on a 4 day ski trip to Mt Batchelor in Oregon. There we were attempting to cook dinner (a typical steak, beer, and baked potatoes male menu) when my buddy asks if I mind if he watches a basketball game since nothing else was on (he is an avid basketball fan). I said no problem.

Over the next hour he pointed out a few b-ball principles (that's principles, not princpals :) ) to me to enhance my enjoyment (which was minimal). Then the broadcast replayed a drive to the hoop in slow motion. It struck me like a ton of bricks....basketball players are finely tuned human bodies that move with unbelievable athleticism and grace. Basketball became a form of ballet for me in that moment. I have since become a fantic basketball fan (no other team sports tho). I can quote boxscores and salary caps with the best of them now. I even go to 10 Sonics games a year, sitting quite close so I can see those bodies doing their ballet!

So don't poo-poo the cross-over possibilities (but 1st you have to get their attention). I have talked a few of my macho buddies into going to the ballet. I stress the athleticism and commitment in my sales pitch (and the fact of goreous human bodies if the truth be known.)

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:) A well-executed play is truly a thing of beauty!

Thank you, Kyra, for bringing this back up. Amy made an excellent point when she said that Chicago and DC are two very different towns. I remember my media-consultant husband saying that demographically, Chicago counts as redneck or Joe Sixpack or something like that in things like Nielsen ratings.

Alas, I believe the Joffrey has changed advertising staff. I don't recall seeing any advertisements recently. Not saying they aren't around, just that I don't recall seeing them. Which is effectively the same thing ...

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Ballet companies' advertising people -- like their development directors -- seem to change as rapidly and erratically as the New England weather. This makes the job of building audience loyalty even harder, no matter how good the product.

Now that I live outside NYC, I've seen campaigns for several companies that are so short-term and fragmented that know one even knows what will work. Or even what has worked.

I don't know what you can do to counter that. A sustained image-building campaign -- whatever form it takes-- might be better than a few on-target ads that are quickly replaced by something else.

The solution would probably be different in different cities. San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle all seem to see themselves -- and take great pride in being -- major cultural and artistic centers. Its a key identifier for each of them. I don't know whether Chicago, Philadelphia, or Washington DC (until recently) ever had this kind of self-image. You probably need a local media (tv as well as newspapers) committed to building up this kind of identity.

Keeping the dancers and what they do at the center (whether your focus on the athleticism or whatever) seems very positive. Attracting the wealthy and social leadership, and making ballet patronage fashionable for them, seems to have a carry-over effect, too.

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Hi there, kfw. I'm a Virginian myself (I assume we are talking about the same Charlottesville). This thread reminded me of an old ad for Richmond Ballet's Rodeo: just a pointe shoe with a spur on it. It a) caught your attention by pairing to generally unlike things, as in the football example above, and b) it did give some idea as to what the ballet was about-- although technically there's almost no pointework. Its ballet dancing with a cowboy twist. It didn't cheapen the product-- the company or the production.

I guess I'm on the side with the realists. Dance companies have to get people in the theaters in order to survive, especially the regional companies. Look at the programming. From what I know of regional ballet (which, aside from Richmond Ballet, isn't much, but still), a lot of name recognition-- Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, and how many Draculas are there now?-- and gimmicky "contemporary" ballets that are set to pop music or have cutesy Americana themes.*

Anyway, those programs-- and of course the obligatory Nutcracker season-- allow the companies the security to keep going. If they have a good director, they can even take some risks here and there. As to advertising, I guess I think its hypocritical to balk at a gimmicky campaign when gimmick is obviously one of the means such operations stay afloat.

On the naysayers side, however, I do agree that the kitsch shouldn't get so out of hand that it alienates the core dance-goers. Still, what's wrong with the Romeo and Juliet ad the original poster refered to? It does encompass the themes of the ballet-- with the shoes to show that yes, this is ballet. As for the football ad, I'm undecided as to how classy it is, but I don't think it crosses a sacred line.

Also, on a sidenote, I think the ads for NYCB are positively boring. Probably just my personal photography preference, but they lack excitement. To me, NYCB is exciting, and I wish the posters highlighted that. I do appreciate the placement of dancers at New York landmarks, though.

*I'm not against ballets set to pop music, or integrating mainstream culture into dance by any means. Obviously there are some great dances which do this. But there are a lot more duds, if you ask me.

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This thread reminded me of an old ad for Richmond Ballet's Rodeo: just a pointe shoe with a spur on it. It a) caught your attention by pairing to generally unlike things, as in the football example above, and b) it did give some idea as to what the ballet was about-- although technically there's almost no pointework. Its ballet dancing with a cowboy twist. It didn't cheapen the product-- the company or the production.

Sounds like an interesting ad. It did a couple of jobs well, from what you say: catching the attention, and conveying a sense of what the product is. I hope it increased the audience.

Anyone else have interesting or provocative ads -- good or bad, successful or unsuccessful -- they would like to share?

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I guess I'm on the side with the realists. Dance companies have to get people in the theaters in order to survive, especially the regional companies. Look at the programming. From what I know of regional ballet (which, aside from Richmond Ballet, isn't much, but still), a lot of name recognition-- Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, and how many Draculas are there now?-- and gimmicky "contemporary" ballets that are set to pop music or have cutesy Americana themes.*

Also, on a sidenote, I think the ads for NYCB are positively boring. Probably just my personal photography preference, but they lack excitement. To me, NYCB is exciting, and I wish the posters highlighted that. I do appreciate the placement of dancers at New York landmarks, though.

Whitelight, not only the regional companies have to build audiences but even the companies in the big cities have to replenish their audiences as they age/drop off. So I agree the advertising really has to try to reach the potential new audiences....it's essential , and yes it all about money. I'm a realist too.

I also agree the NYCB needs to shake up their ad agencies. The brochures are ok I think, for the existing core audience, which is and has been for a long time, pretty loyal but all those thumbnail photos are going to put off a lot of new potential ticket buyers, and they are crucial. Although they are sometimes hokey, the ABT brochures have big , colorful photos.

Going :off topic: a bit , the Met Opera's brochure for next season is stunning.

Richard

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