Gene Carr's Patron Technology Blog

NYC Opera: Too Hip by Half? Take My Marketing Challenge

Last week I got a curious brochure in the mail from the New York City Opera. This is the same group that lost its high profile French leader only months ago, and turned to New York's own forward-thinking George Steel to rescue the institution and redefine its mission.

It's also the same group that, according to an article in last week's The New York Times, "had raided its endowment of a total of $23.5 million to pay off debts and right the troubled company’s finances, leaving little left in its coffers."

So anything new coming from the City Opera caught my attention as a harbinger of things to come. And indeed, this print brochure looked like something much more likely to come out of an Indie film festival (or a comic book store). In fact, it was so hip, one of my staff said, "Why did they do this in print at all? Why not just create a Web site?"

Indeed, they did create a Web site, and the URL in the brochure takes you to an amazingly creative and enjoyable video:

Now comes my challenge. Please do the following.

1. Click through and watch the video.
2. Don't click on any other links on the site.
3. Return to this blog, and click "comment" to tell me what *exactly* they are promoting.

Let's see what you come up with, and then in the next post, I'll give you my reaction.

The End of Newspapers -- This Soon?

I assume you all heard about the threat our local paper, The New York Times, made this week -- to shut down the Boston Globe. Who knows if it was merely a negotiating posture with the unions, but just the mention of that kind of threat damages the Times' own reputation, so one has to believe they are seriously on the ropes.

When I wrote about the demise of newspapers a few weeks ago, I ended by saying that it was my guess that the folks that run newspapers don't get it, and they will watch as their enterprises sink into the sea.

Well, last night I read something on Huffington Post which I had to share, written by Jeff Jarvis (whose new book What Would Google Do I ordered from Amazon.com just last night).  Jeff's take on the newspaper industry is far harsher than mine, and I think it's a must read.

It's titled "To Newspaper Moguls: You Blew It" and he makes the indictment with a dagger.

I know folks in the arts community in Boston are scrambling to understand the potential of their city without a major newspaper to review their shows and a place to put their ads.

It may just be that the biggest economic crisis the arts are going to face in the next year is not financial at all -- it's editorial.

So, as I've said for years at my seminars (now sort of a mantra to arts marketers), when you think about marketing online you should make yourself into the publisher. With e-mail and Web sites, and now RSS, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, *you* are the publisher -- and in some cases this may be necessary sooner than you think.

 

Atlanta Speech & Facebook Teach

I'm heading to Atlanta tomorrow at the invitation of the National Alliance for Musical Theater. I've been invited to give the keynote address at their Spring 2009 conference. The conference is titled  "Marketing in a New Age: How Technology Can Build Your Audience and Save You Money."

My talk will be largely focused around the incredible potential now facing the arts & culture world with regard to "cloud computing." In techie circles that phrase is quickly becoming an over-used cliche, but the reality is that organizations that embrace this new way of accessing technology truly can operate with dramatically greater efficiency and for a lot less money. If you happen to be in Atlanta (or want to hop on a plane) my talk is at 10 AM on Friday morning.

The only downside to all this is that I'll be headed to the airport tomorrow just in time to miss Michelle Paul's Webinar about how to develop your organization's presence on Facebook, that I wrote about last week. We are all thrilled here at the overwhelming registrations for this event -- as of this afternoon over 800 people have registered!  if you still want to go, you can still register for free here.  

I got a preview of her session last night and it's chock full of good information. We sent out a survey to all registrants earlier in week about their social media habits, the results for which Michelle will summarize. And to top it off, she's going to be announce a new initiative we're developing for arts professionals around social media.