Friday 6 April 2012

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Shameless Advertising

The other night I spoke with the owner of the Fox and Fiddle where the open mic is held (and by this I mean he let me do one, he's letting me do another, I suppose this is how things start). He gave me a stack of amazing posters and some advice: "Take these everywhere. Go to Timothy's and Starbucks (I daylight as a barista- at Second Cup) and tell everybody." As if I haven't called my own mother 3 times to make sure I tell her that I'm doing this. Then he says "get birthdays and suggest parties on the night of the open mic." I suspect that most birthday parties would be best enjoyed at wild kareoke or live bands, but perhaps a certain group really wants to hear some nice soft unplugged stuff to celebrate a year gone by. So I considered this.

He is an ad man. He runs two other very successful restaurants among other ventures, so I trust his advice. I also take it with a grain of salt. (After all, the artist must do all in her power to fight 'the man' and bite the hand that feeds.)

Also, my ignorance about strategic selling has me in a spin. I know how to tell friends and regulars at work about my project, but I estimate half of that is small talk white noise to them. I hope more of them come to support, but it's akin to tossing a bag of denim cutoffs off the roof of a downtown office building onto a hundred pedestrians. Maybe 10 of them take a pair home. The real gold is in the other 25 or 30 who tell of the miraculous heaven-sent shorts. They tell their unfashionable friends who then show up the next day in wait. What I need is to find some really unfashionable people who want my demin shorts.

So I went out on the town. I really went to town on the town. I plastered my posters anywhere that would have them. It's actually starting to excite me to consider where else I can take my campaign. Where do musicians go? Hopefully to my open mic night. But the question is, where are they now? Do I know how to sell them on this? What kind of suit is somewhere between the effortless charisma of Janis Joplin and he smoky charm of Don Draper?


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