Well, every publicist or marketing director, anyway.
Now, we all make mistakes. A few weeks back, I sent Steve Smith
a potential Time Out NY listing without a date. He was kind enough to
write back (errr…when is this??) rather than simply ignoring me,
which would have been deserved. But I received two comments on this
blog today that will certainly make me think about my pitching efforts
and relationship with journalists going forward.
The first was
an e mail suggesting I write about a website that I already written
about, not five days ago. I’m not entirely sure how the person who
pitched the site to me even located the “Contact” section on this blog
without noticing the relevant entry, but she managed to. We live in the
custom-built-for-the-lazy Age of Google. It is…painfully…simple to
find out if someone has already written about your artist (or website,
in this case), the fact that you’re supposedly an expert on that which
you are pitching (and consequently should know its press history)
notwithstanding.
The second, and worse, was a comment on a recent entry (“I have had it with these motherf-ing snakes on this motherf-ing plane!”), from the American Symphony Orchestra. Not an actual comment, but rather a listing for an upcoming concert of theirs! What
the Leon Botstein is this?? They tried to list a concert on a
blog entry that used the word “motherf-ing” (2x) and referenced Snakes on a Plane, of all things! Did they think they could just
sneak it in, folks would see it in the comment field – a blatant
advertisement apropos of nothing – and buy tickets? Also – SPOILER
ALERT – this is a blog about classical music publicity, so the ASO
clearly didn’t pay attention to where they were posting these
listing-comments. Not incidentally, I asked two other ArtsJournal
bloggers about this, and they got the same comment on recent entries.
Is that…SPAM?
Not only is this just very odd, but it
demonstrates a total lack of understanding of blog culture and
etiquette. [insert “blog ‘etiquette’ is an oxymoron” joke __here__].
That
said, perhaps the clever, clever American Symphony Orchestra has simply
outsmarted me. If they purposely marketed their concert in an absurd
fashion so I would post about it on this blog and consequently promote
their concert, my hat goes off to them. Well-played. Well-played indeed.
Two quick thoughts:
1. Unfortunately, spam works. I hope ASO has enough class to realize the error of their ways, but the reality is that nobody is going to boycott them for spamming and given the low cost of spamming if they generate just a couple of additional ticket sales it will have paid off. Now, if I were publicizing ASO through spam I wanted to use my powers for evil, I would create links to discounted ticket sales in each spam posting with a unique URL so I could track the effectiveness of my spamming effort blog by blog. If I wanted to use my powers for evil.
2. Do you know if all of the spam was for the same show, and if so is there any chance that the spammer was actually not ASO but somebody associated with that particular concert who wanted to raise audience for his or her own event?
The commenter name was “American Symphony Orchestra” and the e mail address given was that of their marketing assistant, so, unfortunately, it appears to have come directly from the organization. Clearly, SPAMing works, but has such negative connotations that pursuing those tactics within one’s own industry is a big mistake. Thanks for reading! -AA
You’re now talking about the ASO, which was the entire point of the comment. Granted, it’s harsh and it’s negative and all that, but still, all publicity is good publicity. Seems to me like they’re manipulating this new medium rather well.