I live in envy of the Performance Monkey. That is, David Jays, fellow ArtsJournal blogger and Sunday Times and New Statesman critic. I enjoy his writing and his subjects very much, but I truly resent his ability to market himself within the world of ArtsJournal.
After we submit an entry to our own ArtsJournal blog, bloggers have the option of posting a teaser on the ArtsJournal homepage with a heading and sentence-long description. My last teaser was Embracing Excess: Would offering all-you-can-see cards help fill empty seats?. The challenge comes in being clever enough to drive reader traffic to your entry without obfuscating your real point. I was quite smug about billing multi-instrumentalist Rob Moose’s interview as Genre Doe, but that doesn’t actually make sense unless you’ve already read the interview. David Jays, however, has mastered the craft of the ArtsJournal teaser. Every time I see a title I like in the blogger column on the mainpage it ends up being his; Bend it like Bacon (on visual artist Francis Bacon) and Ladies Man (on playwright/screenwriter David Hare’s female characters) are two of my favorites. His most recent is And the difference is?, promoting an entry about dividing performance awards by gender, completely schooling my Embracing Excess.
As previously mentioned, I spoke at a session for Chamber Music America’s annual conference about a month ago. I wanted to call my hour “The Great Depression”, but CMA went with “Marketing and Promotion on the Cheap” instead. The session was packed, not because of me, but because “cheap” is what folks have on the brain. In retrospect, who – except me – would want to spend the afternoon at a session called “The Great Depression”? Amusing myself does not good marketing make.
The problem is that presumably, I’m good at this. For other people. Turns out, it’s hard to promote yourself, which speaks to both our personal issues with self-identity and a fear that our peers and the public-at-large will perceive us as oblivious and/or self-serving. Artists have to self-promote all the time in interviews, in press pitches if they don’t work with PR people and in booking themselves if they don’t work with managers, but they’re not alone: publicists, critics and generally anyone trying to further his or her own career in industries across the board needs to self-promote. The question is how much, and how to.
A publicist friend recently told me that a colleague asked what set her apart from other classical music publicists; not as a challenge, but as a brand-identity exercise. I wonder if that exercise is meant to be useful for marketing oneself to potential clients and their managers, or marketing oneself to press contacts. Once a publicist has list of clients, the clients themselves become what sets him or her apart from other publicists, in addition to, I suppose, writing style and basic personality. But do potential clients need to be sold on a mission statement, or is it enough for them to meet and brainstorm with a publicist after seeing his or her work elsewhere? Is the pitch to them your epithet, your industry contacts, or your personal “style”?
When I launched my website last year, I was told the font was hard to read and, among other things, was asked why I didn’t have a bio or photo on the site. Who am I, I responded, that would make artists want to hire me? I am x, y and z in real life, but as a publicist, I am my clients; if you’ve heard of the people with profiles on this site, I’m doing a good job. Does it matter that I’m a Gemini with an art history minor from Connecticut? I would be writing my own bio, so does my perspective on myself really make a difference?
The idea of marketing oneself to the press as a publicist is fascinating. I received a great compliment when I e mailed a journalist I admire about pianist Hélène Grimaud’s new Bach album and he responded, “You’re working with Grimaud now? Well, that makes a lot of sense.” I was flattered on two counts: He knew my little roster well enough to know how she would fit in, and he has a sense of what I’m about – my “brand identity”, if you will – enough to make a statement like that. [Of course, what I’m “about”, as put forth above, to me is who I represent, so perhaps I should have been flattered here on just the one count.]
A publicist marketing him/herself to critics (…managers, artists, record labels) can – SPOILER ALERT – also be a simple as being both easy to work with and generally good at what you do. The summer after I graduated from college, Broadway/TV director Jerry Zaks was generous enough to meet with me and answer my career questions. As I was leaving the office, he said, “Just always do good work, and let your work speak for itself.” Now, as a publicist, I wonder if we sometimes lose the “just do good work” attitude in our attempts to promote ourselves. If you have an amazing mission statement but write terrible press releases and rarely secure pieces for your artists, you’re simply not going to get very far.
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Next time, on Life’s a Pitch: How much do writers pitch themselves and their work to publicists? To publications? Should critics have websites? What should be on them? How much are writers like publicists, pitching stories they want to write to their editors? How often do section editors have to pitch placement to their editors?
And then the time after that, on Life’s a Pitch: How much are writers expected to be publicists, or public relations figures, for their publications? Is it their job to sell papers, or the online equivalent?