Any Publicity is Good Publicity…Right?

Wrong. Not when the name of your client’s upcoming production is all over TV screens across America promoting not the fun, juvenile play featuring an 11 year old and a love for video games, but rather an R-rated movie about sex-crazed, substance-abusing college kids and their parties.  Nottttt exactly the image we want to be associated with.  But, as I mentioned in my last post, we tried to curtail the association between the upcoming film and our upcoming production (opening the exact same weekend, wouldn’t ya know it?) by adding to the title Project X: The Final Level.  We hope this will add distinction to the play.  But that’s not what I want to talk about today.  I want to boast on all of the coverage that Playmakers has been receiving for their upcoming productions!  First, Dig wrote an entertainment article on Playmaker’s modern take on Pinocchio.  And they even added a teaser stating that there are non-traditional characters in the play, “but attendees will have to see that for themselves.”  We love the added suspense! Hopefully it will drive traffic to the production opening this weekend with a “pay what you can” at 7 p.m on Thursday, a 7 p.m. show on Friday night, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. shows on Saturday, and a 2 p.m. show on Sunday.  All located in the Reilly Theatre on LSU’s campus.  

http://digbatonrouge.com/article/postmodern-pinocchio-4533/

 

 

http://theadvocate.com/entertainment/magazine/2077257-123/playmakers-students-build-their-own.html    Then, The Advocate wrote an entertainment article highlighting the play experience.  The article features pictures, an interview with the play’s director, Christopher Krejci, and a list of the cast members.  The two articles together with the AWESOME YouTube video that we’ve been promoting on the YouTube channel as well as on our Facebook page (shoutout to our creative director Jadi for filming and editing the great clip), and the posters hung around town will hopefully create a buzz in the community about the play and *fingers crossed* will help boost play attendance.  We have also been posting trivia questions on our Facebook and offering tickets to the first correct answer.  The answer to the questions can be found on Playmaker’s website.  See what we did there? Eh? Driving traffic from the Facebook to the website.  We’re trying here.

Also, Karli has two billboards around town.  One on Perkins promoting Pinocchio and one on Siegen promoting Project X.  So the message is out there, let’s just hope it’s received and we’ll see our efforts pay off this Thursday night!

Business As Usual

Since my last check-in, The Reilly Agency has really kicked it into high gear.  With the construction of our research synopsis, we formed our target audiences and began brainstorming ways to reach these audiences.  Our target demographic for the next upcoming shows, “Pinocchio” and “Project X” are 12 years of age and younger.  Not so fun fact: “Project X,” a kid-friendly production featuring an 11-year-old actor, a puppet and a handful of digital characters, now has to differentiate itself from a raunchy, R-rated movie by the same name coming to theaters in March–yikes!  This dilemma was quickly fixed as the name for Playmaker’s “Project X” changed to “Project X: The Final Level.”  I thought that was a cute fix and it also helps audiences discover that the play is about gaming.   But, I digress, what I wanted to talk about was how we plan to reach these young audiences.  When we got to thinking about it, 12-year-olds don’t have the means to drive themselves or pay for themselves at these productions, so in addition to catching their attention, we need to focus on their chauffeurs and sponsors: their mothers.

We decided our first plan of action to get the message out is to put up posters of the upcoming “Pinocchio” production all over opportune areas of town.  The posters are well-designed and can easily catch your eye if placed strategically.  After acquiring a good 50 posters, we set out to hang them in Towne Center, Perkins Rowe, local libraries, on campus, childcare facilities, fitness facilities, coffee shops (that’s where moms hang out, right?), elementary schools and popular family restaurants all over town such as Brewbachers and Sammy’s.  We hope that these efforts will at least plant the idea in the mothers’ and children’s minds.

We also created a landing page on the Playmakers Facebook page. The picture can be seen below. This means that when viewers go to the Facebook the initial page is not the wall, it is the “Pinocchio” poster with information and an arrow prompting viewers to ‘like’ the page before entering.  We have seen an increase of 9 ‘likes’ thus far.  We have been posting theater news, behind-the-scenes photos of play rehearsals, and any news that Karli Henderson, Playmaker’s Manager, finds useful.  Our next upcoming project: to embed a YouTube tab onto the Facebook where we can film snippets of play rehearsal and post them as teasers for viewer’s to see—how cool?! We are filming rehearsal this Friday night for “Pinocchio.”  Check out Playmaker’s current YouTube channel for past production clips.

I also created a Twitter to communicate to those in the ever-growing Twitterverse.  I began following other large production companies so that if they should post interesting articles on what’s new in the exciting world of live productions, I can retweet it in hopes to share it with our followers who share our interest in theatre.  So, that’s where we’re at social media-wise on the promotion of “Pinocchio.”

Stay tuned to hear about our plans to promote “Project X: The Final Level” and whether or not its competing crude motion picture will interfere with the play’s success!

First client meeting and fresh ideas

This morning we had our first meeting with the client.  Karli Henderson from Playmakers was very helpful and I think she was pleasantly surprised at all the ideas and goals we as a group, oh, excuse me–The Reilly Agency– had already generated.  I think I speak for everyone when I say that we did not feel like students at the meeting, it felt like we were a #publicrelations team of seven having a morning meeting to plan our upcoming events and ideas.  In a little over an hour we hit on all our major topics and answered all of our questions.  One thing that interested me in particular was the fact that their social media sites are not as interactive and informational as they have the potential to be.  I work for a technology company in Baton Rouge called Wireless IQ, I am the social media manager and communications director.  (Shameless promotion: ‘Like’ us on Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/WirelessIQ) My number one job is to manage the #Facebook pages of our clients. This means designing a #landingpage (if you don’t know what a Facebook landing page is, this site explains it well http://blog.crazyegg.com/2012/01/03/facebook-landing-page-designs/  and shows effective, successful examples) that might promote our latest marketing efforts and prompt viewers to ‘like’ the page.  Providing a call-to-action is an effective way to break the boundary of interaction between organization and users (http://moonviper.com/tips-from-the-guru/facebook-tips-from-the-guru/business-facebook-landing-page/ ).  My job also entails developing those marketing/promotional efforts to get Facebook users off the computer and into our store or using our services.  I think one good idea would be to create a landing page prompting viewers to ‘like’ the page and once they are a fan, we provide them with a 15% off coupon for the show of their choice.  This should increase our fan base significantly and encourage viewers to purchase tickets to an upcoming show.  Another idea is to implement a calendar tab that users can click on to view upcoming shows, show times, tour dates, etc.  Karli mentioned that Women’s Hospital has a Facebook page that basically contains their website and YouTube channel on their Facebook kind of making it a one-stop shop (Check it out: https://www.facebook.com/womanshospitalbr). I think this is feasible for Playmakers and a great way to drive traffic to the Facebook while their site is under construction.  This client is giving me the opportunity to increase my #socialmedia experience while boosting their online image.  If we can meet our impact and objective goals with this client we, as students and young professionals, will get so much experience out of it and the organization will have gained outstanding brand development and public relations assistance.