So well built, we can’t show you the second act
La Cieca hears that a big axe just fell in the marketing department over at Sterling Cooper Draper Gelb. Look for a new director to be hired from outside the company.
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All probably due to the fact that La Cieca knows all before the highly paid PR department finishes proofing their releases.
We also know La Cieca watches Mad Men, since she’s quoting a line from the 3-days old 4th season premire. Awesome viewing choice, I must say, La C.
forgive the ignorance and the underlying sardonic tone, but what does it all mean? has there been a marketing blunder that’s big enough for heads to roll?
There has been a long series of under-performances, and with a marketing background as strong as Gelb’s, I think he wants to make it a priority. They need only look across the plaza to see how PR and marketing works wonders with a limited budget, and how bad PR and marketing work, especially in the management of expectations, can damage a season.
No kidding, the Met’s marketing program targeted to the younger crowd is called the “Young Associates Program” and starts at $500 per season for 4 shows and 2 dress rehearsals I believe. Could they have come up with a stuffier name? Someone hasn’t done their market research in that house.
I mean there’s no winning that one…opera is opera, and if they try to market it as a Yo La Tengo concert, they’re going to look like assholes.
I actually don’t get what this is about. The bus/subway campaign has made them more visible than any time I can recall; some marketing strategy I couldn’t name has packed the house for off-rep operas (Nose, House of Dead) by pulling in what I think one used to call a downtown crowd. They haven’t exactly done badly considering how expensive the tickets are and how most people you know are freaking the fuck out about money. Last season the only thing I recall being conspicuously empty was an old (though beloved) production of Ariadne with no singers in it that are big names in New York.
Acts II-XVII of Armida were increasingly empty as well, but that’s hardly the marketing director’s fault.
The performance of Lulu I attended also drew a large, attentive crowd that seemed younger and less tuxedoed than the Met stereotype.
Valmont, the Young Associates program is $500 for membership only and benefits. Any tickets are of course at the patron’s own expense. I think this really says a lot about the Met’s priorities: they are principally concerned with wooing wealthy potential donors, not in creating or cultivating any kind of new or younger audience.
“I think this really says a lot about the Met’s priorities: they are principally concerned with wooing wealthy potential donors, not in creating or cultivating any kind of new or younger audience.”
I would strongly disagree with this scifisci. I’m 16 years old and what probably got me interested in opera was through how accessible it became. I realized that it cost less for me to go see an opera with things like their student rush than a Broadway show. This past season alone, I saw fourteen operas at the Met, more than I had ever seen before at the Met. For most of the operas, I was able to see them for $30 or less (even a few for free), all through programs Gelb instituted.
While the Young Associates program does seem to be a little pricey, over $300 is tax deductible, not to mention (i believe that I’m correct) that they set up an open bar for each of their events. If you add it all together, the person is getting invitations to two free dress rehearsals, which are almost as good as live performances, and five opportunities at an open bar for $190. It does not seem to be that bad a deal.
Re tax deductions, a tax deduction is a deduction from the taxable income reported, it is not a credit against tax. So if for the sake of argument a person were in a 20% bracket a tax deduction of $300 would result in having to pay $60 less in tax.
Gelb did NOT institute the student ticket program. In fact, he severely reduced it, mostly because of the varis rush tickets. Before gelb, you could purchase student tickets up to two weeks in advance, and since there were no $20 rush tickets, many more performances were available.
Also, Young Associate members mush pay for almost every event they attend, so the open bar thing is basically irrelevant. My point is, the goal of young associates is not to woo young people per se, or to “give back” or whatever, but to get rich donors at a younger age–it’s a membership program lets remember.
I went to four of the House of the Dead performances, and I definitely didn’t have the impression that they were packed. The marketing department seems to be doing a good job making Met advertising highly visible and putting butts in seats, but the other organizations at Lincoln Center are doing a better job attracting new audiences. They really, really don’t seem to be putting any effort into making the Met seem less haughty and more dynamic or culturally relevant – whatever that means – but perhaps that isn’t their goal in the first place. For example, I don’t see how the marketers did anything to make the Nose and Lulu successful – it almost seems to me that the success was achieved in spite of the boring marketing.
Four! Dedication to a cause there.
I’m surprised if the rumour is true because I was under the impression that if there was one thing the GelbHaus was doing well was its marketing. But I guess the prettiest posters and buzziest opening nights mean bugger-all if you’re not actually selling any tickets.
Maybe the visible outputs of the department were okay, but all the internal research and strategy was a bomb.
It seems to me that the Met marketing department has two demographics in mind:
i. WASPs and aspiring WASPs who like opera because it signals their status.
ii. “Tourists” who are attracted by one of the half-dozen or so Met Marketing Department Anointed Stars (where I mean, not just tourists from out of town, but people who go to the opera or a Broadway show once or twice a year as a special occasion, but aren’t otherwise particularly keyed in to the NYC arts scene)
I started going to the opera after buying last minute cheap tickets to a NYCO show about five years ago (and look what happened…). I couldn’t imagine having had a similar experience at the daunting Met, which seems to define itself (like the Met museum and to a certain extent Carnegie Hall) by being apart from the city it is in. Along the same lines, the Met has never really done any of the kind of marketing that got the Philharmonic a hit (and a ton of good press) with Le Grand Macabre or the recent Varèse performance with the Lincoln Center Festival. It seems to me that their strategy is working today, but they might be shooting themselves in the foot for the long term.
You’re not serious, are you? WASPs and aspiring WASPs?
What do you think this is? 1956?
The marketing department at the MET wouldn’t know a WASP if it stung them.
This is one of the most ridiculous posts on this topic ever.
Sure, I’m perfectly serious. If you glance at a recent New York Magazine or the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times, you can see that the world the WASPs built is alive and well in the city, even if it is now much more inclusive world.
Hail, Maury!
“The bus/subway campaign has made them more visible than any time I can recall; some marketing strategy I couldn’t name has packed the house for off-rep operas (Nose, House of Dead) by pulling in what I think one used to call a downtown crowd.”
That’s not marketing; that’s called “papering”.
BTW, Master McGoo: If Gelb started student discounts, how did I manage to get a same-day fourth row Orchestra seat for $8 for a Gwyneth Jones/Jess Thomas/Judith Blegen/John Macurdy FIDELIO when I was in high school decades ago?
Nerva Nelli,
That may well be the best-spent $8 ever.
It isn’t the marketing people who should be fired, it’s the two old hags (Sally and Friend) who should be shown the door. Should have been shown the door years ago. Couple of real waste products in those two. Where’s Henry 2nd’s four knights when you need them?
There is no doubt that Sarah Sally has poisoned the MET for decades.
Speaking of Mad Men, I noticed Don is dating a “supernumarary”. She invites him to come see her perform. I wonder if there will be scenes set at the Old Met in future episodes.
If they’re going to do it, it had better be soon. The current series begins in late November of 1964, the second to last Met season in the old house.
Maybe they can work in this:
Metropolitan Opera House
November 29, 1964
Benefit for the Welfare and Pension Funds
GALA PERFORMANCE
Der Rosenkavalier: Act I
Octavian…………………Lisa Della Casa
Princess von Werdenberg……Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Baron Ochs……………….Otto Edelmann
Italian Singer……………Barry Morell
Conductor………………..Thomas Schippers
La Boheme: Act I
Mimi…………………….Renata Tebaldi
Rodolfo………………….Carlo Bergonzi
Marcello…………………Calvin Marsh
Schaunard………………..Clifford Harvuot
Colline………………….Cesare Siepi
Benoit…………………..Fernando Corena
Conductor………………..George Schick
La Traviata: Act I
Violetta…………………Joan Sutherland
Alfredo………………….John Alexander
Flora……………………Marcia Baldwin
http://tinyurl.com/yznppet
Conductor………………..George Schick
The Met needs to think real hard about,
“If you build it they will come!”
Indeed, perhaps the Met should spend more money working on building the “they” before building anything else.
….and just for some comic relief….
As I was killing some time in front of Hoboken(NJ) City Hall…and borrowing their free wi-fi feed….:
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That’s rich…HOBOKEN … calling something “tasteless and offensive…”…lol
Congrats, La C…!!
Wow, how cutting edge!!!!! A snobby Manhanttanite (er, sorry dear , I didn’t realize you lived in one of the OUTER BORROUGHS, so SORRY for you!) slumming in New Jersey, and GET THIS
for SOMETHING UNIQUE, holding their nose all the time.
Did you get a visa before you got on the PATH?
OH, and complaining about something you were getting for free, SO Brooklyn-like!!!!!
Richard:
CALM DOWN,DEAR….
..I ain’t a snob at all…I just found it amusing what the internet “guardians” find worthy of banning…THAT’S ALL….
Look..I was born in Canarsie… and so I surely don’t lord over JNew Joisey…I lived in Jersey City before it was ..”oh -so- chic”..btw…
On completely unrelated topics, Cieca carissima, when are we going to have our own iPhone/iTouch/iPad app?
I just got an iTouch and am having lots of fun with some of the apps. Do we have people here with enough experience to develop an app? Wouldn’t that be fun?
All you have to do for an Iphone-ITouch-or Ipad Parterre app is to make it a favorite on your browser then assign it a button on your home screne or any nested folder you like. What should be included in the Parterre Iphone Ipad app that isn’t already available via browser on those devices? But a wonderful spinning globe with all the faces of La Ceica (like they have done wioth the new ABC TV app would be fun