January 23, 2008

The Importance of Social Media Press Releases for Dance

I've always been intrigued by "Social Media Press Releases" (SMPR) and how they can be used to enhance publicity within the dance world.

In a nutshell, a SMPR is a relatively new press release format that aggregates 1) summaries of key information, 2) multimedia content and 3) relevant links while removing the extended editorializing that bogs down traditional press releases. (By "bogs down," I mean overwhelms or is irrelevant to non-traditional writers and journalists). Finally, anybody can subscribe to a SMPR feed to be automatically notified about any updates.

A key advantage with SMPR is that they can be used to reach a much larger number of content creators--not just traditional journalists. Dance and presenter SMPR, for example, could be used to reach both dance and non-dance audiences and appeal to anybody with a blog or social networking page--a potentially huge audience.

In this post, I'd like to offer some suggestions of how dance companies could create SMPR for their upcoming dance performances. But first some background:

Background About Social Media Press Releases

Maggie Fox (no relationship) of the Social Media Group wrote a post on Monday "The Social Media Press Release - Digital Snippets." In her post, she includes links to SMPR that her company has created for Ford (here are more Ford SMPR), and a Social Media Press Release Template (PDF).

If you browse through the Ford SMPR, you'll quickly get an idea of how this new take on press releases is constructed and how easy it is to find the types of content you're looking for.

My Posts About SMPR and Dance Publicity

I've written a number of posts since 2006 about new approaches to publicity and how to transform the publicity function in order to increase the number of content creators who are covering and discussing your work and performances:

May 2006: Revamping Press Releases for the Arts

December 2006: Increase Dance Coverage with Multimedia Releases and Open Rehearsals

March 2007: What Strategy Should Drive Dance Publicity?

July 2007: Multimedia Press Kits for the Internet Age

Thinking About Dance and SMPR

There are two important trends to keep in mind when it comes to dance publicity:

1) Dance is now back and part of American popular culture. Just consider the popularity of on-going and new dance shows (Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, Dance War and more), viral dance videos (Evolution of Dance, Soulja Boy and others) and the number of upcoming Super Bowl promotions that feature dancing, including the inane KFC Chicken Dance contest.

2) A huge number of people, especially young people, have social networking pages and profiles--which means that just about everybody can and does create content.

So in light of a huge dance audience and the huge number of content creators it does not make sense to keep producing traditional press releases that only appeal to a small sliver of your potential audience.

What Do Dance SMPR look like?

I think that Dance SMPR would look very similar to the one created for Ford and more or less follow the SMPR PDF template I linked to above. You'd essentially be including videos, pictures, facts, interview quotes, links and recommended tags. ("Recommended tags" would be tags that you recommend content creators use when writing about your dance rehearsals, performances, workshops and similar programs.

In the end, an SMPR is very similar to a blog except that you'd really be creating and aggregating content so that other people could cover what you're doing and the emphasis wouldn't be as much on telling your own story directly to your audience--although you could do that to.

Finally, as with any blog, anybody who wished to could subscribe to your SMPR feed. As things stand now, if a dance company does not have a blog, I have no way of following what they're doing on a regular basis. By creating a SMPR with a feed, I would always be in the loop and so would thousands of other people be as well.

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:59 AM - Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

January 10, 2008

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Reaches Out to Dance Bloggers

Last night I attended a dress rehearsal for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet to which local dance bloggers were invited. The event was a lot of fun and it was a real pleasure watching the company's talented dancers perform works from three very different choreographers. Philip at Oberon's Grove is first out of the box with a write-up of this event and the performances. And Tonya just wrote this event wrap-up about famous-people sightings as I'm about to push the publish button.

It was great to see and meet fellow dance bloggers - there were about 10-12 of us - more on this topic coming soon along with a list of bloggers and a group photo.

I really appreciate Cedar Lake reaching out to dance bloggers. This type of event is the first of its kind and my guess is that more dance companies and presenters will more actively include bloggers in their future publicity efforts.

After the performance, we talked with Artistic Director Benoit-Swan Pouffer. He has a very positive attitude about the value of the unfiltered, personal writing style of bloggers, and expressed his appreciation for the diverse ways that bloggers go about covering dance.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to meet Caleb Custer last night - he was sick so he didn't attend. He's an intern with Cedar Lake and he helped put together this dance blogger event. Caleb definitely shares my interest in exploring how dance companies can leverage the Internet, blogs and videos to connect with audiences in new ways. So I hope to meet with him soon to discuss dance, the Internet and related topics.

Does This Event for Dance Bloggers Have Real Significance?

On one level, you could say this event is not a big deal. Cedar Lake was just smart to invite bloggers to a dress rehearsal, treat them to wine and cheese and host a post-performance talk with the artistic director. And in return get some good, quick coverage in the dance blogs - it's already happened.

All true. But, how come nobody else has done this before?

My answer is that many marketing people in the arts have a fairly traditional way of thinking about publicity, audience development, audience engagement and fundraising. There's still a huge emphasis placed on getting coverage and great quotes in the prestigious and mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times. These quotes are then taken and inserted into advertising/marketing campaigns and funding proposals.

I'm not actually discounting the importance of these favorable quotes to the financial health of dance companies. What I do believe, though, is that the emerging blogging outlets for dance ought not be ignored and offer many possible benefits to dance companies.

Bloggers are part of the community-oriented, participatory spirit of the Internet. And I think we will see many more dancers and dance companies exploring how to use blogs, social networking sites and related offerings to engage audiences in extended conversations about their work.

We turn around stories quickly, which means that you'll get coverage before the last curtain goes down. We include multimedia so that our readers can see videos of your work and make-up their own minds.

Collectively, dance bloggers, especially in New York City, get a good amount of traffic. Dance blog readers tend to be avid dance fans and are probably more interested in dance than the average reader of dance reviews in traditional newspapers.

Finally, dance blog posts can easily show-up toward the top of search engine results. Do a Google search for "Cedar Lake Ballet" and see what happens. A link to a story I wrote about Cedar Lake is right under the links to the Cedar Lake website. The same thing happens if you do a search for this week's "APAP conference" or "Arts Presenters Conference." Great Dance is very high in the search results listings.

What do these Google search results mean? They mean that if publicity people considered how Internet users searched for information about their organizations and performances, then they would reach the conclusion that dance bloggers are important. And, in addition, that it's worth the time and energy to support bloggers in their efforts so that they will hopefully offer positive coverage of your programs.

This post probably sounds like I'm going overboard patting myself and other bloggers on the back, which is somewhat true. But I do believe that there is a large discrepancy between the way in which marketing and publicity people in the arts see the world, and the way the world actually is.

Posted by Doug Fox at 12:34 PM - Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

December 17, 2007

Tony Award-Winning "Spring Awakening," a Powerhouse User of Distributed and Viral Internet Marketing

A think it's helpful to take a look at the overall Internet marketing strategy of Broadway musical Spring Awakening -- Bill T. Jones is the choreographer for which he won a Tony. Here's his acceptance dance and speech:

Actually, that was slight digression - I just like the video. Back to Spring Awakening's Internet strategy. At the heart of what appears to be a highly successful online marketing program is the embrace of no-cost/low cost, highly viral distribution channels to reach large, enthusiastic audiences.

Here are the component parts of the Spring Awakening Internet Strategy. As you'll see, there is little here that dancers and dance companies with even the smallest budgets cannot do:

The Website

Their website is bold and nothing is extraneous. It's about selling tickets and merchandise, getting fans to spread the word about the show and making as many friends as possible on MySpace and Facebook. Take a look at the Spread the Word page. I don't think they missed a single avenue for encouraging visitors to help generate excitement and sell more tickets. Here's an example of a promotional banner that you can embed on your website/blog/social networking page:

MySpace and Facebook

On MySpace, Spring Awakening has amassed over 12,800 friends and 3,300 messages. If you take a look at this page, you'll notice that it was designed with existing content - music, video and details about the show. So it was not time consuming at all to create and generates a lot of traffic.

And for the official Facebook page, the show has another 13,000 or so friends. Their Facebook page is on the boring side, but obviously thousands of fans see value in signing-up, which means that the "friends" of these 13,000 group members also end-up learning about the show. Here's example of the viral nature of Facebook. I visited group page for Spring Awakening. I clicked the "Share" button and posted info. about this group to my profile on Facebook. Now visitors to my profile page see the following in my Mini-Feed:

YouTube and iTunes

Here's one of the many Spring Awakening videos on YouTube. It's been watched 44,000 times, has 44 comments and 86 ratings:

I'm confused by what is and is not an official show video on YouTube.

You can also sign-up for the Spring Awakening video podcast on iTunes and then watch it on your computer or iPod. Here's screen shot from iTunes - you can click image to see larger picture:

Conclusion

Above I didn't really delve into the strategy behind building an integrated Internet campaign that leverages the viral and distributed nature of the Internet. But I did just want to show the component parts of such a campaign. While implementing a successful Internet strategy obviously takes expertise and thus money, what's especially interesting is that the actual services above - MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and iTunes - cost no many to use and can help you reach huge audiences.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:57 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 13, 2007

The Columbia Ballet Collaborative Promotes Performance on Facebook

The Columbia Ballet Collaborative, a group formed by Columbia University students earlier this fall to increase awareness of ballet on campus, has successfully used the social networking site Facebook to promote their weekend performances (tomorrow and Saturday).

To access their Facebook pages, you'll need to register. You can visit the Columbia Ballet Collaborative page and also view the details about their weekend performances.

Here's a screen shot of their performance/event page - you can click image for larger picture:

Here's screen shot of the same page that highlights the Facebook event invitation tools. On top right visitors can RSVP. Then on bottom and in right-hand column, you can see who will, might and will not attend - click for larger image:

This morning I spoke by phone with Lydia Walker, a part-time Columbia student and professional ballet dancer who was one of five students who created The Columbia Ballet Collaborative. Lydia said that they used Facebook since all the students were already using this social networking site and it took the fewest resources to get up and running with it. She said that this application will work well for anybody who has a good friend base and it's a really easy way to let people know what you'll be doing.

To promote the Ballet Cooperative, they set-up a Facebook group and event page, and asked friends to join. Once you join this group, you then automatically receive updates from the group in your newsfeed on your Facebook profile page. Plus, your friends who visit your profile page will then see info. about the Columbia Ballet Collaborative.

Here's the mini-feed that appears on my profile page after I signed-up for the Columbia Ballet group:

Simply a great form of viral marketing. Once you sign-up to do something all your friends know what you'll be up to. (The Columbia Ballet Collaborative's Facebook initiative has inspired me to get more serious about Facebook. I have not been very active at all and I think I should start using it more.)

Lydia said that a good place for dance companies to start their Facebook explorations is with dancers under 35 who have a lot of friends on Facebook.

I would be delighted to hear from other dancers/dance companies about how you are using social networks to build audiences and sell tickets. Do you have success stories to share?

Other Articles/Posts about Columbia Ballet Collaborative

- Pictures of the Columbia Ballet Collaborative.

- Ballet Collaborative mentioned in this post about Dance at Barnard.

- Preview of Columbia Ballet Collaborative in Time Out New York by Gia Kourlas

Posted by Doug Fox at 1:57 PM - Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

November 26, 2007

Distribution of Dance Coverage in New York City

Now that I've been linking to dance reviews for performances in New York City for the past two weeks, I'm curious to examine what does and does not get coverage.

If you look at the right-hand column of the NYC dance review blog, you'll see that there is a significant imbalance in terms of what is written about. New York City Ballet (8 reviews) and Batsheva Dance Company (7 reviews) followed by Complexions Contemporary Ballet (4) and Pennsylvania Ballet (4). All the others have one or two reviews. (I should point out that I probably have links to about 80+% of reviews in newspapers and blogs and that this data covers only a two-week period).

Why do some dance companies get more coverage than others? Popularity? Prestige? Venue? Or is it that the mainstream media (in this case dance critics who write for newspapers/magazines) has certain favorites? Actually, the mainstream media angle doesn't really work. If you take a look at the reviews for Batsheva Dance Company in particular, you'll see that a good number of the reviews are from bloggers.

And on another front, do dance critics with the New York Times, The Village Voice and other papers only write about the most popular companies performing at the largest/best-known venues? Yes, to a certain extent but definitely not always. I link to three reviews of New York Times' writer Jennifer Dunning. Two are of the New York City Ballet and the other one is of Gesel Mason at Joyce SoHo. Deborah Jowitt of The Village Voice, on the other hand, reviews Douglas Dunn & Dancers at Dance New Amsterdam and Monica Bill Barnes & Company at Danspace Project.

There are many ways to examine this aggregation of dance review data from over the past two weeks. But one thing is for sure: Most dance companies get virtually no coverage whatsoever - maybe one review or blog write-up if they're lucky. And the readership of dance reviews in the traditional media has been going down. The Village Voice would not have cut-back its coverage of dance if readership was increasing. And the New York Times would not have removed the link for "Dance" from its home page navigation bar (left side) if dance readership was steady or increasing.

Given this overall paucity of coverage and shrinking readership, what then is the best publicity strategy for dance companies?

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:30 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

November 19, 2007

Update on New Blog with Coverage of NYC Dance Performances

You can visit the new Great Dance blog that links to dance reviews of dance performances in New York City.

So far, you'll find links to recent reviews for performances from more than 15 writers. If you'd like to submit your own review, you can fill-out this submission form.

Some Additions and Changes

- In addition to linking to an existing dance review on a newspaper website or blog, you can also submit a review directly to Great Dance. Just complete the above form to share your thoughts about a dance performance that you've recently seen. We do review all submissions for relevance and suitability before publishing.

- Of course, please post your comments in response to any of the reviews if you'd like.

- I'll soon add a calendar of upcoming performances in the New York City area. And there will be a form you can fill-out to submit your upcoming performances to the calendar.

- Choreographer and dancer statements and previews are welcome and encouraged - please read section that follows for elaboration of this.

First Person Creative Statements from Artists

This new blog to New York City dance performances does link to or feature dance reviews. But I also think it's important for artists, choreographers and dancers to have their own voice on this blog as well. Many people who are thinking about seeing dance would be delighted to hear directly from the creators of the work they are about to see; they don't want to just read reviews.

So I'll be setting-up a separate form on this blog that choreographers and dancers can use to share their first person perspectives about a work that they are about to perform. These posts can include video previews as well--actually, I hope many of them include video excerpts so that dancegoers can get a visual idea of the works that will be performed.

By the way, I'm definitely not inviting choreographers and dancers to submit press releases. Press releases are not usually designed for human consumption. I get lots of press releases and I don't ever look at them -- unless they are the only source of specific factual information that I need. To me, press releases are filled with impossible to decipher hype that my brain simply can't process and people on the Internet do not communicate in "press-release speak."

I realize that many dancers don't usually write about their work in the way that I'm proposing. Some dancers think that their work should speak for itself or they might not feel comfortable writing about their dances in a direct, more or less conversational style. All understandable. But I strongly believe that artists who don't share their vision online are simply missing out on an invaluable opportunity to communicate with their audiences and are letting others define their work--sometimes in inaccurate or unfavorable terms.

I'm more than happy to work with dancers to help in the process of writing artist statements about work you are about to perform.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:10 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 14, 2007

Access New York City Dance Reviews from a Single Blog

I'm about to launch a series of new blogs that will feature brief excerpts from all online dance reviews within a specific geographical area.

The first blog in this series, which will launch this week, will be dedicated to dance performances in the New York City area. Essentially, you'll be able to visit and subscribe to this blog to access brief excerpts of online reviews in newspapers, blogs, community forums and on other sites. If a review interests you, you can click a link to be take directly to the entire article or post, whether it resides on Great Dance or any other website.

I'm creating this centralized dance review resource for a number of reasons:

1. There is no single website that dancegoers can visit to gain quick access to all reviews for a specific city or town.


2. There has been a sharp increase in the number of people writing about dance, especially on blogs. And I think the number of people writing reviews about dance will continue to increase. These new Great Dance blogs that aggregate dance reviews will make it easy for people to find all of these reviews.


3. Part of my mission for the expanded Great Dance, now that we're hosting blogs from different dance-makers, is to reach both the existing dance community as well as occasional dancegoers and newcomers to dance. By creating a centralized gateway for accessing a diverse range of voices sharing their thoughts about local performances, it makes it much easier to capture the attention of this larger dance-going public.


4. Fourth, many choreographers, dancers and dance companies simply do not get enough or any coverage through traditional media outlets. Given the expansion of online dance reviews, there's no reason for this situation to continue. Even the smallest venue or emerging choreographer should have an opportunity to have their work discussed and reviewed online.

What Dance-Makes Can Do To Build Audiences

A central location of links to all dance reviews, I believe, will be helpful to dancers and dance companies as they work to build their audiences. But dance-makers also have an opportunity to rethink how they work with dance writers for mutual benefit.

One of the perennial problems with traditional dance reviews is that by the time these reviews are published, the dance performances are over. So even a spectacular review won't sell more tickets if there are no more performances to see.

But what would happen if dance-makers increased the number of days between the writing of the first review and opening night? Say there was a four to five day time-frame during which reviews were being written and dance enthusiasts were talking online about your upcoming performance even before your first show? The inevitable result would be that you would be getting much more free publicity than ever before and many more people would be talking about your dance company. The odds are that you would sell more tickets.

There is a catch however. Are you willing to invite dance writers--critics with newspapers, dance bloggers and others--to write about works that probably are not finished? If you invite writers to see your work 5 days or so before opening night, you may have quite a ways to go before your work is ready for the stage.

So the basic question is: At what point are you willing to show your work to people who will write about it so that you can build in as many days as possible for conversation about your upcoming performance to peculate throughout the online world before the curtain goes up? You might decide, for example, that you'll invite writers to your dress rehearsal but not before than.

In addition, I think that as part of this process of expanding the "perculation time-frame" it's worth cultivating relationships with non-traditional dance writers who are blogging about the performances they see or posting their reviews to message boards. For starters, is your publicist reaching out to these writers and encouraging them to cover your dance company? Are they being invited to rehearsals and opening night?

Are You Writing About Dance in New York City?

I already know many people who write about dance in New York. But you may want to drop me an email in any case to let me know about your website/blog or other online writings. I'd like to put together a comprehensive list of writers that I can share with dance companies, presenters, publicists and others who might want to reach out to you. You can email me at doug@greatdance.com.

Advertising on Great Dance

With the launch of this centralized dance review service, first for New York and then for other cities, I'm going to start selling ads on Great Dance to presenters, dance companies and other organizations connected to the dance world. If you'd like to discuss advertising possibilities on Great Dance, I'd be delighted to hear from you. Since I'm in the beginning stages of structuring various ad programs, it's a perfect time to hear from likely advertisers about the specifics of how you would like to benefit from your participation in our advertising programs. You can email me at doug@greatdance.com.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:41 AM - Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

November 7, 2007

I'd Like a "Sense" of The Dancer When I Visit a Dance Website

I, of course, have visited thousands of dancer and dance company websites. And it struck me that I very rarely get what I'm after when I visit these sites.

What I want is a really simple home page. At the top there are three to four sentences about the dancer/dance company. Then beneath this intro there is a large, high-quality video clip of the work the artist is most proud.

That's it. What else would I want?

Then I can access all the other details (history, profiles, works, upcoming performances and contact info.)

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:09 PM - Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

October 22, 2007

Dance/NYC Townhall - Part III: How Does Live Dance Compete? Embrace Amateur Dancers

I'm continuing my posts in preparation for this Wednesday's Townhall meeting at Dance/NYC titled "Dance Have a Future? Implications of a Technological World."

In January of this year, I attended an educational session, "Professional Presenters and the Amateur Arts," at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference in NYC. This session, which I wrote about, was conducted by the students of Andrew Taylor (his blog) at the Bolz Center for Arts Administration. The focus of this session was on how presenters should respond to the growth of participatory and amateur art-making. In addition, the students explored whether this explosion in non-professional art-making represents a competitive threat or possible partnership opportunity for presenters.

I believe that the Internet is contributing to the growth of amateur art-making and I think that this increase in the number of non-professional artists who are actively involved in the process of creation is a very positive development for performers and presenters intent on sustaining and growing their audiences.

The Internet has benefited amateur art-makers because it provides anybody with any interest under the sun with quick access to the resources, expertise and, most importantly, others who share the same hobbies and passions. So whether you're interested in scarpbooking or virtual jamming with musicians around the globe, you can easily find the people and guidance you need.

Be Like Mike or Buy Pavarotti CDs

In the on-going discussion on the Foot in Mouth blog about whether the dance world needs its own Pavarotti, Apollinaire Scherr offers a perspective that is alien to me. In her post, Apollinaire publishes a comment from Natalia of Bellydance: Experiences. Natalia suggests that what the dance community really needs is a Michael Jordan and not a Pavarotti. Natalia writes:

There's another issue here, which I haven't seen addressed: Do we want shows to turn people on to watching dance or to doing it? It's not the same thing, and although it's not an either/or proposition, if I had to choose I would hope shows inspired people to get off their couches and shake their tail-feathers a little bit. ;)

I think the dance world could use a Michael Jordan more than a Pavarotti. Sure, Pavarotti sold albums, but were kids running around wanting to "Be Like Luciano"?

Apollinaire responds to Natalia's recommendation:

But what makes me leery of just saying, yes, let's ditch the Luciano model and go for Michael Jordan, is that we've hit this moment in the culture when everyone wants to do. No one wants to absorb what others are doing and have done.

There are probably more people writing novels today than reading them, more people wanting to be a celebrity or a model or a dancer on TV than fawning over them. The culture has gone so over the top with participation (blogs are another example: the constant chatter) that I'm reluctant to encourage any more--though, yes, we do need to shake our booties as often as possible.

What drives me crazy about the pro-participation argument--and it's driven me crazy before on this blog--is it usually dismisses the possibility that being in the audience is also a form of participation. It's a very profound form, I'd say; it just happens to be taking place inside a person.

I find it difficult to accept Apollinaire's perspective on just about any level.

For starters, the idea of a professional class of art-makers is a a very new one. The culture and art-making developed and created over thousands of years has always been amateur in nature and highly participatory. The idea of discouraging amateurs from pursuing their creative interests would have, until recently, been an unimaginable notion. Before radios and records, people use to gather around the piano or guitar, play music, sing and have fun. So why this type of enjoyable art-making became unacceptable is a very strange development.

More Amateur Art-Making Leads to Larger Audiences

If anything, the opposite of what Apollinaire writes is true. The more people do, the more they want to see. The more people write books, paint, play an instrument, sing, dance or engage in any other creative endeavor, the more they want to see or enjoy the work of "professionals." And these amateur art-makers probably are more observant audience members/fans than the non-doers.

In terms of my own experiences learning to dance over the past two plus years, one of the most gratifying experiences for me has been the process of developing muscle memory. In other words, learning how to see a dance teacher show a routine and for me to be able to replicate it. Even though my technique has a long way to go, my ability to remember movement has gone from zero to a decent level in two years. When I started taking dance classes, my body simply could not remember and replicate anything that an instructor did - movements, changes of direction, synchronization with the music or anything else - my mind was just blank and my muscles were clueless.

In my remaining days in DC, I've been using up my class card from Joy of Motion. One of the classes I took was a jazz class with Maurice Johnson on Thursday night. The routine at the end of class was a little too fast for me. But the next day, when I was practicing on my own, I had just about 100% of recall of the routine and was able to replicate it. This may not sound like a big deal to experienced dancers, but for me it represented a lot of progress.

And this ability to remember and re-create movement definitely makes a difference in terms of enjoying and thinking about the dance performances you attend. Just to offer one example, if you attend a performance with little ability to remember movements and patterns, it is very difficult to make sense of the overall structure of a dance work.

So if the hope is as Paul Parish writes (his comment is published in Apollinaire post) for spectators to become

...real audience members, people who would pay deep attention and lose themselves in the vicarious experience [of dance performances]

then more amateur art-makers are needed and not fewer. Natalia's "Be like Mike" recommendation makes a lot of sense.

Tapping into Amateur Art-Makers

The Internet is flat-out a great way to reach amateur dancers -- especially if you define "amateur dancers" in very broad terms: students of concert dance forms, social dancers, ballroom dancers and competitors and dancers and students of world dance forms are all audiences to pursue.

And one of the fastest and easiest ways to tap into these audiences is through the social networking sites, message boards and blogs that cater to dancers and dance students with very diverse dance interests.

This targeted social-networking-focused approach is especially worthwhile for dance-makers who already bring an eclectic approach to their choreography. Anna Brady Nuse (see her Move The Frame Blog) wrote the following in a recent comment she wrote in response to one of my posts:

You are absolutely right that cross pollination doesn't happen enough between different dance styles and genres. However, there are plenty of exceptions to this, and I'm always encountering new choreographers and companies who like to mix it up: Nicholas Leichter, Doug Elkins, Parijat Desai, Merian Soto/Pepatian, just to name a few in my circles. I think that enough exceptions like these exist that have made a substantial impact on the art form. If enough of these types of artists learn to market themselves effectively in web 2.0, I think major change could come rapidly for dance.

A popular marketing strategy is to go after the "low-hanging fruit." In other words, market to the people who are already receptive to your message. If your upcoming dance work combines elements of Lindy Hop, doesn't it makes sense to embrace swing dancers who are already hitting the dance floor one or more times a week?

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:15 AM - Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

October 19, 2007

Dance/NYC Townhall - Part II: Is the Internet Good for Dance?

I'll be a panel participant in Dance/NYC's Townhall meeting next Wednesday on the topic of "Does Dance Have a Future? Implications of a Technological World." (Dance/NYC RSVP, my initial post and "Part I: Dancing for the Environment and 15,861 Bloggers.")

In this post, I'd like to discuss the success of classical music on the Internet, offer my thoughts on why it is successful and share what I think are some of the key obstacles in concert dances' efforts to replicate the online energy and richness of the concert music world.

The Internet is Great for Classical Music

New Yorker music critic and blogger Alex Ross has a column in this week's New Yorker: "The Well-tempered Web: The Internet may be killing the pop CD, but it's helping classical music." I strongly recommend reading this article because of the parallels with the dance world. He writes:

The anonymity of Internet browsing has made classical music more accessible to non-fanatics; first-time listeners can read reviews, compare audio samples, and decide on, for example, a Beethoven recording by Wilhelm Furtwängler, all without risking the humiliation of mispronouncing the conductor's name under the sour gaze of a record clerk. Likewise, first-time concertgoers and operagoers can shop for tickets, study synopses of unfamiliar plots, listen to snippets of unfamiliar music, follow performers' blogs, and otherwise get their bearings on the lunar tundra of the classical experience.

Chris Bell, the director of worldwide product and music marketing at iTunes, happens to be a classically trained violinist, and he has closely monitored the progress of the classical division. He told me, "An interesting fact I recently uncovered is that, when you look at different genres in terms of sharing and cross-pollination, there's more dabbling going on than you might expect. We sell almost as much hip-hop to classical buyers as we do jazz. We've made iTunes a safe place to try classical music. It is easy to sample and the buying is low-risk." Bell talked about the serendipity of listening on the Internet, where someone might come to the site looking for a souvenir of Pavarotti and end up with the Kronos Quartet playing pieces by the Icelandic band Sigur Rós.

In these two paragraphs, Ross captures some of the elements that have helped break-down barriers to learning about and enjoying concert music on the Internet. In the rest of his article he offers specific examples of websites, musicians and business models that have helped revive the classical music world.

Key Contributors to Classical Music's Online Success

The Internet, according to Ross' column, has helped grow the audience for concert music in the following ways:

- Lots of good, diverse content that is easy to find and is very accessible.

- Internet users have anonymity and don't have to feel embarrassed because of their lack of knowledge - this fear on the part of newcomers definitely has parallels in the concert dance world.

- Concertgoers can make sure that they are very well-informed before walking into a concert hall.

- There is an abundance of high-quality audio recordings available at affordable prices.

- Music fans do not limit themselves to a single genre of music - there is a lot of "sharing and cross-pollination."

How Can Concert Dance Replicate These Resources and Offerings?

I would like to say that the answer is easy, but it is not. Classical music on the Internet starts with a number of advantages over dance - this despite all of the complaints of classic music fans that they can't build new audiences and the economics don't work.

- More people (including musicians, composers, critics and others) write, blog and communicate about classical music on the Internet than they do about concert dance.

- The quality, scope and diversity of music-focused content is better than that for dance.

- There are millions of high-quality audio recordings that can be listened to and purchased online. The quality and scope of dance videos on the Internet, however, is fairly poor overall.

- In the dance world, there does not appear to be that much "cross pollination." In other words, I think there is a tendency for dance-makers, dancers and dancegoers to limit themselves to specific styles or genres of dance and to not interact with or market to dancers in other dance spheres than themselves. For example, have you ever seen printed postcards at a Salsa dance promoting an upcoming modern dance performance?

Here's one example of the challenges faced by the concert dance community:

Let's say I'm going to see a performance of a classic work of a 20th Century modern dance choreographer. How do I learn about, watch and ask questions about this dance piece before going to the performance? The answer is that I can't in almost all cases. I'd like to be proven wrong. But pick any of the 100 most famous dance works of the 20th century and try to put together an educational and viewing kit for somebody about to see one of these works. Can you find sufficient background materials? Is video available? Is the quality of the video any good?

Now in some cases, classic ballet is in somewhat better shape than modern dance, but not by much. And it's often difficult to find good quality video of these ballet performances. And even if you find good quality video, it's probably a short segment and posted illegally.

So what should the concert dance community do? I think next week's Dance/NYC's Townhall is a good starting place to discuss and brainstorm about these challenges. And maybe we can set-up a dedicated blog to continue thinking about and discussing these issues after this program.

Please share your thoughts and reactions.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:20 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

October 15, 2007

Dance/NYC Townhall - Part I: Dancing for the Environment and 15,861 Bloggers

Last week I wrote about my upcoming participation in Dance/NYC's October 24th townhall on how the Internet and technology will impact the concert dance world.

One of the questions that will be discussed during this forum is: How can we use [the Internet] to grow our audiences? (Here's the complete description of the townhall and an RSVP form).

I'd like to offer my first answer to this question:

Dance-makers (choreographers, dancers and dance companies) should actively pursue ways to integrate their dances into the causes, interests, organizations and activities about which they are passionate.

For example, if you make a dance about the environment and put an excerpt from this dance on YouTube, why not encourage all bloggers who cover global warming and related issues to embed this video on their blogs? You're offering bloggers engaging, captivating content, which will help them connect with their audiences and you are building a larger audience for your upcoming performances.

Why Not Reach 15,861 Bloggers?

Today is "Blog Action Day." The goal of this initiative is to raise awareness and encourage action on behalf of the environment. If you visit the list of participants, you'll see that 15,861 bloggers, with a readership of 12,697,713, have agreed to write a post today about the environment.

Natalia of Bellydance: Experiences is one of the participating bloggers. You can read her post, "8 Little Things Bellydancers Can Do For The Environment."

Let's say you're creating a dance piece about the environment. Three months before the next Blog Action Day for the environment, you approach the organizer of this outreach effort and offer the following proposal:

You will shoot and edit a dance video specifically for the next Blog Action Day. With heightened interest in dance as a result of popular TV shows, your video on the home page of their website will encourage even more bloggers to participate in this event. In addition, you will add a brief clip before your dance of the organizer of this event talking about this initiative and encouraging more people to join the effort. Then the organizer will conclude by saying: "Now stay tuned for a dance video about the environment and our Blog Action Day."

So the video will be viewable on the home page of Blog Action Day, and all participants will be encouraged to embed this video on their own blogs.

A nice and simple way to reach tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands or millions, of new fans in a single day. On top of that, you will likely reach individuals, corporations and grantmaking organizations who will be interested in providing financial support for your choreographic work.

All you have to do is create one great, engaging video!

Posted by Doug Fox at 1:02 PM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 11, 2007

In Art and Business Fluidity Trumps Clarity

In my beginner modern dance class last night at the 92nd Street Y, my teacher Susan Cherniak made the point during one of the exercises that she wasn't interested in our arriving at the right point in sync with the music, but was more interested in the process of our getting there. This is simply another way of saying that the quality of movement or the process of moving is more important than the goal of reaching a specific destination.

This need to focus on the fluidity of movement as opposed to the desired outcome might be a good metaphor for many of the conversations and developments that I've been following on the Internet. An emphasis on process, I think, forces us to be more aware of change over time in all spheres of our life, and limits the tendency to become glued to fixed notions about the way things work or ought to work - maybe I'm pushing this point a bit, but here are some examples of what I'm trying to get at.

Here's a TV ad from Zurich Financial Services that I've always liked - it's part of their series of ads with the tag line "Change Happenz":

The point of the ad is straightforward: Don't get locked into fixed ways of thinking because if you do the world will pass you by. So the only survival strategy that makes any sense is to accept that we live in an ambiguous world and that we can't become too attached to specific ways of living and working.

TED Talks Blends PR and Advertising

Last week I received an email from Natasha Dantzig a PR representative with Galloway Media Group that represents the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference. She emailed a number of dance bloggers encouraging us to embed and promote the following video of hip-hop dancer Kenichi Ebina who performed at a TED event this past March:

You'll notice even before watching this video that it's sponsored by BMW and once you click "play," you're presented with a brief BMW video ad followed by a longer one after the dance performance. So Galloway Media Group is in part a public relations firm that builds awareness and audiences for its client, but it's also building an advertising distribution platform for TED at the same time - a nice synergy at no extra cost. In essence, they are encouraging bloggers and others at no financial benefit to themselves to host ads from their sponsors. TED is using the VideoEgg platform to host, distribute and, I assume, monetize its video content.

I think the blending of the PR and advertising functions is an interesting one - something that is not possible to replicate in the same way in the offline world - especially the part about encouraging the embedding of viral videos with sponsorship messages.

Publicity in the Dance World - Pursuing a Traditional Path

I continue to be surprised by how few publicity people in the dance world make personalized pitches to me and other dance bloggers to write about or feature either stories and especially online videos in our posts. I do get an increasing number of press releases. But there seems to be no basic understanding or interest in how bloggers "see" the world. There's not much we can do with press releases in most instances. But if you write us a short personalized email and say, "We just put up this new video that I think you'll like. If you find it of interest, you might want to include it in an upcoming story or yours," we'll be happy. You don't really have to say much more than that except to provide a bit of context for the video and making sure you include links to the video.

What I'm recommending that dance PR people do is really simple, but almost nobody does it. This to me means that many PR people are stuck in a time-warp with very traditional notions and inflexible definitions about what publicity means. Or, to be fair, maybe their clients or bosses are in the time-warp and have very fixed ideas about how to measure PR success. If getting bloggers to write about dance performances doesn't provide concrete benefits to PR people, why should they waste their time pursuing this type of exposure?

In the Dance World, We Can't Even Define Dance

Even when we're creating and discussing dance, nobody is certain how to categorize and define what we're doing any more, even though this is not really a recent development.

At the beginning of July, I had just taken a week-long workshop, "Generating and Crafting Movement" with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (my write-up). So I was inspired to create a dance with my 6-year old nephew. So I asked him what he had done over the past week. He said he took a karate class. So I made a karate movement with my arms. He protested and said that karate wasn't dance. I then told him about Paul Taylor's famous "Duet" that's performed in complete stillness. That seemed to put an abrupt end to our artistic collaboration. The next morning, my nephew pointed to a curtain and proclaimed, "That's not dance!". I figure I must have made an impact.

There are two current blogging conversations that highlight the continued uncertainties about how to categorize dance.

In "Viva la dance dance revolution!," Anna Brady Nuse considers the popular Dance Dance Revolution game and ponders whether it is indeed dance - read comments on this post and Matt Gough's response on his blog as well.

In another post, "What's in a Name," Anna highlights the many terms that are used to try to define what I'll call for now videodance. In a nutshell, there are a huge number of different terms and many people describe this art form in different ways.

A Final Thought...

Of course, we've probably been deluding ourselves for decades and centuries. There's never been as much order as we imagined and all our neat little, seemingly-logical categories were simply created to convince ourselves and others that we lived in a sensible, coherent world. That said, I advocate reinstating the Great Chain of Being:

OK, scratch the Chain of Being idea. We do live in a very fast moving and rapidly changing world and maybe our challenges in defining what happenz around us and our difficulties in creating usable frameworks in which to operate and do business will create new ways for dance, with its fleeting and fluid qualities, to speak to these uncertainties in tangible ways???

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:45 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

October 1, 2007

Dancing for a Better World and Commissioning Dance in New Ways

There are three important trends that I think the dance community should be avidly following and embracing:

1) TV dance shows are big hits.

2) Internet-based cause marketing and fund raising are growing by leaps and bounds.

3) Online video consumption continues to grow.

The importance of these developments is that choreographers and dancers now have new ways that they can support worthwhile causes and be commissioned to create new dances. Plus, additional revenue streams can be created for dancers while pursuing either of these two paths.

Let's first take a quick look at these three trends:

First, despite some grumblings in the concert dance community (read compelling posts on Foot In Mouth), the success of Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance, represents a great development for everybody involved in dance. More people are excited about dance and energized by movement - that's an excellent start. As Clare Byrne said to me last Friday, these TV shows could potentially end-up having an impact on the concert dance community.

Second, Internet-based fundraising is one of the hottest trends out there. Read Wall Street Journal article by Rachel Emma Silverman, "A New Generation Reinvents Philanthropy: Blogs, Social-Networking Sites Give 20-Somethings a Means To Push, Fund Favorite Causes." There are many software applications and a range of strategies that not-for-profits can implement online to seek both small and large donations. On the popular social networking site Facebook, you can see a list (once you register) of different causes and the amounts of money that they have raised.

Third, Internet video continues its stellar rise to the point where it's now a mainstay of how web users expect to follow their favorite interests and past times. Plus, video is becoming part of fundraising campaigns as well. Take a look at YouTube's new "Broadcast Your Cause," which lets not-for-profits use this popular video service to seek donations from viewers. [via TVover.net and Watching TV Online].

New Avenues for Dance-Makers

These three trends lead to two major opportunities for choreographers and dancers:

Fusing movement with causes:

At any given time, choreographers around the world are making dances that deal with every topic and issue imaginable. Works are being created that either in a concrete or abstract form deal with global warming, human rights, health care and many other pressing issues of our time.

So why shouldn't these advocacy groups and dancers partner - online and offline - to expand and enhance their efforts on behalf of social justice and other initiatives?

If millions of TV viewers are engaged with dance, they are more open than ever to dance as a medium of communication and emotional connection. So if advocacy groups start featuring dancers in their online videos and in-person fundraising efforts, they are likely to connect with their audiences in new and compelling ways. Plus, from the position of dancers, they now have the opportunity to dance about what is meaningful to them, reach larger audiences and maybe benefit financially in some way from their involvement. For example, some fundraising efforts may serve both to raise money for a particular cause as well as to provide financial support for the participating artists.

New approaches to commissioning dance:

There is also a more commercial ramification to the trends I highlighted at the beginning of this post.

If more people are watching dance on TV and on the Internet and thus increasingly value movement as an important form of engagement and communication, why wouldn't more corporations, trade groups and associations commission dance works that deal with specific themes and ideas that are important for their companies and organizations? I realize that this may be a bit far-fetched in some instances, but I think it's worth considering.

Many meeting and conference organizers invest considerable financial resources in booking speakers and entertainment for their events. Why shouldn't they commission, instead, dance pieces that will help their audiences think about, grapple with and discuss pressing issues that need to be addressed? Wouldn't the kinesthetic energy of a performance open new avenues for viewers to approach and respond to these topics?

I don't know if a gathering of tax attorneys can be encouraged to commission a dance performance to help them explore the ramifications of creating tax shelters for their richest clients, but I'd wager that there are thousands of other groups who might be amenable to the idea.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:45 AM - Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

September 7, 2007

The Problem with Most Dance and Presenter Websites

One of the main objectives of dance and presenter (theaters/venues/festivals) websites is to sell tickets for upcoming performances and help people get to your venue.

Simple enough. The problem is that most of these websites make fundamental tasks too difficult or cumbersome for dance-goers.

I often go to a website to find out the performance date and time, the address of the venue and how to get there.

But there are usually obstacles in my way that make it a hassle to find these really basic pieces of information. Some websites:

1. Start-off with cumbersome Flash animations that take time to load and bypass.


2. Don't give me an obvious link that I can click on to get date/time and directions.


3. Include address information in graphics, which makes it difficult to print and impossible to cut and paste into my calendar and/or mapping software.


4. Force me to open-up a PDF file to get this information.


5. Put pieces of this information on different pages, which slows me down.


6. Combine dates and times for multiple performances so you're not sure which time a performance starts on the day you are going.


7. Don't include the full address - including city, state and zip code, which makes it difficult to find a venue on a map.


8. Include impossible to decipher maps that only make sense to the people who already know where the venue is. And,


9. Don't embed a Google Map or provide a link to a Google map.

It's nice to have a visually appealing website. But in the end, people visit your site to find the information they want quickly and hassle free. If you create obstacles, you'll just annoy your audiences.

I'd recommend doing a quick audit of your website. Is it really clear what the dates and times of each performance are? Can people who don't know where you're located actually figure out where you're located and how to get there?

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:27 AM - Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Creating and Promoting City-Wide Dance Calendars

In a post on The Evil Imp blog, Article19 writes that while dance performances obviously draw much smaller audiences than the movie industry, there's still much that presenting and dance organizations can learn from how films are promoted.

The movie studios spend a large percentage of their budgets on marketing, they do joint-promotional campaigns with food companies and game makers and there is considerable cross-promotion of films from rival studios. (Actually, I'm not sure about this last point - I think that movie chains run trailers of films that the studios pay to have promoted. So you'll end-up seeing promotions for films from different studios).

In any case, Article19 sets the stage for asking why presenters and dance companies don't follow in the footsteps of the film industry:

1. Why don't dance companies promote each others shows on their websites?

2. Why don't theatres run video trailers, prior to dance performances promoting other dance performances in the same theatre or nearby venues?

3. Why don't NDA's [National dance agencies in England that provide professional support services to dancers] carry a synchronised listing of all dance performances on their websites for the whole country?

4. Why don't big, successful companies promote the shows of smaller, new companies?

These are all important questions to consider because much can be done without significant financial resources to promote dance more effectively. This Article19 post points out that even though they've set-up a free listing services on Upcoming for dance companies to promote their performances, nobody has taken advantage of it.

I just talked with Neil Nisbet of Article19 via Skype a few minutes ago because I didn't know what NDA stood for. During our conversation, he mentioned that Article19 has also been experimenting with Twitter for updates to dance auditions. You can go to their auditions page and you'll see a link for Twitter that you can follow to sign-up to receive audition updates by SMS. While it's an interesting idea that may prove to be worthwhile, at this point there are only 4 subscribers - myself included. So either there is very limited interest or people don't know about this offering.

Using Free Internet Marketing Services for NYC Dance Community

I think it would be incredibly helpful if presenters and dance companies in NYC used popular event listing services such as Upcoming and Eventful to list their performances. These are very flexible listing applications that let users add your events to their own calendars, provide RSS feeds, and let you embed listings in websites and blogs.

But I think the trick to ensuring that free services like this work is making sure that they are comprehensive and updated on a regular basis.

Personally, I'd like such an offering because it would save me a lot of time, energy and hassle. It takes me too long to find all the dance performances and related events in NYC. I just want to go to a single location and find everything that I want.

I've written about this topic before, primarily with a focus on Washington, DC:

- Should You Use Upcoming and Eventful to Promote Your Dance Performances?

- Adding Upcoming Event Badge to Your Blog or Site

- Promote Dance Performances with Google Calendar

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:38 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

September 6, 2007

Email and Text Messaging Are Different Types of Communication Tools

In "Text Messaging VS E-mail Marketing," Gene Carr, founder and president of Patron Technology, argues that "text messaging is a transitional technology" and will be replaced by email. [via Danciti]

I think that Carr's position is incorrect on most counts.

First, email and text messaging (SMS) are two different forms of communication. For me, text messaging is great for sending and receiving short messages from people I already know. It answers basic questions about where are you now, what are you doing and related topics that can be dealt with in a sentence or two. Even though I can easily send and receive email from my Sprint phone, text messaging is still a faster form of communications in many situations.

Second, the type of information that I want to receive via SMS is different than what I want to receive via email. For example, I like receiving a weekly lists of dance performances via email--either from DanceMetro/DC or Dance/NYC. But I sure don't want to receive a long list of performances via text messaging, actually it's not possible. What I would like via text messaging are changes in scheduling and other details for specific dance performances that I am likely to attend or will attend.

So let's turn to Carr's points:

1) "The lines between e-mail and text messaging will blur."

Yes, you can send email messages and text messages from the same application. But users of each of these tools have different expectations of how they want to use them and the types of information they wish to receive. In addition to the points I made above, text messaging is a two-way communications tool (among people); email, especially in the case of email marketing, is a broadcast tool and primarily meant for one-way marketing that is intended to inspire a specific response or action.

2) "Text messaging is just text: Text messaging is limited - you can only send 160 characters (not words), and it's plain text. You can't send a complex message, or an attachment, or a picture or video. And, there's no formatting. Text messages can't be easily stored, forwarded or archived."

Limited functionality does not by definition equate with being useless or inferior. The beauty of text messaging is its limitations. Nobody wants to attach a video to a text message. That's not its purpose.

3) "Text Messaging Merely Got There First: If getting e-mail on your phone was really what everyone wanted in the first place, the reason it didn't happen was that the first generation of cell phones couldn't support the technology infrastructure needed."

I don't agree with this statement. For whatever reason text messaging was created, it still makes sense even with email access on the same device. SMS is for instant communications and email is often for non-instantaneous communications. I don't want to have to go through all of my emails on my phone to communicate with somebody via SMS. Maybe there's an elegant way to combine the two on the receiving end into a single application but this doesn't seem like a high priority to me.

4) "The price of text messaging is about $.08 to $.10 per message, to send AND the same cost to receive a reply. In a world in which most of our clients pay half to one tenth that rate to send an e-mail and pay nothing to get a response from a consumer, I think it's a marketing method with a lot sizzle, but not a lot of beef."

As I wrote above, different types of communications are optimal for email and SMS. So if you do let your clients receive notices by text messaging, you'll be sending different types of information. For example, you can send changes in schedules via SMS, as I mentioned above, and you can also send short special offers to people who want to receive them.

Whether SMS messages are more expensive or not, that is not the main issue. If somebody wants to receive a message from you as a SMS message, it means that they have a very high interest in what you offer and they are very likely to attend your performance or other arts event. So if it costs an extra 10 cents to get them to buy a ticket, it is worth it because your conversion rate will be very high.

But there are also ways to send free SMS messages. If you put your event calendar on Google Calendar, anybody can sign-up for text message notification. So if a dancegoer wants to track one of your upcoming performances, they can simply subscribe to it and indicate how they would like to be notified. Here's a screen shot from Google Calendar where you set your event reminder preferences:

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:31 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 14, 2007

How Do I Get There?

If there is one thing that really bugs me about many websites that promote dance performances and related programs is not being able to figure out where the venue is located.

It would seem like the easiest thing in the world for an organization (theater, festival, studio, dance company, etc.) to include complete address information, a map or a map link, and written directions on their website. But often I'm completely baffled by the address information that is provided and I have to take too many steps to figure out how to get there.

So here are my suggestions about providing website visitors with the information they need to get to a venue:

Address Information

The address for the venue should be written-out in its entirety:

full venue name (theater/studio and building name as well if necessary)
complete street address or names of streets at intersection
city, state and zip code

I've been to websites for festivals that don't even tell you in what town they are located in - so I can't even begin to figure out how to get there.

It is very important that the zip code is included. Many people, including myself, go to Google Maps and search for a location. Google Maps can get confused if you do not have a zip code.

Also, you do not want to embed the venue address in a graphic--this doesn't happen too often--because you can't then cut and paste the address for use in Google Maps or another application.

Finally, if the venue is on a campus or other setting with a lot of buildings, you should specify the full name of the building where the performance will take place. And this name should correspond to the name given to this building on any maps and diagrams:

"The performance will take place at the ABC theater in the DEF building, which is behind the XYZ building. See below diagram for location of DEF building."

Maps and Diagrams

Maybe it's me, but I'm always confused by the diagrams and maps that venues include about where theaters are located--this is especially the case with campuses and outdoor venues in parks and recreation areas.

The diagrams are often too small, I can't find the building/theater I'm looking for and I can't figure out where the venue is in the context of a city or town. For some reason the creators of these diagrams think it's sufficient to highlight the nearby streets, whose location I don't know in the first place, and not even indicate which way is north.

Even worse, I'm forced to open up a PDF file with diagrams, which is not something I want to waste my time with.

So my recommendation is to always include a link to Google Maps. This way visitors to your website will never be confused and they can see both a detailed view of your location as well as see where it's located within a larger geographic area.

To create a Google Map link, enter the address for your venue and then click on "Link to this page" toward the top right of the page. Then copy the link that is displayed in a pop-up box.

Even better, Google is about to make it easy to embed maps directly into your website--see story in Mashable. It has been possible for a while to embed Google maps like I did for this customized Washington, DC map of performance venues. But this embedding process is complicated.

Whether you link to or embed a map, you want to ensure that the marker that indicates the location of your venue is in the right place. In some cases, you might enter an address and Google will put the marker a block away from the actual location. If your venue is on a corner, the solution is easy to fix. In the address search engine for Google Maps, replace the street address with the names of the two streets at the intersection (e.g., Main street and Maple street).

Directions

Most websites do a decent job of providing written directions to a venue. The best approach is to write different sets of directions based upon the locations that people are likely to come from.

In addition to driving instructions, it's also important to provide public transportation details.

Printing and Reading

Addresses, maps and written directions should be easy to read and print. All of the necessary information should be on one or two easy-to-read pages that can be printed without any of the information being cut-off.

I thought about writing this post about how I get annoyed with venue maps and directions after reading Ilana's post on DCDanceBlog about her interest in finding good dance websites with accessible contact information.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:49 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

August 6, 2007

Five Strategies for Engaging New Dance Audiences

In Friday's post I wrote about how to produce content for your blog that will engage new dance audiences.

In this post I'll write about how to market dance blogs to both groups that are "pre-conditioned" to find dance compelling if given the right access point as well as more difficult to reach audiences.

Since Danciti expressed their objection so effectively and concisely to my premise that dance blogs can be used to reach new audiences, I'm also writing this post to refute their argument. Danciti writes:

I don't think blogs reach beyond the super dedicated dance devotee. You read blogs about things that you already have a strong interest in rather than stumbling across a blog and finding a new interest in dance. Blogs aren't a very good entry point because they are written for such a niche audience. It's hard to get interested in a blog that is about the subtleties of dance if you're not already highly interested in dance.

Marketing Strategies

Here's a brief overview of five online marketing strategies you can pursue to build new audiences for your dance blog:

1) Cross-marketing partnerships with artists and arts organizations: The best place to reach "pre-conditioned" audiences (those who go to galleries/museums, theater-goers, opera lovers, etc.) online is by getting as much exposure as possible for dance on the websites (and other Internet initiatives) of these non-dance artists and organizations. Everybody benefits from this reciprocal marketing: Dancers and the artists/organizations with whom they partner both build more traffic and exposure while nobody losses their audience in the process.

2) Targeted distribution of topic-specific dance content: Dance performances deal with hundreds of different topics - health/medical issues, spirituality and healing, science and technology, environment and sustainability, war and violence and many other issues. For just about any theme or topic you can imagine for a dance work, there are hundreds or thousands of websites that deal with this topic and have audiences that are highly engaged with this issue. By making your dance material available to these websites, especially in the form of video content, you can engage these targeted audiences directly with your dance material, which many will find quite poignant. And this can be done regardless of whether or not these audiences have any exposure to dance whatsoever.

3) Partnerships between dancers and presenters: As more dancers embrace blogging, there will be new opportunities for theaters, performing arts venues, festivals and touring organizers to promote performances by highlighting a dancer's/dance company's blogging activities. Some presenters receive large-scale website traffic that goes well beyond traditional dance audiences.

4) Dance education for newcomers: As things stand today, there is no online video material that is designed to help new dance audiences learn how to enjoy and appreciate dance. Yes, there are some dance instructional videos. But I have never seen a single online video that was intended to provide insight and analysis so that people with no dance background could actually learn about an upcoming performance. When this gap is filled, I believe that it will be easier to cultivate new dance audiences.

5) Join with charities and causes that are important to you: This suggestion in related to item two above. The theme of your work may address issues and ideas that are important to local charitable organizations. Why not partner with these organizations both online and off-line? You can perform at, say, a fundraiser and also make your dance video content available for the organization's website. In return, you get to support a cause that is important to you and to connect with an audience that comes to your work because of a commitment to an idea, hope or initiative not directly through movement.

Implementing Your Strategy

The above strategies represent a handful of the many different online approaches that can be pursued to grow your connections with non-traditional dance audiences. But none of these approaches, I believe, will be very successful unless considerable thought is devoted to the types of content you produce (see Friday's post with suggestions of questions to address in your blog).

If you produce a blog within the framework described by Danciti--an insider's blog by and for dancers only (or dance devotees)--then I don't think it's realistic to pursue the above strategies. But if you want to broaden the scope and purpose of your blog (or create a new blog along these lines), then I believe you can reach much larger audiences by implementing a number of the above outreach initiatives.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:55 AM - Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

July 26, 2007

Should You Sell Videos of Your Dance Performances with a Second Audio Track for Commentary?

Tuesday night I saw Doug Varone and Dancers at Wolf Trap outside of Washington, DC.

It was great to finally see Doug Varone's company and I especially enjoyed Lux, which premiered last October at the Joyce Theater in New York City.

But every time after seeing a work I enjoy, I have the same reaction. I want to see it performed again - immediately. Or at least, I'd like a high-quality DVD version to watch at home. Even better, I would like the DVD to have a dual audiotrack. The first track would be for the music and the second audio track would be for commentary from the artists themselves or dance experts. That way I could watch the dance with the musical score, for Lux that would be Philip Glass' The Light, or watch the dance while listening to artist or expert analysis -- maybe the commentators could add a John Madden-type Telestrator for graphic overlays.

The Benefits of Dual-Audio Dance DVDs

From my standpoint, a DVD with the music and commentary would blow me away. If I could watch the entire Lux performance multiple times and hear Doug Varone talk about this piece for its entire length - maybe 15 minutes or so - it would give me so much helpful background in terms of thinking about his work and understanding how he approaches the creative process.

There really is nothing comparable to such an offering. It is possible that I could attend an after-performance talk, which would probably be fun and interesting. But it still is not the same as having a vocal guide describe what you're looking at while you're watching a recorded version of the actual dance.

Such a tool would be invaluable to dance newcomers who don't have a framework for thinking about or responding to dance. And it would be equally helpful, maybe more so, to people who never even go to performances because dance strikes them as an alien, inaccessible art form.

On top of these benefits, I think that there is money to be made for dancers and dance companies who produce these videos, whether they are distributed in DVD format or for are sold via the Internet.

Obstacles

But there are big challenges to launching such a project:

Licensing and Contractual Arrangements

Once dancers start selling digital dance content, a host of legal issues have to be dealt with to avoid problems down the road. First, the music has to be licensed so it can be included in the recorded video of the dance performance. And music rights must be obtained for both DVDs and online distribution. The use of royalty-free music would significantly reduce these costs.

Also, all parties to this creative process have to sign agreements or waivers of some type. Dancers, costume designers, lighting designers, set designers and even the venue might have to sign-off on this project. (When I was at the the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, I couldn't even watch some dance videos because I first needed written authorization from the venue where the works were performed - a real hassle, but a good illustration of the number of parties that can have a potential legal interest in an artistic project.)

Describing One's Own Work

Among choreographers and dancers there seems to be a lot of resistance or lack of interest in describing one's own work. I think many dancers take the understandable position that the dance should speak for itself. Last year I was at a performance of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's Small Dances about Big Ideas at DNA in New York City. After the performance, dance company members talked about the work with the audience. One guy in the audience was really adamant that Liz Lerman describe what the piece was all about. Liz refused and asked the audience member to share his reaction to the work. In the context, a post-performance talk, I think many performers would have responded the same way that Liz did. They just danced. Why should they have to explain what they did?

But in other contexts, I don't think that a reluctance to describe one's work benefits dancers and choreographers. In the end, whether you explain your work in a detailed manner or not others will do it for you. Dance writers and critics will assess your work, and people who see a performance will discuss your dance with their friends. So why be at the mercy of other people's interpretations when you can set the framework for how the discussion proceeds? And what better way to share your thoughts about your own work than on a dual audiotrack of a performance video?

Video Production and Technology Know-How

In order to produce a dance DVD with a dual audiotrack, many steps have to be taken that require specialized expertize.

A good quality video has to be shot of a performance using one or more cameras. Lighting has to be optimized for the video shoot or the resulting video could easily be terrible. The video has to be edited and then prepared for DVD and/or Internet distribution.

A separate high-quality audio track has to be recorded by the choreographer and/or dancers, or independent commentators.

For Internet distribution and sales of DVDs and downloadable videos, an e-commerce system has to be implemented along with a fulfillment process. Plus, a marketing campaign has to be developed and launched.

Costs

The folks at Article19 always say I should have more specifics when it comes to issues like costs. But I don't at this point without doing research for a specific project. But as with any other endeavor, you can spend a lot of money or, alternatively, take a guerrilla-budgeting/marketing approach.

If you collaborate with a group of artists who want to see such a project through to fruition. And among those artists are musicians who write and play their own music, you can minimize or reduce to almost nothing many of your costs. You can shoot a performance with a single camera and thus simplify the editing process, and turning-out basic DVDs is pretty straightforward these days. Then you need to take advantage of low-cost distribution approaches for selling your dual-audio track dance video performances.

Hmmm....

Well, upon reflection, that's a lot of work.

But the Internet is huge. If you sell your videos in downloadable format - put aside the DVDs for now, the numbers can easily add up. If your two-video package (for downloads you have to sell two videos as single unit - one video has music and the other has commentary) sells for $2.00, how many copies do you have to sell before you make a profit? If you sold 5,000, you'd generate $10,000.

The one element that I believe is often overlooked is the sheer size of the online audience. If part of your overall marketing strategy involves constant efforts to grow as large an audience as possible for your performances and other offerings, the economics are dramatically reshaped. Yes, it's true that in a small black box studio that only so many seats can be sold for any given performance, which means that there is a concrete cap on total box office sales. On the Internet there are no caps. Your just replicating digital content that can be sold again and again and again.

Posted by Doug Fox at 12:03 PM - Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

July 25, 2007

Multimedia Press Kits for the Internet Age

Eva Yaa Asantewaa and I are about to post another audio interview on the Great Dance Podcast blog.

As you can see in the post that includes an audio interview that Eva did with Japan Society Artistic Director Yoko Shioya, we included multimedia materials - pictures and videos - highlighting some of the upcoming performances for their fall 2007 season.

If it were not for the excellent media kit provided by the Japan Society, these pictures and videos would probably not have been included. Eva and I worked with two public relations specialists on this project: Shannon Jowett of Japan Society and Meg Own of The Karpel Group.

Media Kit Contents

In addition to the printed press releases, the media kit included a CD-ROM with a large gallery of high-resolution pictures of dancers and dance companies who will be performing as part of the Japan Society's Fall 2007 Performing Arts Season. In addition to the pictures, a master Microsoft Word document included thumbnail images of all the photos along with all of the important information for each photo - name of performer, name of photographer and other details.

So it was easy for me to grab the pictures I wanted, downgrade the resolution for the web, and copy and paste the captions for each photo.

A DVD included video clips that were shown during the press conference we attended. I ripped a couple of the videos from this DVD, converted the files to Flash format and uploaded them to the web.

From my standpoint, the Japan Society's media kit was very helpful and thorough. In particular this media kit was web-publishing friendly in its inclusion of digital pictures and video clips.

Putting Together Multimedia Press Kits

I would like to encourage all PR people who promote dance to think about how your media materials can be used by others outside of the traditional print press. And to consider how you can prepare materials in a way that it will make it relatively easy for online writers to add your pictures and videos to their stories.

Last year I wrote a post about social media press releases that addresses the issue of how multimedia materials can be offered to writers in new ways. I'll expand on this post soon and offer specific suggestions on how dance photos, videos and audio programs can be packaged and distributed via the Internet.

If you know of examples of web-friendly media kits for dance, please share.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:22 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

June 5, 2007

Dissecting San Francisco Ballet's New Branding Campaign

As part of its upcoming 75th anniversary celebration, the San Francisco Ballet has introduced a new branding campaign and website featuring this logo:

The re-branding was done by MetaDesign. And the press release can be read here.

Plus, you can read an extensive conversation about the pros and cons of this new branding identity on the Brand New blog.

From the Press Release

The new brand identity is a dynamic expression of SF Ballet's unique agenda of promoting new works by today's acclaimed choreographers and introducing new interpretations of classic productions...The new logo redefines the definition of "ballet" by highlighting the dance company's sophisticated, diverse international repertory and establishing "ballet" as an exciting and vital cultural destination. The logo combines elements from "Didot," a nineteenth century typeface and "Galaxie Polaris," a typeface that was created in 2005. The result fuses the spirit of modern choreography with the tradition of classical ballet.

"The new SF Ballet logo takes the concept of ballet as a traditional art form and brings it to a new, contemporary place that represents the company today," says SF Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. "The new logo also takes the word 'ballet' and gives it a renewed vitality."

The elements of the new logo are choreographed as if on a stage: A vibrant snapshot of an energized performance. The letters are orchestrated to suggest the dynamic nature of the ballet art form, while highlighting the dramatic production lighting and shadows created on-stage through the use of a sophisticated gray color palette.

My Thoughts About SF Ballet Branding Campaign

After reading comments on Brand New, these are my initial thoughts and questions:

- Why is much of the emphasis placed on the word "ballet" as opposed to the SF Ballet? Very few branding campaigns from long-established organizations focus on a generic term as opposed to the identify of the organization. The press release clearly indicates a desire to transform how the general public thinks about ballet, but this is dangerous territory when you're forced to promote a category over your own brand.

- Why did they get fancy with the initial "B" in the ballet logo and make it look like the number "3"? This seems unnecessarily risky to me. Will some people not even know that this word is indeed "Ballet"?

- I do not like what strikes me as the subdued colors of the logo, graphics and navigation system on the new San Francisco website. It creates too conservative a feel for me.

- The idea of seeing the logo as a vibrant snapshot of choreography unfolding on stage is beginning to grow on me.

I'd be surprised if SF Ballet and their branding company haven't thought about the issues I raise - I'd like to learn more about what they're thinking.

[via danciti]

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 15, 2007

A New Business Model for Dancers

There's a wonderful, must-read story in Sunday's New York Times Magazine about musician Jonathan Coulton.

Coulton left his full-time job as a computer programmer and devoted himself to becoming a professional musician. The way he launched his new music career is what's so compelling. He decided that he would write a new song every week for a year and post it to his blog for free. He's built an impressive audience since starting this endeavor and the Internet now serves as a direct communications link uniting him with his global fan base.

And if you visit Coulton's website, you'll see that he is now selling his music individually and in collections through many different channels. He's become so popular that his fans email him links to the mashups they've created based on his songs. A fan made this music video, which features his "Code Monkey" track:

The reason why I think that this is an important story is because it offers a case study of how an artist can build a successful business by embracing the Internet. Dancers and dance companies devote much of their non-dancing time to seeking funding, securing bookings, and worrying if they'll get good reviews or will receive any coverage at all. But as Coulton demonstrates, the world of a dancer does not need to revolve solely around the kindness of funders, presenters and critics. Dancers can build their own audiences and communicate with their fans directly. Dancers can also create dance videos that can be sold over the Internet.

Creating a Real Conversation with Your Audience

What sticks out in my mind from the NY Times article is the way that Coulton communicates online with his audience in order to share, learn, gather feedback and generate revenue:

- He spends hours a day emailing to his fans. "He discovered a fact that many small-scale recording artists are coming to terms with these days: his fans do not want merely to buy his music. They want to be his friend. And that means they want to interact with him all day long online.

- When he struggles with a new song, he asks for help via his blog. And readers have sent back recordings of his song to offer him guidance on possible ways to play it. When he's looked for new ways to generate revenue, fans have posted suggestions on his message board.

- And the most compelling illustration of the power of building your own audience online is the following:

Normally, a new Brooklyn-based artist like him would trek around the Northeast in grim circles, visiting and revisiting cities like Boston and New York and Chicago in order to slowly build an audience — playing for 3 people the first time, then 10, then (if he got lucky) 50. But Coulton realized he could simply poll his existing online audience members, find out where they lived and stage a tactical strike on any town with more than 100 fans, the point at which he’d be likely to make $1,000 for a concert. It is a flash-mob approach to touring: he parachutes into out-of-the-way towns like Ardmore, Pa., where he recently played to a sold-out club of 140.

The Numbers

The NY Times article does not say how much revenue Coulton makes, but it does say this:

In total, 41 percent of Coulton’s income is from digital-music sales, three-quarters of which are sold directly off his own Web site. Another 29 percent of his income is from CD sales; 18 percent is from ticket sales for his live shows. The final 11 percent comes from T-shirts, often bought online.

So I can't wait for the day when we see a "Coulton" in the dance world. One dancer or dance company is going to pioneer this new turf and show the rest of the dance world that they don't have to be at the mercy of the traditional pillars of the dance establishment.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:54 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

May 9, 2007

More Marketing Fun With Google Maps

I made a larger customized Google Map for dance venues in Washington, DC - plus, I added more venues. Click the link right below to continue reading this post, then on large map, click on the only blue pin. You'll see a pop-up windows for Dance Place with an embedded YouTube video of Daniel Burkholder's "My Ocean is Never Blue" which was just performed at this venue.

What I think would make an excellent marketing tool for dance in DC is if for each dance venue there was an embedded video where the director spoke for about a minute about the dance performances they hosted. That way each time you clicked on a different pin, you would be presented with an engaging, short video. A similar map could be created for dance studios in the area.

In addition, the above map overlay could be imported into the 3D mapping tool Google Earth to create automated tours of dance performance venues in DC.

Posted by Doug Fox at 2:39 PM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

May 7, 2007

Google Map for Dance Venues in Washington, DC

I created a customized Google map that shows the locations of dance performance venues in the Washington, DC area and I embedded the map in this post right below.

You can click on any of the purple markers to see a pop-up window that has a logo for the venue and links that take you to the venue's website. You can drag and resize this map as you would a normal Google map.

You can view the complete customized map on Google. The advantage with viewing it on Google is that there is a legend in the left-hand column that lets you jump to any of the venues by name.

I think that customized maps are an especially good way to promote dance throughout a specific region or to promote city-wide dance events.

If you'd like your DC-area performance venue added to this map, please let me know.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:47 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

April 2, 2007

New York Presenters Embrace Video

Editor's note: I misidentified the below video. The video is a clip from a 2005 work by Levi Gonzalez titled "The whole world has suddenly disappeared."

In the past month Dance Theater Workshop has added 9 videos of recent and upcoming dance performances to its YouTube channel. Here's a video of choreographer Levi Gonzalez's "Clusterfuck," which just wrapped-up three performances at DTW:

Claudia La Rocco has an unfavorable review of this piece in Saturday's New York Times, "Wondering What to Do in a Crazy, Mixed-Up World."

While DTW provides easy access to a lot of videos, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) does a better job of integrating dance video previews into its website. From this link you can watch a video from Doug Varone and Dancers as well as watch videos of other past and upcoming performances.

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:48 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 26, 2007

Behind the Scenes Look at NYC Ballet's Upcoming Romeo + Juliet

In a post yesterday, Kristin Sloan of The Winger and New York City Ballet announced the launch of a behind-the-scenes video diary of the upcoming Romeo + Juliet - world premiere on May 1st.

On the Romeo + Juliet site, you can watch the first episode of this weekly series where Kristin introduces the program.

I think we are at the early stages of an important trend as more ballet and modern dance companies introduce innovative video applications for the Internet. Recently I wrote about "Anaheim Ballet's new video podcast series," and Chris Elam of Misnomer Dance Theater wrote about his company's use of videos via social networking and video sharing sites.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:45 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

March 19, 2007

The Perils of Widgets

Last week I wrote about the wonders of widgets that let you embed content from one site into another. I mostly wrote about widgets in the context of embedding listings of upcoming events and multimedia content in your website or blog.

The problem is that some of these widgets really messed-up how my home page loaded. So I've unpublished a number of these widget-containing posts and I'll add them back once they're off of my home page.

So while I still think using widgets as a way to take advantage of the reach and distributed nature of the Internet is an excellent strategy, you do have to be careful about which widgets you use, not include too many on one page and make sure they all work so that your site/blog readers don't encounter any page-loading errors.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:09 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 14, 2007

You're Not in My Sphere

The way that many people - especially younger people - use the Internet is fundamentally changing the marketing landscape.

Essentially the broadcast model is dying and it is being replaced by what I call customer-controlled spheres of influence.

To give you a concrete example:

If you have a dance blog, I probably read or skim all of your posts on a daily basis.

If you have a website for promoting your dancing or dance company and you do not have a blog, it is very unlikely that I have any idea what you're up to.

Why do I follow dance blogs and not websites?

My answer is that I subscribe to the "feeds" of every dance blog that I know about. I'll explain what "feeds" are below. But for now, here is a screen shot similar to one that I included last week of Google Reader - an online application that allows me to easily read all blog posts in a central location. I don’t have to visit every blog individually to read the latest posts. Click for larger image:

So Google Reader acts as my customized sphere of influence. I choose which blogs to read, and I can add or remove feeds any time I wish.

To exaggerate the point a bit, if you don't have a dance blog, you don't exist in my world or my sphere. You can have an informative, engaging and helpful website but websites are not the primary way that I gather information and communicate with others. And there are millions of other Internet users out there who consume content in the same manner as I do.

Feeds Described

All software programs that are used for creating blogs automatically create what are called RSS feeds or syndication feeds (See popular blog platforms: Blogger, TypePad and WordPress). One definition for "RSS" is Real Simple Syndication. But just about nobody refers to this definition.

The important thing to know about RSS feeds is that they offer a great way for you to syndicate the content of your blog. Just as a newspaper might syndicate an editorial column by one of its writers to hundreds of newspapers, an RSS feed lets you syndicate your blog to a large Internet audience.

On most blogs and Internet browsers, you'll see a variation of this button:

This icon means that you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the blog or web page you're currently viewing.

If you are using a Firefox browser and you visit my Great Dance blog, this is what you'll see at the top of your browser window:

In the above screen shot, I clicked on the orange icon and a pop-up window opened with three options representing different types of feeds. It really does not matter which of the three options you click on to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you do select the "RSS 2.0" feed, this is the page you will see. You are now viewing my feed. At the top of this feed page, there are instructions that you can follow to subscribe to this feed.

You may choose to collect and organize the feeds you subscribe to in many ways. You can subscribe within your browser ("live feeds" for Firefox), use a feed reader such as Google Reader, or use a customized home page application such as NetVibes.

Once you start subscribing to RSS feeds, you will always be presented with the most recent posts automatically.

If you create a blog and want to improve and publicize your feed, a good place to start is with FeedBurner. Actually, if you sign-up for a free account, one of the FeedBurner tools under "Publicize" is called "Chicklet Chooser." In this Chicklet Chooser, you'll see a list of the many different ways that people can subscribe to your feed. Here's a screen shoot of these options - click for larger view:

The number of subscriber options gives you an idea of the popularity of RSS feeds and how important it is to have a feed and encourage people to subscribe to it.

I'm going to write a number of posts about the importance of being in the customized spheres of influence of your customers. In these posts, I'll discuss social bookmarking, social networks, multimedia content, embeddable widgets, online fundraising tools, and other important ways to promote yourself online.

At the heart of all these marketing strategies is the importance of entering the world or sphere of your customers and not forcing your customers to enter your world - more to come.

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:40 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

March 12, 2007

Photo Widgets from Good Widgets

And, in terms of photo widgets, you have many choices. Yesterday, I came across Good Widgets which offers a variety of visually compelling and flexible photo widgets - but I did encounter some technical errors when configuring them.

For the following two examples of Good Widgets, I used the contact improvisation photos of David Olivari on Flickr. Here's his blog. I especially like the second widget.

As with other widgets, you can embed them in a blog post as I have hear or you can post them anywhere else on your website or on social networking sites.

Click the continue reading this post link that follows to see the examples of these photo widgets.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:45 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

March 11, 2007

Promote Dance Performances with Google Calendar

The free Google Calendar offers many ways to promote your upcoming dance performances.

To illustrate its features, I created a Google Calendar for dance performances in Washington, DC. To add upcoming performances, I went back to Eventful and clicked the Google Calendar link next to DC area dance performances. Once I clicked on this link, performances were automatically added to my calendar. (I wrote about Eventful over the last few days - both here and here.)

On each event page within Eventful, you'll see the following links that allow you to save and share events:

Once I added these upcoming performances in my Google Calendar, there are a number of ways that I can now promote my calendar.

- With a link to my public calendar with upcoming dance performances. I made my calendar public so I could do this.

- With a link to the RSS feed for my calendar so that users can subscribe to it using their favorite news reader.

- A button that my blog or website readers can click on that allows them to important all of the listed dance performances into their own Google calendar. You'll have to sign-up to use Google Calendar for this feature to work:

- By adding a Google Calendar widget to my blog or website that lets me display my Google calendar. Google uses the word "gadget" instead of "widget." But it means the same thing: Taking data from one source (in this case Google Calendar) and embedding it in another source (in this case my blog). Click on dates with red boxes to see description of performances for that day:

You can create your own customized Google Calendar Gadget.

There are a number of ways to use Google Calendar for marketing purposes. Overall, the best reason to use this calendar tool - as well as other popular calendar applications - is because you get your performances in the calendars of potential audience members. And once your event is listed, calendar owners are not going to forget about your performance. Plus they can send themselves event reminders in many different ways. Google Calendar can be configured, for example, so that reminders are sent via SMS (text messaging) to your mobile phone.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:53 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 9, 2007

Should You Use Upcoming and Eventful to Promote Dance Performances?

I was curious how good two popular social calendar applications were for finding and tracking dance performances in the Washington DC metro area. I explored Upcoming and Eventful to find out.

As a baseline I used the online dance performance calendar that is managed by Dance/MetroDC. If your goal is to find a well-organized, up-to-date listing of upcoming dance performances in the Metro DC area, this calendar is a very good place to go. It is comprehensive and includes most dance performances in the area. Here's a screen shot of their calendar - you can click for larger image:

Outside of the local dance community - dancers, students, teachers and those with a very close connection to dance - I'm not sure how many people visit the calendar on the Dance/Metro DC website. So my recommendation is that all local dance companies and all venues that offer dance performances in the area take full advantage of Upcoming and Eventful. They are both popular calendar applications that offer good functionality and multiple ways to track events.

The main problem at this point is that neither of these calendars has comprehensive listings of local dance performances that are regularly updated to reflect the latest changes. If all local dance companies and venues, however, did add and update their listings regularly, then more people would know that they could turn to these calendars to find upcoming performances. There's no charge for listing your events.

Here's a screen shot from Upcoming that reflects a search that I just conducted for dance performances in the Greater Washington, DC area. You can visit this link to see the search, but, I believe, the calendar will default to whichever metro area you are currently in. Here are the results I found:

You'll notice on the results page that you're not presented with a lot of summary detail about each performance, the Dance/Metro DC calendar lists more performances for the month of March, and not all the listings are really for dance performances - the first listing I saw was for a movie that had dance in it. But the performance listings are better than Eventful that I discuss below.

Here's a screen shot of a dedicated event page on Upcoming for this weekend's performance of Edgeworks Dance Theater at Dance Place, which I'll probably go see:

You'll notice on the right side of the above screen shot (click for larger image) that the number of Upcoming.org users who are attending or watching this event is listed. This mean that once you log-in to your Upcoming account, you can track your own events. The events you're tracking can be accessed from the "My Upcoming" link at the top of the page. Plus, you can also track the events of your friends. But from the perspective of dance companies and venues, these social bookmarking tools are only helpful if a large number of people know that they can track dance performances in the area on Upcoming - I'll return to this idea below.

And here's a search I did on Eventful for dance performances in the Washing DC metro area for March 2007 - I had to specify March 2007 because I was having trouble getting a good listing of results. And I sorted the results by "Venue" instead of "Date" because the date-ordered sort was confusing:

Another reason the search results for Eventful are annoying is because all dance events are merged together. I tried to search for dance performances, but as you'll see, there are dance classes and all kinds of MeetUps among the results. Plus, it appears that not as many dance performances are listed as on Upcoming.

But I do like the dedicated event pages on Eventful. Here's the page for this weekend's "Teen Dance Project" at the Jack Guidone Theater at Joy of Motion.

On the above screen shot on the right of the page, you'll see that there are a number of ways that you can share this event with others and post to social bookmarking sites. Plus, you can save the event directly to different online calendar applications or import to your calendar software on your computer.

Recommendations

My recommendation is that all local dance companies and venues list their events in both Upcoming and Eventful. They are both popular services so they offer a good way to attract audiences. Plus, the more comprehensive the listings for dance in the area, the more people will turn to these online calendars to learn about upcoming performances.

Plus, as more people use these calendars to find dance performances, more people will use the "MyEvents" and "MyFriends" functionality to track their own events and those of their friends. This type of online community-sharing of events is a great viral tool for building audiences.

I also think it might be helpful if local dance companies/venues decide on a tagging nomenclature. In other words, the tagging systems in Upcoming and Eventful are not always helpful for people who specifically want to find dance performances as opposed to other dance events such as classes or workshops. It might be helpful to create a tag such as "danceperformances". This way when people search specifically for dance performances by using this tag, they will usually only see the desired results.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

March 1, 2007

What Strategy Should Drive Dance Publicity?

Should dance marketing and public relations people be driven by a mass-market mentality or a relationship-building mentality?

Here's what I mean:

Should PR people promoting dance companies and performances simply email press releases to a lot of writers and hope that they get write-ups or should they send individual emails with customized messages?

I can only speak for myself, but most of the press releases I receive are completely meaningless and incoherent. Even if I'm interested in the topic of the press release (which is rare), it takes too long for me to figure out the basic factual details that I need in order to write a story.

But in the end - and maybe this has something to do with a blogging mentality - I usually only respond to personal messages that are relevant to the topics I cover. Plus, I'm human - I like people to acknowledge that they have a clue what I write about.

I'll give two examples of what I like:

First Example:

On January 9th I received the following email from Charley Hayes of PR firm Immediate Future (strange their website is under development just as I'm about to praise them). In any case after receiving below email, I wrote this post "Sanex Choreographs European TV Ad Campaign" on January 10th.

Hi Doug,

I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year.

I represent Sanex (the Sara Lee body care brand) and we are working with them to launch their new European advertising campaign which celebrates skin and its natural process, through use of human bodies acting as skin cells.

The new pan-European advert, which is now showing on TV, is a big departure from traditional skincare ads.

Sanex has teamed up with Cuban dance choreographer Alex Verona to create dance routines to bring human body ‘skin cells’ to life, as part of its new pan-European advertising campaign, ‘celebrating skin’. The adverts feature three different dance vignettes, visually representing how Sanex protects, hydrates and works with the skin. Modern dance improvisation was used to physically represent the fact that our skin is alive and relies upon natural processes to remain healthy.

A behind-the-scenes choreography video has today been uploaded to the Sanex Skin website and I thought this might be of interest to you?

Would you be happy for me to keep you up-to-date with any further developments in the campaign?

Do let me know ….

Thanks Doug,

Best
Charley Hayes

Second Example:

Last Sunday night Chris Elam of Misnomer Dance sent me an email that described the innovative ways that he is using his website, social networking sites and video to build dance audiences. I published his email in full the next morning (with an embedded video) with a couple of minor changes. You can read "Email From Chris Elam of Misnomer."

Additional Thoughts...

Of course, I could just be vain and want people to write me nice personalized emails. Or there could be something more important here, which I think is the case.

The broadcast era is coming to an end. The publicity framework in which most organizations operate - including dancers and dance companies - does not really exist any more. How many stories really result directly from the press releases you send out? Does anybody read them? I don't.

If you want stories - especially blog stories - you have to address the specific interests of the writer/blogger - or you are probably not going to generate the type of coverage you want.

But then why spend energy trying to get coverage in dance blogs? Does anybody read them? I'll post my stats for February tomorrow and you can decide for yourself :-)

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:02 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

February 26, 2007

Email from Chris Elam of Misnomer

Chris Elam of Misnomer Dance Theater sent me this email last night about his Internet marketing and outreach effort for his upcoming Spring Soirée. I'm posting this email with his permission.

(In my previous post I included a link to a BusinessWeek video interview with Chris that you can watch online.)

Hi Doug,

We have been implementing an Internet-based approach to audience outreach for our company that I thought I'd write to you about. To increase awareness of our efforts, on March 8th we will be hosting our Spring Soirée - a party in the 860-seat theater at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU in NYC.

The goal is to create a dynamic, fun party for people of all walks of life where we'll discuss our online undertakings and aim to progress this conversation. The aspect that I think you'll be particularly interested in is that in addition to mailing traditional invitations, we have created a Spring Soirée Invite video, which is posted to our website, our Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and YouTube sites (just search for "misnomerdance"). The video is emailable to enable the information to travel quickly.

This is an outgrowth of an online audience development initiative that we began last September, through which we have dedicated Misnomer administrative time to building and cultivating active communities online around our work. As a result, we now receive hundreds of unsolicited emails per month from people who discover us online. Through these contacts, we are creating street teams in various cities who help organize audiences when we tour. We are working with The Skirball Center on some aspects of these experiments in finding ways to build new young audiences.

We are thinking about serving online audiences as well as in-the-theater audience. Likely, the majority of the people who discover us online will not get to see us live in the near future. Instead, we are aiming to offer them interesting videos of dancing with increasingly made-for-Internet content that provide a behind-the-scenes peek into the workings of our company, opportunities to spread the word about our events, contests and other ways to stay engaged and connected to the company. We are using ourselves as a case-study, and hope to find useful systems that can serve the performing arts, growing new audiences, volunteers, contributors, and partnerships.

As part of this experiment, we have started a Fundable campaign (which I recommend other groups consider) to see what advantages group fundraising on the web can provide. With a modest initial test amount, we aim to engage fans from afar to help create our next work.

I agree with you that this is an important and exciting time for experimentation with online solutions for the arts. Today audiences can have a closer, more intimate relationship with a company, if the company creatively fosters such opportunities. These new tools enable artists and companies to take a more direct role in building their audiences and directing the growth of their vision.

All the best,

Chris Elam
Artistic Director & Choreographer
Misnomer Dance Theater

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:21 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 22, 2007

Building a Derivative Dance Culture

On the Creative Commons blog, I came across a post about an "Open Art" show that is taking place now at the University of Florida. A student group, Florida Free Culture, is hosting this show in which the art work on display is made available under what is called a Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0" license.

What this means is that anybody can download the images of the artwork, which are in a Flickr photo pool, and then modify or remix these images to create altered or augmented versions of the original. For example, one of these images could be edited and modified in a photo editing software program to create a more abstract version of the initial photograph.

In essence, users who download these digital images from the show are given permission under this Creative Commons license to create derivative works. From a copyright standpoint, a "derivative work" is a complicated concept that I don't fully understand. But I take the general premise behind this term as being a new work (book, artwork, choreography, etc.) that is built upon an existing work.

One of the things I realized about the Flickr pool is that all the photos are uploaded by the same person. I would have thought that an "Open Art" show organized by a group of students would have included work from a number of different contributors. But, in the end, it doesn't really matter since I just wanted to use this Creative Commons art show as a possible model for dance.

Creating a Derivative Dance Festival

An understandable tendency for choreographers and dancers is to protect their work from a legal standpoint, or, at least, ensure that choreography is not replicated without the express written consent of the artist or dance company.

But why don't we just turn these standard rules upside down and see what happens?

Why not host a dance festival in your town or city where all the dance performances are licensed under Creative Commons so that anybody can create and distribute derivative versions of the works in digital and/or live formats? And one of the stipulations would be that derivative works would properly recognize the original creator. It would be up to the festival organizer and dance companies whether derivative works could be created just for non-commercial purposes or also for commercial purposes. (Here's a link to the different types of CC licenses).

From a Practical Standpoint, What Does this CC-Licensed Event Mean?

Here's a rundown:

- All dance performances at the festival are recorded and the video is uploaded to a video sharing site. If there's a two camera shoot, the raw footage from each camera might be uploaded. The music tracks can be uploaded as well as separate audio files. Obviously a deal has to be arranged with the owners of the music - maybe under a CC license as well.

- Internet users are now free to do what they want with the video and audio files. They can edit the videos, insert their own dance footage and make any other creative changes and additions that they want. Then they can upload and share their finished works. (There happens to be an excellent overview in yesterday's TechCrunch of online video editing applications. So it's easier than ever for dance fans to edit video footage.)

- Derivative works can be created in the offline world as well. A dance teacher might incorporate part of a performance in whole or part into a dance routine that is taught during a class. Or a dance company might use one of the festival dance works as the basis for one of their new pieces. In either the class or performance setting, the original artist would have to be recognized under the terms of the CC license.

What Are the Advantages of this Licensing Approach?

- Dancers and dance fans will be able to use your work as the basis for further exploration and creativity. They are no longer just passive observers of your work (I think this is my mantra after saying this a hundred times in previous posts). They can create their own dance videos and/or work in a very direct, physical manner with your choreography.

- All participants in the dance festival will get a lot of exposure and recognition at a very low cost. This CC licensing approach is very viral in nature. In other words, since users - dancers and non-dancers - can experiment with your creations and create new works, they will be highly inclined to share what they've done with others. They might embed their new video on their blog or social networking profile, or they might upload their video to a video sharing site.

- The likely result is that you will get more exposure for your dance company and increase the likelihood that you will get more bookings in the future and larger audiences as well. Plus, since the Internet is an important part of this proposed CC licensing approach, there is also the possibility that you can sell or monetize your work through online channels.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:02 AM - Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

February 12, 2007

Scottish Ballet Sells Dinner Dates with Dancers, and a Letter to Merce

In a post, "Dancers For Sale," in Article19's Evil Imp blog, the writer strongly criticizes the Scottish Ballet for auctioning dinners on eBay with two of its lead dancers.

This charity fundraiser continues on eBay and bidders have just less than two days to place their bids. As I write, there is one bid for Soon Ja Lee at 50 pounds (the initial price) and three bids for Jarrko Lehmus with the highest bid at 67 pounds.

Evil Imp finds this auction "disturbing":

Dancers were always seen as a commodity in the dark days of dance. There to be exploited by the upper class wretches and patrons (take your pick) that hung around like vultures but in 2007 is this type of cynical marketing crap the way any dance company or arts organisation wants to raise money?

I'm not going to condemn the Scottish Ballet in such stark terms. But I do think the auctioning of dinner dates with ballet dancers is a bad idea from just about any angle you can imagine.

First, the Scottish Ballet is not going to raise much money as the bids above show - unless a bidding war miraculously breaks out in the remaining hours of this auction. And if the bids don’t go higher, then everybody will know that ballet supporters aren't even willing to spend decent money for a night on the town with their favorite dancer.

Second, these types of auctions always strike me as very elitist - even if they are on eBay. And why would a ballet company want to be associated with this type of fundraising campaign. It reminds me of the "slave-for-a-day auction" (I believe that's what it was called) sequence in the comedy Caddyshack II with Jackie Mason and Chevy Chase. Mason invades a private country club where his presence is definitely not wanted and he starts to bid on the services of all the well-heeled members who are up for bid. He wins every auction and forces all of the club members to do real work on his construction site instead of pouring tea at a brunch party. Elitism can work when the fun and games is limited to a friendly, insular world. But it doesn't go over as well when the public can easily watch or partake in the action.

Third, why limit auctions to just two winners? This seems very counter-productive and too exclusionary when the objective should be to involve as many new financial supporters as possible. Last August Neill Archer Roan, a strategic management consultant for the arts, wrote an excellent blog post, "The Lexus and the Money Tree," in which he describes the terms of sponsorship support for the Lexus South Florida Dealers Association of the new Miami Carnival Center for the Arts. Part of this sponsorship package provided free valet parking for all Lexus owners who attended performances at this venue. But everybody else had to pay for parking. Nobody benefited in the end from this fundraising effort. Roan wrote:

I know that raising money is very difficult. The people at the Carnival Center have a big job on their hands and nobody should underestimate how hard it is to build a network of sponsorship support...Still, I wonder if the good people in Lexus marketing have asked themselves if this strategy is really such a good idea?

Forth, Evil Imp writes sarcastically,

Let's not advocate the genuine value of the arts or celebrate the skill and talent of a professional dancer, let's hawk out a cheap date with a pretty girl/boy for somebody to leer at across the candlelit dinner table between courses.

This is the essential issue, I believe. The first question for any dance company or performing arts venue should be:

How can my marketing program or fundraising effort place the art, the artists and their creativity, and the performance at the heart of the campaign?

Here's one specific illustration of what I'm getting at:

Last year I wrote about a very successful mashup contest for Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" video (the final mashup video from my previous post has been removed from YouTube. But you can watch Shakira perform this song at last night's Grammys.)

It is very probable that the mashup contest helped push Skahkira's song to the top of the charts and dramatically increased sales of her single. The contest was fun, participatory and viral. By viral I mean that people watched her video and the mashup video, and quickly shared it with their friends. And it's possible she would not have been at the Grammys last night if it weren't for this mashup contest.

Now, let's take this Shakira mashup model and apply it to dance. Last year I wrote a post, "Merce Cunningham Puts Music Selection in Audience Hands." In a performance of "eyeSpace" Cunningham's experimentation with randomness was taken to the next level by giving each audience member the ability to choose which audio track to listen to on their personal iPods while watching each part of the performance. The experience of each spectator was different because everybody watched the same performance while listing to different music.

Let's assume that Merce Cunningham comes to me and says: "Doug, I want to create a compelling fundraising campaign that is based upon my ideas of randomness. Can you do this for me?"

I'll say, "Sure. I have the perfect solution."

My proposal:

Dear Merce,

Create a new section on your website called "eyeSpace Mashup." In this section make available a three-minute video clip of the eyeSpace performance. This video will not have an audio track.

Then, upload five of the audio tracks, in MP3 format, that audience members could select from their iPods when watching this performance.

Now, encourage your website visitors to create their won mashups of the video clip, song tracks and anything else they wish to add. You'll be very surprised by the creative videos that participants come up with.

Also, add an "email-a-friend" link so viewers can forward this contest to their friends.

Next, set-up a mashup library on your site so people can upload their video mashups for others to see. Or, just recommend that people upload their videos to YouTube and then link to these videos.

Finally, you are already using Network for Good to raise money through your website. But you could improve how you use this fundraising tool. First, online fundraising should usually be project specific. So, you could focus on how to raise contributions for continued development of eyeSpace (both as a live performance and in the online world) - happy to talk more about how you can bring this performance to the web. Second, you can use "Charity Badges" from Network for the Good so that visitors to your site are encouraged to help you raise money from their own websites and blogs. Why not put your supporters to work in a good cause?

That's my proposal. It's very participatory - everybody gets to be an artist and create their own mashups. It's very viral because this campaign will spread like hot cakes throughout the Internet. You will drive huge traffic to your website. And you will raise a lot of small contributions from a lot of people.

Thanks for considering my proposal. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Doug

Back to the Scottish Ballet

Does the Scottish Ballet date-with-a-dancer make sense? No, it doesn't. When it comes to the Internet, the goal is to be participatory and not exclusionary. You want to create highly engaging programs where everybody gets to have fun and everybody wants to share their enthusiasm with their friends.

Finally, the art and the creative spirit of the artists should always be at the forefront of the marketing, sponsorship or fundraising campaign. I came-up with an imaginary program for Merce Cunningham - one that I believe would work. But the optimal campaigns of other dance companies as well as performing arts venues would be different because everybody's creative spirit is unique.

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:48 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 10, 2007

Hybrid Performances Build Audiences and Sell Tickets

It's nice to have your predictions instantly confirmed.

I wrote last Wednesday in "'Grease' - New Synergies For Hybrid Productions" that

While the TV show's website may have some limitations, the idea of creating synergy between a TV competition and a Broadway musical is an excellent one. TV audiences not only get to watch competitors vie for the lead parts in the Broadway production, but they also get to participate in the selection process. And through this highly participatory process, it's hard to imagine that a huge number of tickets for the theatrical production won't be sold.

Yesterday, Playbill reported in "$1.3 Million in Tickets Sold for Broadway's Upcoming Grease":

Averaging 11.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings, the new TV show debuted Jan. 7 — the same day tickets went on sale. The synchronicity seems to have paid off as the box-office advance for the work — which doesn't hit the Broadway stage until July 24 — has already passed the $1 million mark.

Also, thanks to Ballet.co for including a write-up about my "Grease" post in their new weekly section, "Ballet.co BlogWatch," that highlights posts from dance blogs. (Once you click on this link for their weekly news stories, you'll want to scroll down page the page to the links for January 7th.)

Posted by Doug Fox at 5:53 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 8, 2007

Building an Online Marketplace for the Licensing of Dance Choreography

Update: A few minutes after publishing the below post I came across Wall Street Journal article, "Fine Art of Distinctions: The line between creative performance and actual authorship blurs," by Terry Teachout. This articles deals with the confusing world of copyright laws as they apply to the arts - a topic I touch upon toward end of post. [via ArtsJournal]

In a number of spheres of the art and entertainment world - music, video/film/TV and theater, for example - there have been initiatives to create online marketplaces to facilitate the licensing and use of artistic creations. Yet within the dance community, there has been no such activity. The lack of such an online exchange is unfortunate because it could serve as an important new revenue stream for choreographers.

A Possible Model for the Dance Community

Last September I was listening to an interview on the radio program Studio 360. (Click on this link and then select "Playscrips" to listen to the program). The guests were Douglas and Jonathan Rand, brothers who started a new business in 2001 called Playscripts, Inc. The brothers realized that the process of marketing unpublished plays was very difficult and there were only two main companies through which playwrights had to work in order to get exposure for their scripts.

So the Playscript founders created an online marketplace where quality scripts could be licensed. Now the service has over 550 plays from more than 350 playwrights. Most of these plays are licensed to high schools and community theater groups. In the interview the Rand brothers pointed out that most agents are always in search of the big gigs for their playwright clients. The big challenge, however, is that there are only a few hundred professional theaters but there are tens of thousands of high schools that produce plays.

The end result is that everybody benefits from the Playscript concept. Amateur and professional groups in need of plays can now search for, review, license and pay for scripts. And the playwrights now have a new revenue stream through this innovative distribution platform.

An Online Licensing Platform for Dance Choreography

Is it possible to create a similar online marketplace for the licensing of dance choreography?

I think that this idea is worth exploring although there are some potential hurdles that may be difficult to overcome.

Among the key challenges:

First, is there a market today for licensing dance choreography? In most cases when choreography is licensed it is done to re-stage well-known works or for Broadway-style productions. But as the Rand brothers identified a huge untapped marketplace for plays in high schools, is there a similar unrecognized market for dance choreography?

Second, choreographers and dancers often do not get copyrights for their dance works. Without a standardized approach to protecting intellectual property - in this case dance choreography - it's not really possible to set-up a marketplace (online or off) where large numbers of dance works can be licensed. Take a look at "When Choreographer is Out of the Picture" by Diane Solway in yesterday's New York Times. The article points out that even the great choreographers of the 20th Century have paid little attention to ensuring that they secured a legal interest in their works and could control their own legacy:

“I don’t care frankly,” said the boyish Mr. Taylor with a sly laugh, fishing another cigarette from the pack. “I won’t be here to see the dances which I enjoy, so what does it matter to me?

Third, if large numbers of choreographers did seek copyright protection, a train wreck might ensue. Would there all of a sudden be hundreds of court cases with choreographers and dancers battling it out to determine who exactly owned what moves, steps and combinations? Dance may be better off the way it is now - a fluid process of creation, sharing and re-mixing where choreographers are inspired by many sources and incorporate many ideas into their dances.

Let's say that the above challenges can be addressed, how would an online marketplace look for the licensing of dance choreography?

I think it would be similar to Playscripts. Buyers could search for dance works by style, choreographer, audience-type, price and other criteria. Then users could read descriptions and watch video excerpts.

The pricing options would be listed for each piece of choreography. For example, there might be different prices for amateur and professional groups and different combinations of a flat licensing fee with or without a percentage of box office receipts.

In addition, the choreographer could choose to allow the creation of derivative works so that the licensed choreography could be used as the basis for a new work built upon this original piece.

So my hunch is that it would be very challenging to create a marketplace for the licensing of dance choreography - although if it were possible, it would create a new revenue stream for the creators of these works.

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:34 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 5, 2007

Dancing for a Better World

Here's how dancers around the globe can join together to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to support worthwhile causes while simultaneously generating financial support for their dance careers and creative explorations.

A few months ago, Peter DiMuro, producing artistic director for Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, told me about "Postcard Dances," which were popular during the 60s. If somebody wanted to see a dance that dealt with a specific topic, they would write the description of the desired dance on the back of a postcard and mail it to a specific address. Then, a dancer or dance company would choreograph a piece in response to the postcard request. How the mechanics of this process actually worked I'm not sure about - if somebody in Los Angeles requested a dance that was created by dancers in New York, how did the postcard writer actually see the dance? I have to ask Peter about this.

In any case, I've been thinking about this idea of Postcard Dances in the context of the Internet. What would happen if we put out an online call for a specific type of dance performance? Say, we wrote that we were looking for 3-minute original dance works that addressed (in a concrete or abstract manner) specific topics such as poverty, healthcare and disease, violence and genocide, environment and global warming, or many other pressing issues of our time.

Dancers around the world could then make a video of themselves or their dance companies performing this theme-specific work and then submit it to a designated website. Visitors to this site could then watch hundreds of excellent dance videos that addressed specific issues. This would be my Internet version of Postcard Dances.

Once a video library of dances is created for each cause, the next question is how do we go about monetizing this undertaking? In other words, how do we raise money for different charitable efforts? If the first requested dance piece deals with global poverty, then we need to find a way to raise money for organizations that are dedicated to combating poverty.

Here's how revenue could be generated from both advertising revenue and donations:

First, by encouraging large numbers of dancers to submit videos that address specific issues, there will be hundreds of engaging dance performances accessible at a single online location. These videos will attract a large audience (with the help of a corresponding marketing effort).

Second, there are an increasing number of video applications and services that enable video creators to monetize their videos in different ways. This morning I was learning about In Video from AdBrite. In Video is a customized video player that you can embed on your website. This video player shows your videos along with advertisements in a "split-screen" so that the video watching experience is not interrupted. Video producers split the ad revenue with AdBrite (I don't know what specifics are of the revenue share). So if hundreds of dance videos are aggregated for each cause, thousands of hours of videos will be watched which will generate a good revenue stream from advertising. [InVideo story via TechCrunch]

Third, this archive of dance videos can also serve as a compelling vehicle for seeking donations from individuals and corporations. This morning I was reading another post, "The Power of One," in Maryann Devine's Smarts & Culture blog. Maryann writes about a successful online fundraising effort conducted by Beth Kanter that uses "fundraising widgets" or "charity badges" for seeking donations. Clearly, as the story makes clear, there is more to fundraising than simply using the latest Internet tools, but it's intriguing to see how these applications can be put to good use. To learn more about charity badges, visit Network for Giving on Yahoo.

So by using charity badges as part of a compelling fundraising effort, donations can add up for worthwhile causes even when contributions are made in relatively small increments. Beth Kanter rasied $49,537 from 745 donors for educational programs in Cambodia in just three weeks.

Forth, both the In Video player and the charity badges have a viral component. So visitors to the dance video site who watch the videos can take any of the videos and put them on their own websites and blogs. Ads are also shown on these distributed videos, which mean that ad revenue continues to be generated no matter where the videos are played. Plus, visitors to the dance video site can also be encouraged to put the charity badges on their own websites as well. This means that an increasingly larger and larger audience of Internet users will be encouraged to make donations.

Plus, if say 200 dancers submit videos for a specific cause, all of these dancers will be encouraged to place their videos and charity badges on their respective websites, blogs and MySpace pages. This type of distributed marketing will significantly increase the audience for the dance videos - increasing ad revenue and donations.

Fifth, dancers should also be compensated for their dance video contributions. Some type of overall revenue share program should be created so that of all the revenue and donations generated, a specific percentage goes to the contributing dancers. Then, a formula would have to be created to determine what percentage of the dancers' revenue pool each dancer or dance company would receive. Maybe it's based on the number of views or maybe it's just an even split for each dance contributor.

That's my game plan. I think it would work.

A note about In Video and specific charity badges. I've never used In Video or any of the charity badges or fundraising applications. So I'm just using them in this story as examples of what is possible.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

December 13, 2006

Increase Dance Coverage with Multimedia Releases and Open Rehearsals

It is challenging to get press coverage for dance performances. In recent years, this situation has become even more difficult for dance companies and presenters because many publications have reduced or discontinued their coverage of dance.

Given this challenging media environment, how can those responsible for generating press coverage ensure that as many articles as possible are written about their upcoming dance performances?

In this post, I'd like to offer my answer to this question. I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts and reactions as well. Do you agree or disagree with my recommendation? What are your recommendations for increasing coverage of upcoming dance performances?

Game Plan for Increasing Press Coverage and Generating More Buzz

Initial Premises

1) If fewer dance critics are writing previews and reviews of dance for large-circulation print publications, then it's necessary to reach out to other journalists such as theater and arts critics as well as journalists who write about the themes you address in your dance pieces.

2) Publicity campaigns are not just for print publications and are not just for professional journalists. There are thousands of websites and blogs that may be interested in covering your upcoming and current dance performances. Also, it's helpful to keep in mind that many bloggers are not traditional writers and are not just looking for standard press releases - more about what they are looking for below.

3) Dance is visual. So the best way to generate interest in dance is by making online video and pictures available to anybody who wants to cover your dance performances.

Action Plan

Part I: Create a Multimedia Press Release

Press releases that promote dance performances don't do justice to the art of dance. Dance is, of course, about motion in space. So why not add videos and other multimedia content to your releases so that recipients can have instant visual access to your work?

So my first recommendation is that dance companies and presenters create their own customized version of a "social media press release."

Earlier this year, public relations firm, Shift Communications, introduced what it called a "social media press release." You can view a PDF template of this new type of press release and you can view an actual example. (I wrote about this new type of press release earlier this year.)

You'll notice that when you look at the PDF template that this release format gets right to the point. First you'll see bullet points that highlight key news developments in an easy-to-digest manner, and then follows relevant multimedia content. These multimedia links are critical for dance. If you want to grab the attention of journalists, videos and pictures are much more likely to capture their attention as opposed to plain text.

I do not believe that dance companies and presenters are well served by placing a line at the end of a release that says, "Pictures are available upon request." The multimedia content ought to be front and center as the example of a Social Media Press Release shows.

There are many types of videos that you can make available:

- Interviews with artistic director and dancers
- Behind-the-scenes look at the rehearsals
- Clips from dress rehearsals
- Videos of performances, and
- Video that is likely to appeal to non-dance audiences

You'll want to put both the videos and pictures on your website (or a third-party websites that hosts videos and pictures) so that journalists have instant access to this multimedia content.

A word about creating multimedia press releases that appeal to writers who do not write about dance. One of my points at the beginning of this post is that fewer newspapers are including articles about dance. So as you prepare your press releases and corresponding video content, a lot of thought should be devoted to story angles that are broad enough in nature that they will appeal to any and all writers covering theater, the arts, entertainment and, possibly, topics outside of the arts all together.

Part II: Use Popular Video and Picture Hosting Websites

Since you'll be creating and uploading videos and pictures so that they are accessible to the press, it is also worthwhile to place this multimedia content on popular video (YouTube and Google Video, for example) and photo (Flickr, for example) sites. Plus if you visit the following article, you can find a huge list of video hosting applications.

There are four main reasons to place your videos and pictures on the more popular video and photo sites:

- More people will come across your multimedia content and thus learn about your upcoming performances.

- Many of these sites make it easy for anybody to embed these multimedia files on their own blogs and websites. For example, newspapers are beginning to embed videos directly with the text versions of articles that appear on their websites. If you upload an engaging video to YouTube or another video hosting service, it is very easy for an online newspaper to place this video directly on their website. Readers will find the stories about your dance company more engaging than just reading text alone.

- But your audience does not consist only of professional journalists. Your multimedia content is likely to be of interest to bloggers who write about dance, theater, the arts and entertainment. Plus, bloggers who write about topics related to the themes of your dance may be interested too. For example, if your work deals with environmental issues, there are many bloggers who might be interested in providing coverage of your performance - especially if they can easily add video and pictures directly to their own blogs.

- For practical reasons, you may not want to put large video and picture files on your own website if you're not certain that your website will be reliable for this type of high bandwidth content.

Part III: Dress Rehearsals for Local Photographers and Videographers

If you invite photographers from local news organizations to take pictures of dress rehearsals, why not open these events to both professional and amateur photographers and videographers?

Imagine that 10, 20 or more amateur photographers and videographers came to your dress rehearsal to take lots of pictures and videos. This multimedia content would then be posted to blogs, websites, video and picture hosting websites as well as personal pages on social networking sites such as MySpace.

Plus, you could encourage everybody who creates online content to use the same tags to identify your dance performance. For example, the tag "holidaydanceinbaltimore2006" - well, you could probably come up with something more specific. But the main point is that if everybody uses the same tag, you can easily link to all the videos and pictures from your own website. Your website visitors could click on a link that would, for example, take them to all videos from your dress rehearsal that have been uploaded to YouTube or another video hosting service.

There are potential problems to this open rehearsal idea. First, there may be copyright issues to deal with. And, second, the quality of some of the videos and pictures may be terrible - whether or not this potential quality issue makes this open rehearsal idea a bad idea is up to you. The upside is that you can generate a lot of publicity.

Summary

That's my recommendation for increasing publicity for upcoming dance performances in an environment when the amount of space devoted to dance coverage in traditional publications is dwindling.

Let me know what you think.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:46 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

November 26, 2006

Pilobolus Embraces Social Media Sites

In a Thanksgiving post on the Bank of America Celebrity Series Blog, I came across some video clips and pictures of dance company Pilobolus on popular social media sites.

It's nice to see that Pilobolus is using MySpace and YouTube to provide fans with additional information about themselves, but, in the case of the video clips, I think it would be helpful if they would provide some more context and background about who the dancers are and what Pilobolus is all about.

For example, Pilobolus has posted three video podcasts on YouTube - they're all informal and light-hearted, which is enjoyable, but it would also be nice to hear the dancers talk about dancing and show some movement as well - but maybe they are prohibited from videotaping each other dancing?? For viewers who don't know anything about Pilobolus, these videos really won't serve much of a purpose. (video one, video two, video three).

In their MySpace blog, they just posted some fun pictures from their Thanksgiving celebration in Belo Horizonte, Brazil where they are performing tomorrow:

Finally, you can watch a TV commercial that Pilobolus did for Hyundai Santa Fe. Whether it's in a commercial or on stage, it's always fun to watch them dance:

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:00 PM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

November 20, 2006

Selling Dance Video Content Online

Benoit Beauchamp writes in "Online Revenue for Dance or Theatre Companies?" that he believes that online dance video is best used for promotional purposes and building buzz but is not likely to generate extra revenue for dancers. His post in his Recycled Space blog is in response to my Friday post, "Exploring Internet Revenue Opportunities for Dance."

Benoit writes:

I feel like online video content is for promoting the company itself but as far as I know, it won’t add another revenue model that generates enough funds to have a person doing this full time. The time needed to create those videos is just not possible for a company member to do it part time.

Yes, shooting and editing video is time-consuming. And without exploring new models for generating revenue from online video sales, there are not sufficient funds to pay for this video production work. But, I believe that there are new revenue models to pursue. For example:

- I'd pay extra if a dance teacher put video online of each dance routine taught in class so that I could more easily practice it in between classes. If an entire dance studio with many classes throughout the week did this, the additional revenue from online routines would add up. I'm not talking about time-consuming video shooting and editing. Maybe three different views of instructor demonstrating routine: 1) front-view, 2) back view or through mirror so it's easier to follow along, and 3) a slow version with the count.

- I'd pay for video of staged versions of dance performances if the price were right. I'd pay somewhere between $2-$5 dollars. Given the size of the global audience for dance, just $2 per video could add up to a significant revenue stream.

- I'd also pay for educational video. Once again, the price has to be right - very low. Maybe moves, routines, floor exercises and other dance guidance are sold individually for $2 or $3, or a package is sold of say 10 clips at a discounted rate.

- Finally, I'd pay for dance films that seemed interesting. There is just about no online distribution of dance-on-camera works, which strikes me as odd given the number of festivals held every year. There is a market for selling these dance films on a pay-per-view basis.

But in the end, until there is more experimentation with the above and other possibilities, nobody is really going to know what will and will not work. That's why in my "Exploring the Future of Dance" post from last week, I recommended an online or offline gathering of a diverse group of people from within and without the dance community to explore new online revenue models for dance.

At this point, I'm leaning toward creating a separate blog and inviting a diverse group of people (see listing in my post from last week) to have an on-going discussion focused on this and related topics. It would be great to have Benoit and other dance bloggers participate in this conversation.

Posted by Doug Fox at 5:53 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 17, 2006

Exploring Internet Revenue Opportunities for Dance

How can dancers and dance companies generate revenue from the Internet now and over the coming years? In this post I pose questions about a number of possibilities:

- What is the best approach to increasing the sale of tickets online for upcoming dance performances? Should they be sold through dance company websites, presenter/performing art center websites or 3rd-party ticketing services or all of the above? What is best approach for each option?

- How do you sell banner ads and other forms of sponsorship for your website, email campaigns and blogs? Should dance companies use ad networks such as Google AdSense? Is it worth selling banner ads and other forms of sponsorship online? Or should dance companies focus their energies on enhancing online promotional opportunities for existing and new sponsors and funders?

- Does it make sense to sell video ads and sponsorship? Video ads and promotional segments could be free-standing, or could run before or at the end of dance videos (pre- and post-roll).

- Will dance be able to embrace the latest developments in product placement tools and technologies to generate revenue? In other words, can you buy the shirt off a dancer's back in a video? ClickZ has article, "Technology Enables Product Placement in CGM," that discusses "plinking" or product linking that enables video watchers to click on embedded links within videos to learn about and buy products.

- Is there a market for a fusion of "Retail Dancne" and Internet merchandizing? Last year I wrote about a "Retail Dance" program that consisted of multiple dance companies performing in different retail stores in San Francisco over a few day period. This always struck me as a good idea - especially if it was combined with an online component to extend the impact of this type of promotional campaign.

- What is the feasibility of creating a web-based online TV network devoted exclusively to dance? What revenue model would support such a TV outlet? Take a look at LX TV - Life/Style Television for a possible model. (Via Random Culture)

As I was finishing-up this post, I came across an intriguing website "Dance Channel TV," that is a type of online dance video channel that also distributes its video through Brightcove (see next item right below).

- How would dancers and dance companies go about creating a distributed model for dance videos? Visit Brightcove for an example of a company that provides the infrastructure for enabling organizations to distribute and monetize video. (Via Mashable)

- What approaches to online fundraising will bear the most fruit for dance companies, studios and others involved in dance? Read "First-of-its-kind" for a range of possible strategies. (via NetSquared)

- Can dance videos be successfully sold online - performance, education and dance-on-camera? Will a pay-per-view model work? Or, alternatively will a subscription model work? What are the best e-commerce applications for selling dance videos online?

- What opportunities are there for selling/distributing dance videos to handheld devices? Will this just work for promotional purposes or is there also revenue to be made in terms of sponsorship and/or video sales?

- Overall, what types of dance videos will generate the most revenue - performances, instructional, dance-on-camera, documentaries or other formats?

Posted by Doug Fox at 5:25 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 6, 2006

A Chorus Line Promoted Through Word of Mouth Reviews

In the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) blog, I came across a post about theater ticket vendor Broadway.com's new theater review program called "Word of Mouth (WOM)."

What's particularly interesting about the new WOM program is that video reviews are conducted by a diverse range of theatergoers, non-professional critics, who will be sharing their thoughts and reactions throughout the 2006-2007 Broadway season.

Here are two screen shots from the video review of "A Chorus Line" conducted by a student, a "domestic goddess" and a mortician:

In its FAQ, Broadway.com says it's replacing its professional reviews with its new WOM program. They explain:

For years we have watched as professional theater critics (ours included!) slam shows that audiences love and swoon over pieces that bore audiences to tears. We think that by showing real people's opinions, we're providing the most useful information possible to help you decide how to spend your hard-earned money when choosing a show.

And another advantage of non-professional theater reviews is that you get some juicy nuggets of insight about the "critics" for each show. Scott, our "Afterlife Care Facilitator," says that if he were stranded on a desert island, he would want the following three things:

I'm pretty low maintenance but a 72" plasma TV, a hammock and a hardy supply of diet cola chilled to 37 degrees Fahrenheit would help ease the pain.

In the FAQ, it also says that reviewers "share their honest reactions with our cameras so that we can create a video feature for you about each new show." But after watching a good chunk of the Chorus Line review, it seems more like an upbeat conversation among friends than anything resembling a theater review - but that's probably what they wanted to create.

Posted by Doug Fox at 5:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 13, 2006

Marriott's "More Room to Move" Dance Promotion

On Adrants, I came across a post about an online promotion for Marriott Spring Hills Suites with the dance-inspired name "More Room to Move." Adrants characterizes the quality of the dancing as Seinfeldian in tribute to Elaine's awkward dance moves. But while corny, Marriott's dance game is entertaining - at least for a minute or two - and captures the notion of more spacious suites.

To play the game, you choose a dancer, and then click a button to activate each dance move as the proceeding dance move is about to end.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:40 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 12, 2006

HBO's "The Wire" Embraces Consumer Generated Media

To promote the fourth season of HBO's "The Wire," a consumer generated media (CGM) competition was created to encourage viewers to submit their own video stories about their early education experiences. You can visit the "Spoken Word Battle" site to watch the uploaded videos.

Here's a good overview of this participatory promotional project from ClickZ:

The campaign, created by Deep Focus, captures a gritty, honest and real mode of expression that's in line with the show's setting in inner city Baltimore. "The biggest thing for us in developing this campaign was trying to be true to the spirit of the show," Sabrina Caluori, account director at Deep Focus, told ClickZ News. "We were trying to come up with a way to approach it that was new and interesting."

The result is "The Wire Spoken Word Battle," a competition for slam poets and hip-hop and freestyle artists hosted on Blastro.com. Users were asked to submit their experiences and views about how they were educated in a three-minute video. The theme of education is consistent with the emphasis of the current season.

I'm very intrigued by this project that develops an innovative way to get viewers and potential viewers of this HBO series to get involved directly with the themes of the show in an emotionally compelling way. It would be great to see a similar type of CGM program created for dance performances or TV shows.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:07 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 11, 2006

Will Participatory Marketing Transform the Arts?

In "Letting Consumers Control Marketing: Priceless" in the October 9th New York Times, Stuart Elliott describes how large corporate brands are moving from a top-down marketing approach to one in which consumers have a much stronger voice.

The old days of slogans such as "Let Hertz put you in the driver’s seat” are being replaced by non-professional Pringles snack commercials created by teenagers and posted on YouTube.

Elliott quotes Procter & Gamble's CEO A. G. Lafley:

“Consumers are beginning in a very real sense to own our brands and participate in their creation,” he said. “We need to learn to begin to let go” and embrace trends like commercials created by consumers and online communities built around favorite products.

As corporations move away from hierarchical marketing - what I'd call we-know-what's-best-for-you marketing - to a more inclusive, bottom-up approach that sacrifices control for empowerment, what are the ramifications for the performing arts?

I think that the biggest impact will be for those performing artists who embrace this more open approach to creativity.

To apply this collaborative online web model - often referred to as Web 2.0 - to the performing arts, what we're really talking about is bringing audiences into the creative process at the inception of an idea not the opening of the curtain.

If audience members come to a performance with no or little background about a performance, then we're really talking about the Hertz car rental model: "Let Hertz put you in the driver’s seat” - literally and figuratively.

If we want to engage audience members early in the creative process and give them a voice, we have to move to the Pringles chip model. We need to create an platform that shares, via the Internet, the entire process of creating a performance from initial concept through rehearsals all the way through to opening night. And simultaneously, there have to be non-stop opportunities throughout this development process for people who are interested to share their ideas and feedback as well as contribute their own content.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:09 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 12, 2006

The Art of Community Tagging for Dance Events

If you are involved in a dance performance where you expect and want audience members and dancers to take a lot of pictures and post them to the web, then it's important to make sure that Internet users can find this multimedia content.

For example, in my new Dance That Matters blog, I just wrote a story about a recent community dance project called "One River Mississippi."

This type of site-specific performance that takes place at multiple outdoors locations is ideal for taking a lot of pictures and videos and putting them on the web.

But an important question is: Once people upload their pictures and videos to multiple websites, how can Internet users easily find this visual recap of the One River Mississippi dance performances?

Flickr Picture of "One River Mississippi"
By Bob Morrison Photography

The answer is the use and promotion of a consistent tagging system. If you are promoting a dance performance and you want people to take pictures and videos, then you want to encourage everybody to use the same tags to identify their multimedia content.

For example, in my post about One River Mississippi, I provided a link to the photo site Flickr where there are some pictures of this dance program. The Flickr link I included was for all photos that matched the keywords "one river mississippi." This is not a very precise way to conduct a search - especially if there are a lot of photos on Flickr that for one reason or another have these keywords but have nothing to do with this series of dance performances. As you'll see on the search results on Flickr, after the first seven matches, the pictures do not have anything to do with this program.

What would be better is if everybody who took pictures of this event simply used the same pre-determined tag for all their relevant photos. The tag might be "onerivermissdance2006". This way anybody interested in this event could search Flickr and other multimedia sites for pictures and videos of these dance performances.

There is also another important benefit to promoting on your website this common tagging scheme before the start of a dance event. If you encourage visitors to your website to take pictures and videos of the performances and then upload them to various websites, you'll get a lot more exposure and publicity for your event - all because you're promoting a standardized approach to tagging.

Then during and after your performance, you can add links to photo and video sharing websites where user multimedia content of your event is uploaded. You only have to create a single link for each site because all users will be tagging this content with the same keyword.

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:00 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

June 26, 2006

Watch Avatars Dancing in SecondLife

On June 9th, I wrote a post, "Dancing in the Second Life Virtual World." In this post, I wrote about Rik Panganiban's thoughts about the limitations of avatar dancing in such virtual environments. He followed-up with a comment where he provided a link to a few video clips that show you exactly what it looks like to dance in SL - I encourage you to watch these clips.

Even though these animated dance videos are rudimentary at this point, I think that SL and other virtual worlds should be taken seriously by dancers. As Phoenix Psaltery, who also posted a comment to my post about dancing in SL, wrote:

Yes, Second Life has shortcomings when it comes to things like dance and other activities that use a lot of personal expression, but please understand that SL is really in its infancy as far as what will someday be possible. It's come a long way in just three years; imagine what it will be like in three more, or ten more.

Already SL is a real cash economy where users are buying products with the virtual world's Linden Dollars that can be exchange for real money. In addition, a post in B2Day blog links to story about how Amazon is exploring how to link the SL virtual world to its web services so that physical products can be sold from within SecondLife.

Imagine visiting a dance clothing boutique in SL, trying on shoes and clothing and then purchasing the real merchandise from within this store? Or watching a SL-based performance by a dance company and being able to purchase video clips of the "real world" performance by the same group.

There are many possibilities and as the ability to control dancing avatars continues to improve in this parallel universe, many new doors will be opened for dancers.

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:40 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 20, 2006

Where Are the Dance Video Previews?

This morning in Rojo - my newsfeed aggregator and reader - I came across an article "Feats (and follies) of technology: Two exhibits illustrate how it can either elevate or obfuscate works" from the Boston Globe. (I subscribe to the dance feeds from Topix.net, which is how I found this article.)

So I visit this article on Boston Globe since anything that combines dance and technology is usually something I'm interested in learning more about. This article is, in part, about "Choreographic Turn," a dance film exhibit that "explores new ways to film dance." This work is the result of a collaboration between filmmaker Peter Welz and dancer and choreographer William Forsythe who is the former director of the Frankfurt Ballet and the founder of the Forsythe Company.

Now to what baffles me:

Here is a dance exhibit that not only incorporates dance film, but actually explores new approaches to filming dance. My question is if you are already working with film or video and you are intrigued by the possibilities of this medium, how is it not possible to think about creating a video preview of this exhibit for online distribution? I did a search for additional information about "Choreographic Turn," and all I find is text. I don't want to just read about this exhibit when one minute of video would provide me with a wealth of insight about this work.

So what I'm really addressing is what I continue to see as a huge disconnect between choreographers and filmmakers who work with video and the world of the Internet. These artists pretty much have everything they need to create a video trailer. They can upload a video and then encourage writers, bloggers and everybody else to link to this promotional video clip.

The end result is that more people would see their exhibits, their dance films and their dances. And the extra work involved in creating this video trailer is just not that great.

I could have used any of thousands of examples to make my point. There are many dance videographers and choreographers using video but who are not making promotional videos available online. But in the case of "Choreographic Turn," the missed opportunity seems so blatant to me that I had to write about it.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:12 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 2, 2006

An Online Blueprint for Making Dance More Relevant

As a follow-up to my post yesterday, "Reclaiming the Relevancy of Dance," I'd like to offer my initial ideas on how we might move forward with such a project.

First, I'd post a message to my blog saying that I'm creating a collection of links to dancers and dance companies that are in the process of creating dance works or have already created dance works that address a specific topic.

As dancers add content (descriptions, pictures, audio interviews and videos) to their websites, blogs and multimedia sites (YouTube, Flickr, etc.), they can then send me the links to these resources.

For example, I could post a message such as the following:

I'm creating a resource guide with links to dance performances (individual or group performances) that deal with the topic of global warming. If you have created such a performance, please send me links to the relevant websites. Clearly, the best type of resource is a video clip so that people can watch your performance. But pictures, text descriptions and audio guides are also worthwhile.

Your dance work does not have to be finished in order to participate in this project. If you've created diagrams or illustrations of costumes, for example, and posted these images to your website or blog, these would be of interest as well.

So overall the goal is to aggregate dances that deal with a specific topic as a way to reach a larger Internet audience. Environmental topics are especially worthwhile because once we put together a list of, say, ten existing dance works (either completed or in progress), I think this would be an excellent resource for the thousands upon thousands of websites and blogs that address environmental issues.

In the end, I think this project would help all participating dancers and dance companies get considerable exposure for their work and upcoming performances.

Once this project is up and running, it can go in a number of different directions. For example, once there are a handful of dance videos dealing with global warming, then we could launch a mashup competition and encourage people to create their own global warming dance mixes that can be uploaded to a public video gallery. It would be nice, of course, if we could find a sponsor for such a competition that would offer cash and other prizes for both the best dance videos and dance mashups -- this actually might be possible if there is enough interest in this project.

That's my idea. What do you think? Also, global warming is just one of many possible topics to focus on. What are some of the main themes and ideas you address in your dance pieces?

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:56 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 24, 2006

Revamping Press Releases for the Arts

I've received thousands of press releases over the years and I've read very few of them. They tend to be filled with lots of hype that don't shed much light on anything. There are usually a few meaningless executive quotes along with effusive customer praise.

But everybody continues to send out press releases in the traditional manner because that's the way it's always been done.

This approach to press releases is especially counterproductive for artists and arts organizations. Dance and the other arts are obviously about the visuals - pictures, videos, the spoken word and other multimedia elements. So if the standard press release is all text and the visuals are an afterthought, its tougher for artists to deliver their message in a compelling manner to writers.

Well, PR firm Shift Communications, with offices in Boston and San Francisco, has taken a shot at revamping the traditional press release into what I think is a much better approach.

Todd Defren of Shift Communications wrote a post in his PR Squared blog yesterday announcing the debuts of what he calls a "Social Media Press Release." (Click here to view PDF version of this new approach to press releases). Defren says that he was inspired to create this new format after reading a rant about the inanity of press releases by Tom Foremski in Silicon Valley Watcher.

If you examine the PDF template for the Social Media Press Release, you'll notice a number of new elements:

- New types of contact info. have been added - Skype #/IM address/blogs

- Bullet list of facts goes up front so that writers/journalists know what the press release is about. Writers just need facts and, as Foremski says, can add their own spin to the story.

- Link to purpose-built del.icio.us page and its corresponding RSS feed. (This is a mouthful. This means that the company that creates a press release also creates a list of relevant links on a dedicated webpage on the del.icio.us bookmarking site. So when reading a press release, a writer can click on the del.icio.us link and be taken to a single page of links that pertain to the focus of the press release.)

- Direct links toward the top of the press release to all multimedia content. So, for example, there are thumbnail images that link to pictures, audio files, graphics and videos.

The direct links to pictures and video I think are one of the most helpful elements of this new press release format. If a writer or journalist opens a press release with colorful pictures that link to multimedia content, it will be much easier to grab their attention. This is better than the standard text-only format that has a message at the bottom of the release that says "pictures available upon request." Even if a writer makes it to the bottom of your press release, it is too much of a hassle to contact you to get pictures when you can just as easily post them to the web for immediate download.

You can see an actual example of a Social Media Press Release by accessing the press release for this new type of press release.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:48 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 22, 2006

Funding Your Next Dance Performance

How would you like to guarantee that your dance company receives at least a minimum dollar amount for your next performance? Or, alternatively, how would you like to raise money to renovate a dance studio?

The Internet offers intriguing new ways for nonprofits to go about raising money.

Visit Fundable to learn about their online fundraising application. You can create your own fundraising campaign, say, for a dance performance. You might indicate that you are seeking to raise a minimum of $1,000 to perform next month at a specified location. You are seeking minimum contributions of $25 per person (essentially the desired ticket price). If you reach your goal of $1,000, the performance will take place; if not, there will be no performance. Those who commit to contribute to your campaign are only charged if you reach your goal. Otherwise, nobody pays a thing.

I did a search for "dance" on Fundable to see if any dance-related organizations have used this service. I came up with two matches:

- Olive Dance Theatre surpassed its $500 goal so that it could file an application with the IRS for obtaining a 501(c)3 nonprofit, tax-exempt status. The campaign ended on 12/06/05 and funds were distributed to the "group leader." But no follow-up details are provided. It would be nice to get a progress report.

- The South Carolina Multicultural Arts Center (SC McAC, Inc.) sought to raise $1,000 to renovate a dance studio. It successfully raised $500 to date and received these funds when the campaign ended on 12/12/2005. You can learn more about this fundraising effort on the SC McAC site. On their site, however, they seek to raise funds directly and don't mention their use of Fundable. I guess they don't want to pay the fees. But this is sort of counterproductive because the public cannot track their overall success in raising money for their studio renovation.

I came across Fundable as well as a related service Chipin, while reading a post on Mashable.

Technorati Tags: dance, fundraising, marketing, nonprofit

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:11 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 19, 2006

Create Your Own Dance Remix Contest

Warner Brothers and RES Media Group are building buzz for the upcoming "A Scanner Darkly" through a remix contest.

There are two ways to participate in this video mashup contest. You can either use the online video editing application Jumpcut to create your own remix. Or you can download all of the needed files (video, music and dialogue) and use your favorite video editing software program.

I'd like to see this approach offered by dancers and dance companies. The difference would be that participants could add their own dance clips to the mix if they wished to have their own performances included in their mashups.

For example, you could create a video with a dance sequence that tells a story along with music that you've licensed or have permission to freely distribute. Then participants would be encouraged to create a remix of your dance sequence, story line and music track. Participants could also create a video of their own dance moves and add it to their final remix.

[via Random Culture]

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:40 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 16, 2006

Arts Marketing Conference Wrap-Up

Last month I wrote about the National Arts Marketing Project Conference.

Last week I came across two favorable posts about this program. Maryann Devine in SmArts & Culture shares her impressions. And Neill Archer Roan in Building Brands and Bottom Lines writes:

Imagine being among 500 marketing executives from museums, dance companies, arts councils, orchestras, theatre companies, presenting organizations, recording companies, galleries, et al - who are all focused on building audiences and participation for the arts. That's what the Arts & Business Council of Americans for the Arts has created for the cultural sector here in Los Angeles for the last three days.

Neill especially enjoyed the P2P marketing sessions moderated by Alan Brown that covered buzz marketing strategies. I wrote about Alan last month as well when I discussed an interesting paper of his about how to more actively engage audiences in the arts.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:40 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 8, 2006

Building a Take a Friend to a Dance Performance Program

Drew McManus in his Adaptistration blog shares his thoughts about my interest in replicating his Take a Friend to the Orchestra (TAFTO) program in the dance world.

On April 25th, I wrote about the TAFTO program and recommended a Take a Friend to a Dance Performance based on Drew's original concept.

In my post I said that there may be more challenges promoting this type of program for dance performances than for concert music.

But Drew in his Friday post is more upbeat and points out that all grassroots efforts are worthwhile whether they reach just a handful of people or much larger audiences:

Grass roots initiatives are grass roots initiatives regardless of whether or not there is one or 1,000 people involved. The fact that a passionate supporter would be willing to do something which increases awareness and exposes an art to individuals that may not otherwise have an opportunity is a good thing.

Plus Drew points out you never know when a grassroots initiative will lead to something much bigger:

A TAFTO effort in one city may be a one shot wonder, never to happen again. However, a TAFTO event in another city may lead to the formation of familiar social groups which center on attending classical music events. Those groups may form a tight core of persons who develop enough concern that they decide to form an orchestra society to raise funds orchestra projects they care about.

Technorati Tags: dance, marketing, music, performance, word of mouth

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:38 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 3, 2006

Email Marketing Tips

I'm in the mood for tech tips this week. So following-up on yesterday's post about improving your online ticketing system, here are 17 suggestions for enhancing your email marketing campaigns:

1) Build your email list: Always collect email addresses from people who are likely to be interested in your dance performances and related offerings. Encourage audience members to sign-up for your free email blasts. Add line in your email signature file that promotes your email newsletter. And promote email newsletter in all online and offline promotional materials.

2) Create email form: Ensure that visitors to your website can easily register for your email newsletter or periodic email blasts. The fewer questions you ask, the more subscribers you will get, the more questions you ask, the better you'll understand your audience.

3) Sample newsletter: It's a good idea to include a link on your email sign-up page for a sample of your email newsletter so that prospective subscribers will know what they will receive.

4) HTML or text: If you can afford the extra work and your email system supports it, it is best to offer subscribers a choice of either a graphic HTML or a text version of your email newsletters. While you may be able to send multi-part MIME emails (email messages that combine HTML and text versions in a single file and the appropriate one opens in user's email client), this combined approach has its downsides. Plus, many more people open email with their handheld device or mobile phone and they want small, text-only files.

5) Single opt-in or double opt-in: Should you require new subscribers to confirm by email that they really want to receive your email broadcasts? While this double opt-in approach ensures that all of your subscribers intended to subscribe, you'll lose customers because some people won't complete the subscription process by responding to your confirmation request. My general recommendation is to stick with the single opt-in approach.

6) Audience segmentation: In some cases, you'll want to send different email content to different groups of subscribers. If this is the case, you'll want to segment your email lists into different sub-groupings. For instance, you might segment customers based on season/series ticket holders, frequent audience members, rarely attend and new customers/never attended. You could also segment by sponsors/donors/advertisers/audience members. You'd then send different emails/campaigns to each segment.

7) Avoid the spam folder: On the email confirmation page that users see after they enter their email address, provide specific details about your email broadcasts so that your emails are actually read by subscribers. The most important detail is that you list the "from" address for your emails. This way if subscribers are motivated they can include your email address as one of the email senders whose message they do want to receive.

8) Privacy information: Describe your privacy policy. As a general rule, you should not use or distribute email addresses for any purpose other then sending the requested email broadcasts.

9) Choosing the day of week: I haven't read many studies lately about the best time to send email broadcasts. Going back a few years, the best results usually occurred on mid-mornings on either Tuesday or Wednesday. I think the logic still holds. On Monday people are overwhelmed. By mid-morning on Tuesday or Wednesday, recipients have already had their morning coffee. And by Thursday, most people are just thinking about the weekend.

10) Subject lines: There are many theories about what to put in the email subject line. For starters, don't include any words such as "money," "win" or words likely to be picked-up by spam filters. Some email broadcasters just put the name of their organizations or events in the subject. But most include a benefit or description of what is included in the email. My approach, which I'd probably change in specific situations, is to go with an upbeat description of what's included in your email newsletter. If you go only with the straight benefit, it can easily sound like excessive hype and nobody will open your newsletter.

11) Format: Whether you deliver a graphic html or text email message, the usual approach is to write short descriptions of each story or offering with a link to a page (usually on your website) where readers can get additional information. This approach makes sense because most people don't read more than a couple of sentences deep about a specific story. Make sure the title for each story/offering is clear and compelling.

12) Content: The odds are you'll be using your newsletter to promote performances, classes and related events. What will grab the attention of subscribers will usually be compelling content associated with your performance or class. Personally, I like multimedia content. If you give me a link to an audio or video file of the choreographer discussing your upcoming performance, I'll definitely watch it. But work with what you have. Or, alternatively, offer special deals if recipients act by a specific deal. For instance, "Our email subscribers can purchase tickets before they are available to the general public. Buy tickets by May 10th and receive 10% discount."

13) HTML newsletters: If you include pictures and graphics in the HTML version of your newsletter, keep the files small so they load quickly. Also, make sure that the links to all of your graphics are permanent and not relative URLs. Send your HTML newsletter to two separate email addresses to test formatting and to ensure that images appear properly.

14) Test your newsletters: In addition to recommendation 13, always do test runs of your email newsletters - HTML and text. Check all of the links to make sure that they actually work and that you are taken to the proper page. It is a hassle to test all of the links. But if you don't do it, your subscribers will inevitably encounter problems.

15) Track "opens" and "click-throughs": If your email application supports it, track the number of delivered emails, the number of emails that are opened (viewed) by subscribers and the number of times that each link is clicked on. If you also collect demographic data about your subscribers such as location, age and type of patron, you can also create cross-tab reports that show you click through rates based upon this demographic data.

16) Modify mailings: Based-upon the reports you generated from section 15, you will want to modify the content of your email newsletters. You will learn what subject lines work the best, what types of stories are of greatest interest and which performance promotional campaigns are the most successful. Whatever works the best, you'll want to do again in future emails.

17) No-hassle unsubscribe: Absolutely make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe from your email newsletter. On every email that you send out, there should be an unsubscribe link that, with a single click, removes the person from your list.

Technorati Tags: dance, email, how-to, marketing, performance, promotion

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:14 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 2, 2006

Perform a Checkup of Your Online Ticketing System

Can your customers purchase tickets online for your upcoming dance performances?

If yes, it's a good idea to test your online ticketing system to ensure that everything works properly. Whether people can buy tickets directly on your website or link to a third-party ticketing site, the entire process has to work smoothly and effectively or you will end-up losing customers.

Conducting an Audit of Your Online Ticketing System

1) Website links: When you list the details about your upcoming performances on your website, you probably include a link that users click on to purchase tickets. Make sure that this link takes users to the correct page. For example, if users are taken to a third-party ticketing website, the link should take users directly to the page which includes your performance details - do not link users to the home page of the 3rd-party ticketing site.

2) Email blasts: When you promote performances in email broadcasts, you'll want to include a link for purchasing tickets. Always send a test email to yourself before sending out the message to all of your recipients. Verify that all links - including the links for purchasing tickets - work properly in both the text and graphic versions of your newsletter.

3) Logistics: Are all of the required details included along with the description of your performance? For example, is the date, time, address, transportation details, maps, accessibility and all other information available to your website visitors? When listing the date, always include the year. When listing the address, always include the Zip Code. Verify that when users open a map, they are actually viewing the correct location for your venue.

4) Printing and email: Make sure that users can print all of the logistics details and that the printed page is legible and properly formatted. Also make it easy for users to email this logistics page to themselves and others.

5) Seating chart: Include a seating chart so that users can clearly see the locations of all sections at your venue. Label each section so that users can figure out which tickets they want to purchase.

6) Buy two tickets: Use a dummy credit card number to purchase two tickets -- better yet, get somebody who is not familiar with your website to buy tickets for your performance.

7) Clear instructions: During each step of the purchasing process are all instructions clear? Is anything confusing? Are required fields clearly indicated? If you enter the wrong information or don't complete a required field, does the error message make sense?

8) Ticket availability: If tickets are not available for a performance, is there a message that states that tickets for this performance have been sold out?

9) Selecting tickets: Is the process of selecting your desired tickets easy? If one type of ticket is listed as "Balcony section," does this make sense and correspond to the graphic seating chart?

10) Billing details: Can you enter one address for the billing address of the credit card holder and another one for your mailing address?

11) Will call: If you are purchasing the tickets within a few days of the performance, is there a clear indication that you can pick-up your tickets at the performance venue and that the tickets will not be mailed to you?

12) Confirmation page: Is a review page displayed before you click the actual "purchase" button? Can you edit any of the details if you need to make changes?

13) Credit card transaction: Once you click the "purchase" button, what happens? Does everything work properly? Do you get a confirmation page? Does the confirmation page give you a transaction number? Are you told how you will get your tickets? Does this confirmation page include all of the performance details along with the location and is it easy to print?

14) Email receipt: Do you receive an email receipt with all of the transaction and performance details (minus credit card number)? Can you print this email and take all of the performance details with you?

15) Telephone number: On the confirmation page or in the email message, are you given a phone number to call if you have questions about your tickets or the performance?

Technorati Tags: dance, ecommerce, performance

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:16 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 28, 2006

Dance to the News

I was browsing the posts on the Springwise blog, a global network of "spotters" who identify the latest entrepreneurial trends, and came across a story about T-post, a Swedish company that offers a t-shirt subscription service.

Here's how it works: You subscribe to this t-shirt service and every 6-weeks you receive a new t-shirt with a news-specific theme. You can access the archive to review all of the news-themed t-shirts and on the bottom left of each page you can read about the news story that inspired the design.

I was thinking that this news-driven t-shirt concept would be great for a dance company. Why not create a new two-minute long dance work every couple of weeks or so that is based upon a current news event? Then videotape the performance and distribute it on the Internet. I think this type of video would generate a lot of traffic because many news websites and blogs would feature your video. Plus, there are probably ways to sell sponsorship and generate a new source of revenue.

The challenge, I think, would be to figure out what news stories to cover and how to stage your dance pieces in an optimal manner for video reproduction.

Technorati Tags: dance, marketing, news, video

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:00 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 27, 2006

Monetizing Your Dance Videos

Brightcove, a commercial platform for distributing video content over the Internet, launches its public beta program today.

After watching the video tour and reading an overview of their service, Brightcove looks like an intriguing way for video content owners of any size to generate revenue through ads, sales and affiliate network distribution.

While popular sites like YouTube are a great way to get exposure for your dance videos, you end-up reaching a lot of eyeballs but you don't generate any revenue.

The concept behind Brightcove is to provide video publishers with a system that allows you to organize your videos into channels, determine how you will generate revenue and choose who will have access to your video content.

You could, for instance, create three video channels:

1) Dance performance previews

2) Performance videos for the web

3) Dance instruction videos

The first category you could distribute for free. The performance videos you might distribute as part of the Brightcove advertising network and video ads would be inserted each time your video plays. You would get a cut of this advertising revenue. And the third category - dance instruction videos - you might offer on a pay-per-view basis.

I think it's time to experiment with services such as Brightcove because there is clearly money to be made - the main question comes down to what the optimal business model is. Will Internet users pay for dance content? How much will they pay for different types of videos? Or is the advertising model the best approach for dance video distribution?

Technorati Tags: brightcove, dance, instruction, performance, ppv, tv, video

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:56 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 26, 2006

Altarholics Spread the Word About Altar Boyz

Altar Boyz, the Off-Broadway musical comedy that spoofs boy bands along the lines of "Spinal Tap," launched what I think is a fascinating community website for its intensely loyal fans - the "Altarholics." (Read New York Times article to learn more about show's passionate fans.)

The Altarholics site, designed by word of mouth marketing company Affinitive, is by far the most engaging community-focused promotional platform I've ever come across in the performing arts world. I strongly encourage you to sign-up for free access so that you can explore the sites many interactive capabilities.

At heart, the Altarholics site is about encouraging fans to become active participants of the Altar Boyz community so that they will share their enthusiasm with their friends. If you write a testimonial, you earn "Communion Wafers" that let you win prizes - often involving interaction with cast members. Users are encouraged to email and IM (instant message) their friends as well as add banners to websites and post promotional copy to message boards - in all cases graphic banners, icons and complete code are provided to simplify this process. And the site has so far featured 23 different competitions that engage fans in countless ways - from designing an Altar Boyz decal for T-shirts worn by Altarholics at an upcoming AIDS Walk to encouraging fans who attended an Altarholics appreciation party to write reviews of the event in their own blogs.

There is also a message board and chat room so that fans can interact. And you can view a list of top members based upon the number of "Wafers" that they've earned.

There's a lot of good food for thought here and I'm sure a lot of these ideas can be transferred to promoting dance performances.

Technorati Tags: broadway, marketing, theater, word of mouth

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:00 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 25, 2006

Take a Friend to a Dance Performance

Music blogger Drew McManus started a wonderful program last year that encourages classical music fans to take their uninitiated friends to the orchestra. The 2006 Take a Friend to Orchestra (TAFTO) month is just wrapping-up now and is a great example of how bloggers, musicians, classical music enthusiasts and administrators can join together through the Internet to spread their love of concert music.

Drew McManus, a musician, administrator and consultant, writes the Adaptistration blog, which is devoted to orchestra management. You can read his "All About TAFTO 2006" post to learn about this audience-building initiative. Then, you can read his post from yesterday, "TAFTO 2006 After Action Report," to read posts from bloggers and others who share their experiences of taking their friends to see an orchestra.

As I wrote in my comment to Drew's post, I think the TAFTO program is wonderful for two reasons. First, it's simply a fun way to get people who don't usually go to live musical performances to attend a classical music program. Second, I enjoyed reading the posts from the many music bloggers who participated in TAFTO. In the dance world, unfortunately, there simply are not that many bloggers writing about dance. And just about nobody is having blog conversations about the challenges facing the dance community. Edward McPherson in his Onward and Upward blog writes about some of the economic challenges facing dance and I cover similar topics, but that's about it. It would be great to see a more vibrant blogging community covering both dance performances as well as the business of dance.

I'm not really sure what it would take to expand the dance blogosphere, but it would be great if it does happen.

Getting back to TAFTO. Drew emailed me a nice message after I posted my comment last night and expressed my interest in pursuing a similar program for dance. One of his suggestions was that the dance community could create such a program that could take place the month before or after his April 2007 TAFTO program. That way both a Take a Friend to the Orchestra and a Take a Friend to a Dance Performance could be marketed together. I think that would be an excellent idea and plan to explore it. If you have thoughts on a such a program to build audiences for dance, I'd be delighted to hear them.

Technorati Tags: dance, performance, marketing, word of mouth

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:19 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 21, 2006

Build Buzz with Dance Event Photo Contest

I was just exploring the community-oriented events calendar Upcoming and I came across an event listing for the Bay Area National Dance Week, which starts today (link to National Dance Week website).

The Upcoming event tracking website, owned by Yahoo, is part of the Web 2.0 trend in that it allows users to tag events of interest and network with others who are tracking the same events. If you visit the profile page for Bay Area National Dance Week on Upcoming, you'll see a list of who's attending this event and whose watching this event (just a handful of people so far). At this point, nobody has added any tags for this event.

Bay Area National Dance Week

On the Bay Area National Dance Week site, you can explore all of the performances, demonstrations and classes that are taking place over the next 10 days. Sounds like a lot of fun.

As part of this dance event, the organizer is promoting an amateur photo contest. Participants/attendees can take pictures and submit them with the opportunity to win plane tickets and other prizes. I like the idea of a photo contest, but the way this contest is structured does not help promote this week's dance event or future Bay Area dance programs. Essentially, this is an old-school photo contest. You actually have to submit pictures by snail mail.

If I were organizing this photo contest, this is what I'd do:

1) I'd offer a competition for both videos and pictures.

2) Encourage all performers/instructors/lecturers to provide a blanket waiver that allows pictures and videos to be shot during any of their programs - no flash photography.

3) I'd include on the dance event website a listing all of performers who have signed the blanket waiver and who have not signed the blanket waiver. This way people who want to participate in the photo and video contest would know when they are allowed to take pictures and video.

4) I'd encourage everybody who participates to post their pictures and videos on high-traffic multimedia hosting websites.

5) I'd create an online submission form so that anybody who took pictures and video could submit their entries for the competition along with a URL for the location of their files.

For starters, my approach would get more people involved in the competition. It is too time-consuming to print pictures and submit them by mail. If participants can upload their pictures and video to any website(s) they wish, thousands of people can look at them and learn about this dance event while it's taking place, which is likely to build a much larger dance audience as this 10-day event progresses.

My approach instantly builds large-scale world-of-mouth marketing with zero investment on the part of the dance event organizer. The dancers get more exposure and more people get excited about dance.

Technorati Tags: calendar, dance, performance, upcoming, web2.0

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:55 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 20, 2006

Last.fm and the Future of Dance Videos

I think that dancers and dance companies are missing out on such a wonderful opportunity to use the Internet to reach larger audiences, build excitement for upcoming performances and generate revenue from online sales. I've said this before, but what made me think more about this missed opportunity is the Last.fm website.

Last.fm is a social networking site for music fans. Users can tag and categorize songs, create customized radio stations, write their own journals and join communities with those who share similar musical tastes. You can also have your playlists automatically displayed on your Last.fm profile page for others to view, listen to the radio stations of your friends and see which songs and musical groups are the most popular.

Last.fm, like MySpace, is simply a great way for musicians to build audiences for their music within the context of community-focused websites -- the fastest growing sector of the web.

There's nothing comparable in the dance world. Dancers and dance companies don't post their videos to the web so there can be no community-driven marketplace where dance fans can watch dance clips, tag videos and form communities with others.

But imagine if there were thousands of dance videos online. Dance enthusiasts could create customized TV channels with their favorite videos, share their channels with friends, and meet others with similar tastes. Such a service would enable dancers and dance companies to build larger audiences and at the same time create an online marketplace for selling dance videos.

One thing in particular that I don't understand is that there are many dance on camera film festivals around the world. This obviously means that thousands of dancers already have their works in digital format. So what is stopping them from uploading their videos to the Internet? Why are they not using these videos for promotional purposes? Why are they not trying to sell them online through Google Video and other services?

And in the bigger picture, the online universe is simply so incredibly large that it just doesn't make any sense to ignore it any longer.

I used to watch the TV game show "Let's Make a Deal" when I was younger. Contestants had to choose one of three doors. If they picked the right one, they won some wonderful prizes. If they picked the wrong door, they would end-up with some meaningless gift.

But imagine that before choosing a door, host Monty Hall said, "Now, we want you to choose one of these three doors. Before you choose a door, I want you to know that there is one million dollars behind door number two. OK, go ahead and choose a door."

What does the contestant do? He says, "I choose door number one."

I'm not saying that dancers are going to make a fortune anytime soon. But I am saying that there is a disconnect of massive proportions that does not make any sense. If there are millions of Internet users behind door number two. It is not logical to pick door number one.

Technorati Tags: dance, last.fm, myspace, web2.0

Posted by Doug Fox at 1:17 PM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

April 17, 2006

Embracing the Inventive Spirit of the Internet

The dance community has a serious challenge on its hands:

If the Internet culture is marked by interaction and contribution, and the dance culture is marked by observation and passivity, how can dance presenters and dance companies expect to grow audiences for future performances?

My short answer is that it will be very difficult unless the dance community seeks new ways to engage audiences.

The Internet is a very vibrant form of communication. Millions of Internet users are creating content, building upon what others have contributed, and collecting and organizing their favorite movies, songs and pictures. On the other hand, audiences at dance performance sit in their seats as passive observers without any opportunity to contribute to a performance. Can the performing arts world survive this stark contrast?

A New Framework for Audience Participation

In last Friday's post, "Word of Mouth Marketing Builds Audiences," I wrote about two educational sessions that will be moderated by arts marketing and management consultant Alan Brown at the upcoming National Arts Marketing Project Conference.

Alan has written some very insightful articles and studies including a July 2004 report, "The Values Study, Rediscovering the Meaning and Value of Arts Participation" (PDF).

In this report he creates a new framework in which arts participation is divided into five types or modes.

Click for Larger Image

Here is how these five categories are described:

"- Inventive Arts Participation engages the mind, body and spirit in an act of artistic creation that is unique and idiosyncratic, regardless of skill level.

- Interpretive Arts Participation is a creative act of self-expression that brings alive and adds value to pre-existing works of art, either individually or collaboratively.

- Curatorial Arts Participation is the creative act of purposefully selecting, organizing and collecting art to the satisfaction of one’s own artistic sensibility.

- Observational Arts Participation encompasses arts experiences that you select or consent to, motivated by some expectation of value.

- Ambient Arts Participation involves experiencing art, consciously or unconsciously, that is not purposefully selected -- art that happens to you."

In the context of this arts participation framework, how would you describe the way in which audiences participate in the performing arts and other cultural events?

Andrew Taylor, in his September 14, 2005 write-up about this report, wrote:

I'd suggest that the predominant (perhaps disproportional) emphasis of professional cultural nonprofits is the fourth mode on the list (observational). Have we been ignoring or discounting opportunities in the rest of the spectrum?

To see how different types of arts experiences are plotted within this framework, click on the following graphic (dance is in the bottom right-hand quadrant):

Click for Larger Image

Contrast the observational nature of most dance performances with how the Internet is used today. To use Alan's framework, millions of Internet users are either inventors, interpreters or curators. Anybody who shares a video, a song or a picture is an inventor. Likewise, the large majority of bloggers are inventors. A person who creates a video mashup by combining two or more videos is an interpreter. And every user of Apple iTunes is a music curator.

Here's a chart the shows the increase in the number of blogs tracked by Technorati. Currently, 35.3 million blogs are tracked and the blogosphere is 60 times bigger than it was three years ago - that represents a huge increase in the number of online "inventors":

Click for Larger Image

And here's a chart from Alexa that shows the millions of daily users for YouTube, Flickr and MySpace - all highly participatory and interactive communities:

Click for Larger Image

So with the help of Alan's framework and Andrew's question ("Have we been ignoring or discounting opportunities in the rest of the spectrum?"), I think the path for dance and the performing arts in general is pretty clear:

If Internet users are active participants and contributors (in other words, they are primarily "inventors" and "interpreters"), they will expect nothing less when they participate in arts programs. Thus, arts organizations will have to explore ways to move the predominant mode of participation away from the outer layers of the circle ("observational") and toward the heart of the circle where everybody can contribute, share and have their voice heard.

I don't think this process of broadening the available modes of arts participation is easy, but it is necessary.

Technorati Tags: arts, marketing, web2.0

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:03 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 14, 2006

Word of Mouth Marketing Builds Audiences

(Update 4/17/06: Julie Peel of Americans for the Arts, the producer of the National Arts Marketing Project Conference, pointed out to me that I missed an entire series of pre-conference educational programming that focuses on Internet marketing and the arts. You can read the agenda for the "Technology Boot Camp.")

I was just browsing the website for the Americans for the Arts National Arts Marketing Project Conference, which will take place at the end of April in Los Angeles, California. I was curious to learn if there were any presentations that dealt with online marketing strategies for arts organizations.

Unfortunately, there's no much. But I did come across two interesting sessions moderated by arts marketing and management consultant Alan Brown.

These workshops focus on "peer-to-peer" (P2P) marketing strategies that are based upon the idea of empowering influential and motivated customers to spread the word about upcoming arts programs. I happen to come across a slideshow presentation (PDF) from last November given by Alan Brown and Eric Haeker (Arts in Motion) that lays out the foundations for P2P marketing in the context of the arts.

Here's my summary of this slide presentation:

In a marketplace where customers want personalized offerings and the media is fragmented, word-of-mouth marketing is critical in determining how people spend their leisure time and money.

Given the importance of word-or-mouth (viral) marketing, it is important to identify your customer evangelists - the people who love your offerings - and provide these opinion makers, thought leaders and "activators" with the tools that will help them spread the word about your upcoming programs. Essentially, you want to build a free sales force that will get their friends, family members and colleagues to attend your programs.

Credit: Francois Portman

One of the peer-to-peer marketing examples in this presentation is for the October 2, 2005 performance of the Red Bull Artsehcro ("orchestra" spelled backwards) at Carnegie Hall that featured a fusion of classical and turntable music. "Influencers" were identified as the "resellers" who would promote this event on college campuses, printed materials were distributed to drive traffic to the website that featured a music mashup application, and other viral strategies targeted clubs, hip hop fans and extreme sports enthusiasts. That's my very brief summary. I encourage you to take a look at the presentation.

If you want to learn more about tapping into customer evangelists, you can read about "Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force" on Amazon.com and then link to books on buzz marketing.

The beauty of word-of-mouth marketing is that it's inexpensive and there are many online tools that can help you to empower your most enthusiastic customers. Essentially all of the social media and networking tools that I've been writing about lately are examples of viral marketing. If a customer creates a video mashup of a dance performance, they are going to send it to their friends without your involvement. All you have to do is provide the raw materials - video clips, audio tracks and a lot of encouragement.

Technorati Tags: arts, customer, marketing, mashups, viral, web2.0

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 11, 2006

Union Contracts Limit Online Revenue for Dancers

During The Washington Ballet labor dispute, which has since been resolved, I read some of the contracts between dance companies and the unions that represent the dancers.

What struck me about these contacts is that there are so many prohibitions against shooting video of performances and rehearsals that unless changes are made to these agreements, some of the most established dance companies will never be able to generate revenue from online video sales and promotions.

If I were an executive director of a dance company or a union representative, the first thing I would do is renegotiate the contract sections that relate to digital reproductions of performances, rehearsals and other dance formats. The online world, as I've written about extensively, represents a huge opportunity for dance companies to reach larger audiences, generate more revenue and ensure the financial health of dance. But the online world cannot be exploited without first addressing these contractual issues.

Here is a list of union contacts on the website for the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), which represents a number of US-based dance companies including The Washington Ballet.

Here is a portion of the Atlanta Ballet contract, section 41, that relates to "Filming, Broadcasting, Television, Etc.:"

Except as provided herein THE ATLANTA BALLET shall not videotape, film, broadcast, record or televise, including marketing of video cassettes and/or in-theater closed circuit television, any performances, rehearsals, concerts or engagements in which the ARTIST appears by wire, wireless, radio, telephone wireless process or any motion picture, recording, mechanical, electrical or telephone device now in use or hereafter developed or any combination of such devices...

The rest of this section goes along in the same vein. I can't begin to say how detrimental this contract language is for all involved in a dance company. Essentially dance companies and dancers are prohibiting themselves from exploring ways to make money through online sales and promotion.

This prohibition is ironic given the many financial challenges faced by dance companies in cities throughout the US. Here are two stories from last week that illustrate these challenges:

- "Hard Truths about Ballet in Southland," by Lewis Segal of the Los Angeles Times, covers the cancellation of Ballet Pacifica's first season.

- "Strapped Ohio Ballet Cancels Spring Series," by Wilma Salisbury of The Plain Dealer, covers the cancellation of the reminder of the Ohio Ballet's season.

Technorati Tags: ballet, dance, internet, marketing, union, video

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:00 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

April 10, 2006

Product Placement and E-Commerce Technology Offer New Career Opportunities for Dancers

PersonalScreen Media, a new producer of TV programming for the Internet, has introduced technology that enables viewers to get instant access to products, clothing and other items featured within a show. As you watch a show online, you can click on a dress, for example, get a pop-up screen that provides the details and purchase the dress through an integrated e-commerce system.

Click for Larger Image

I think that this type of integrated product placement and e-commerce functionality offers some great opportunities for dancers. Even though this market is very new, it strikes me that dance offers advertisers and retailers a quick and effective way to grab the attention of multi-tasking and easily-distracted Internet users.

You can learn more about PersonalScreen Media in an article in this morning's edition of ClickZ.

For more dance-specific possibilities for integrated e-commerce and product placement, read two recent stories I've written:

- "Nike Offers Marketing Campaign Featuring Hip Hop Dance Video" - Here's an impressive online marketing campaign that features a dance video, a breakdown of dance steps and the ability to buy the clothing worn by the dancers. ClickZ also has a recent article that provides background on the creation of this online Nike campaign.

Dance Video

- "Emerging Digital Dance Careers": In November I wrote about new career opportunities for dancers in the online world. One of the areas I discussed was product placement and a video ad from Nordstrom's that features the Go-Go's. Viewers can watch the video and buy the featured clothing and accessories.

Technorati Tags: ads, audition, career, dance, e-commerce, marketing, video

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:22 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 7, 2006

New Dance Film Promoted Through Video Mashups

Today the Antonio Banderas "Take the Lead" dance movie opens in theaters.

While I haven't read any positive reviews of this film, New Line Cinema's marketing strategy has generated a lot of buzz for its unconventional approach.

At the heart of its pre-release promotional efforts has been the music mashup feature on the official website that I wrote about on March 29th. In addition Internet users have been encouraged to create video mashups (video mixes) that are actually sanctioned by the studio - although at this point the video mashups appear to be semi-official and done by video DJs. Three video mashups are featured in the video section of the official movie site. And you can also watch the trailer and mashups on popular video services such as YouTube and Google.

Here's the official trailer and mashups so you can watch examples:

Watch Official Theatrical Trailer

Watch Addictive TV Remix

Watch Eclectic Method Remix

Watch DJ 2nd Nature Remix

Technorati Tags: dance, mashups, marketing, video

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:40 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 5, 2006

A New Business Model for Dance Companies

Since starting my blog in September of last year, I've come across many depressing stories about the economic perils faced by dance companies. Some dance companies simply can't survive or their economic health remains tenuous.

In an article in today's New York Times [via Downtown Dancer], choreographer Bill T. Jones is quoted:

"You don't make a damn cent in dance."

That succinctly sums up the problem.

The question for dance-makers is the following: Given the constant financial challenges, what new approaches can be taken to improve the economic conditions of dancers and dance companies? Or, better yet, how can more dance companies ensure that they have a healthy and secure financial future?

I have a two-part answer:

1) Dance companies should broaden the sources from which they seek financial support, and

2) Dance companies should seek commissions for dance works that have both a live and online component.

Science and Dance - A New Partnership

Before providing an explanation of my two-part solution, I need to highlight a trend that has potentially wonderful ramifications for dance.

Over the past half year, I've noticed that a number of dance companies have been exploring scientific and technological themes in their works.

Here are just a few examples:

- Rambert Dance Company: "Constant Speed" (Physics)

- Australian Dance Theatre: "Devolution" (Robotics)

- Liz Lerman Dance Exchange: "Ferocious Beauty: Genome" (Genetics/DNA)

- San Francisco Ballet: "Ballet Mori" (Earth Science)

These dance works are very intriguing because they offer examples of how human movement can serve to give audiences a different and enhanced way of reflecting on science and technological developments.

There is also an economic component to the fusion of dance and science. Focusing on scientific themes makes good business sense for dancers. There happen to be thousands upon thousands of scientific, technological, medical and related companies that need to market and promote their products and services. And the art form of dance is already showing itself to be a compelling means of explaining, exploring and grappling with scientific and technological developments and changes.

So what better partnership could there be than for dance companies to seek commissions or other forms of financial support from private companies in the scientific and technological arena?

Plus, there is one more element that I want to point out about companies in the technology/scientific realm: They appreciate the importance of leveraging the Internet to reach their customers - I'll elaborate on this point in just a moment.

Back to My Two-Part Solution

As I just explained, dance is a wonderful way to explore and make vivid a huge range of scientific topics. So the first component of my plan is straightforward: Seek commissions/funding/sponsorship from companies in the scientific, technological, medical and related fields - or funding from associations, foundations and related entities that represent these companies.

The second component of my plan is a little trickier because it has not been done yet - but it represents a huge growth area for dance.

The economics of dance companies, which, as Bill T. Jones explained, is miserable, is not going to significantly change until dancers find financially profitable ways to exploit the Internet. The logic is simple. Even in the best of circumstances, you can have only so many people who are going to buy a ticket to watch a performance. The Internet, on the other hand, allows you to reach an audience of potentially unlimited size.

So in addition to seeking commissions from scientific and technological companies, you'll want to propose dance works to these corporations that are designed for the theater as well as the online world.

This dual-track approach to performance will be much more compelling to potential sponsors. Not only will they receive the traditional benefits of sponsoring a dance performance, but they will receive the many benefits that come with helping to underwrite the Internet-based version of your dance piece as well.

From your perspective, you'll be able to raise more money, there will be good synergies between your live performances and their online component, and you will be able to generate additional revenue from online sales.

But I'm leaving out one critical component: What is the structure and nature of the online component of your dance performance and how specifically will you make money from it?

To be continued...

Technorati Tags: business, dance, marketing, performance, technology

Posted by Doug Fox at 2:54 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 31, 2006

New Strategies for Booking Dance Companies

Performing arts booking conferences serve to bring presenters and performers together for business, networking and educational purposes. In the world of dance, this means that presenters (performing arts venues, dance festivals, tour organizers and promoters) have an opportunity to see performances and book dance companies.

To explore an example of an upcoming performing arts booking conference, you can visit the site for Performing Arts Exchange, an event that will take place in Baltimore, Maryland from September 27-30, 2006.

While these face-to-face encounters and performance showcases, offer excellent opportunities for assessment, interaction and learning, they are just one component of what could be a much larger and richer collaborative endeavor to book performances for an upcoming season.

What these booking conferences lack is large-scale, structured input from audiences (or potential audiences) about the types of dance performances that are of greatest interest to them. And until the emergence of what is now referred to as the Web 2.0, there was not really a mechanism whereby dance enthusiasts could contribute in a meaningful way to indicating their preferences for specific dance companies and preferred types of performances.

For a good introduction to the Web 2.0, you can read this week's cover story in Newsweek, "The New Wisdom of the Web."

Here is my scenario of how the more collaborative culture of the Web 2.0 can play a role in helping presenters book performances that are appealing to larger, more diverse audiences:

- Imagine that all dance companies participating in an upcoming performing arts booking conference created a profile on a social networking site - I'll use MySpace as an example, although the young demographic profile of this site's users is not completely on target for the purpose of dance performances. On their MySpace profile page, dance companies can describe their upcoming performances and include links to performance video clips on YouTube and pictures on Flickr.

- In addition to or instead of MySpace, some dance companies may have their own blogs where they write about their dance company and performances.

- Now web surfers with an interest in dance start viewing the MySpace profiles and reading blog entries as well as watch dance videos and view pictures.

- Dance enthusiasts can respond to this dance company content in many different ways. Maybe a dance fan posts a message to his or her blog about one of the dance company's videos. Another dancer saves the link for a set of dance photos to the collaborative bookmarking site Del.icio.us. Another adds a MySpace profile of a dance company to their friend's list on My Space. Another saves a dance video to their YouTube favorites and posts a comment.

Tag Cloud from Flickr
Cloud show more popular tags by size

- Even more fruitful is that as dance fans explore, write about, comment on, save and evaluate the online dance content, they are constantly categorizing (tagging) the pictures, videos, links and other resources that they like. A video might be categorized, for example, by tagging it "moderndance" and "environment" - I'm assuming that a modern dance piece happens to deal with an environmental theme. Once this video is tagged, it is then possible to find this clip by using either tag as a search term. So if you enter "moderndance" into the video search engine, you'll see a listing for this environmentally-focused modern dance work.

And now to jump way too quickly to the end result: Let's imagine that the above collaborative activity has been taking place for two months preceding a booking conference. What kind of new insights would presenters and dance companies have?

- They could explore the social networks created around specific dance companies on sites such as MyFriends. Why are some dance companies very popular and have hundreds or thousands of "friends" while others do not? Is this just a popularity contest or are there meaningful insights that can be gleaned from these explicitly expressed connections? Are certain styles of dance, themes or creative intent more captivating than others?

- By accessing the blog search engine and analysis tool Technorati, they can find out what types of conversations have emerged around the blog postings of specific dance companies and dance fans. What are the hot ideas that are being debated? What do people like and dislike? What are the challenging, disruptive questions?

- On YouTube, videos can be searched by the number of views and comments can be reviewed to determine how viewers reacted to the dance clips. What are the most popular dance videos and why? Do the top 10 most popular videos share something in common? What key terms have been used to categorize different types of dance videos?

- On Flickr, as with YouTube, dance pictures can be considered by popularity and reviews can be scanned to understand viewer reactions.

- And on bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us, saved links can be analyzed by what tags dance fans used to categorize their favorite videos, pictures and other resources. Do the tagging schemes of users indicate that there are specific themes that especially capture their interest? And which of these links have been bookmarked by the largest number of users?

Above I'm just scratching the surface in terms of the range of ways that Web 2.0 data and connections can be evaluated and analyzed to gain an understanding of what dance enthusiasts are looking for in terms of dance performances. But hopefully, it offers a glimpse into what some of the possibilities are in terms of the emerging collaborative web.

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

March 30, 2006

Getting Started with Podcasting

On Tuesday I wrote about picture blogging for dancers. Today I want to talk about audio podcasting.

One of the benefits of photo blogging is that you can focus on sharing pictures of dance rehearsals and performances as opposed to spending a lot of time writing posts a few times a week for your blog.

The same time-saving benefits also hold true for adding audio messages to your blog. I think it would be great to be able to listen to dancers and choreographers talk about their work and other activities on a regular basis. Say, for example, I could go to Bill T. Jones' new blog and listen to him talk about what he's up to in the world of dance. Maybe he could record a five-minute audio message three times a week. I think that would be incredibly compelling. Of course, if hundreds of choreographers and dancers started to do this, we'd all have to pick the ones that we listened to.

The beauty of podcasting is that it's fast, cheap and usually easy. You can either record your audio messages through a microphone connected to your computer or you can pick-up a telephone and leave a voice mail that is converted into an audio message that can be listened to over the Internet.

Once you start your podcast, you can then make it accessible through your blog and services such as iTunes so that these audio programs can be transferred to iPods. I create my podcast in a much different manner than I'm describing in this post because I conduct interviews by telephone. But however you go about it, you can create a channel like I have on iTunes - you need iTunes software to view it or click this image for larger view:

Click for Larger Image

Here are some applications that you can use to create an audio podcast:

- Audioblog was one of the first (maybe the first) audio podcast services. Prices start at $9.95 a month. You can record audio messages by telephone or through a web browser. I've used this application. It works well and you can post your audio recordings automatically to your blog.

- Odeo also lets you record and share your audio programs. You can record messages by telephone or through a Flash application. You can even add an Odeo link on your blog/website so that visitors can leave voice mail messages for you. Odeo won the podcasting category of the Web 2.0 Awards. Odeo is free. I've used this service very briefly just for the purpose of sending a voice message from the home page of a blogger - a fun feature.

- Evoca is a very new audio recording and sharing service. I experimented with it for a few minutes yesterday. It's easy to record an audio message, but as of yesterday, you could only post your audio messages if you used Blogger. I'll experiment more once they support MovableType - my blogging software. Evoca is free for a basic account and $4.99 for a professional account.

- In addition to recording your own audio blogs, you can have the text from your blog converted into audio messages. Services such as Talkr and Feed2Podcast create synthesized voice versions of your posts. The voice on both of these services really annoys me. But for some of your blog readers it may be more convenient to have access to these audio transcripts.

- Here's a listing of more audio and podcasting services.

- And here's another listing of podcasting, audio and music services - they are at the top of this huge list under the "Audio" category.

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:35 AM - Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

March 29, 2006

How to Offer Your First Dance Video Mashup

Last night I saw a poster in the DC Metro for the upcoming "Take The Lead" movie with Antonio Banderas. I tried to remember the site's URL but forgot about it until I saw the post about this dance movie in Edward McPherson's blog.

Mashup Music Maker from Take the Lead

It's interesting exploring this movie website to see how it compares to promotional sites for recent dance movies - and related online dance promotion efforts in general. I'm getting a little tired of these virtual dance games where you click and drag a series of dance steps into a time line and then record and share your dance creations - that's what you can do on the Take the Lead site. It's time to move on and innovate. What I did find interesting about this movie site is that they also have a Mash Up Maker where you can mix two songs and save the final piece. And you can listen to mashups created by other users as well.

So I was trying to figure out how dance companies could create their own dance video mashups on their own websites as a way to build buzz for upcoming performances. This is what I came-up with:

Why not take a camcorder and film a dancer or dancers against a bluescreen background. Put this video on your website and encourage visitors to download your video and mix it with an additional video that is relevant to the themes of your dance piece. Once a user finishes creating their mashup, they can upload it to a gallery on your website where all the mashups can be watched. Maybe you can add a competition component to this mashup offering as well where you pick the best mashups of the week.

Still from Heat and Life

Here's an example:

Take a performance such as "Heat and Life" from Emily Johnson's Catalyst Dance Company that deals with the topic of global warming. You could video tape a 2-minute segment from this work with the dancers performing against a blue screen (or green screen) background. (When you shoot video with a blue or green screen background, it is easy to remove this solid color background and drop the objects your are filming into another video - video editing software programs call this chroma-key.) You post this 2-minute segment on your website and visitors download this video clip.

Then site visitors would be encouraged to take the dancers and superimpose them on their own video clip that dealt in some manner with global warming. Maybe the video backdrop shows images of polar ice caps melting or something closer to home such as industrial plants pumping pollutants into the air. The mashup video clip could also include the creator adding videos of themselves dancing into the mix. Many possibilities - even making the entire backdrop completely abstract.

After the dance video mashups are submitted, they could be placed in an archive for anybody to watch and either the dance company or website visitors or both could vote on their favorites.

I think this idea would be a lot of fun and generate a lot of buzz. So definitely let me know if you decide to do something along these lines.

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:15 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Importance of Generating Online Revenue

According to an article in today's New York Times, "3 Out of 4 Visitors to the Met Never Make it to the Front Door," by Carol Vogel, many millions more people interact with the Metropolitan Museum's website than step foot into the Met's building on 5th Avenue. 15 million people per year visit this museum's website and 4.5 million visit the physical museum.

While I would think that the ratio would be much higher - that say for every one museum visitor, there would be something like 15 to 20 website visitors - the point of the article is that the Met generates significant revenue through its website. According to the NY Time's article, $6.5 million is generated online through the sale of memberships, merchandise sales and fundraising.

While a certain percentage of this total online revenue would have been generated whether or not it was processed through the museum's website, the main point is that this website and the websites for more and more museums represent significant sources of revenue for these arts institutions.

In the dance world, unfortunately, dance companies - from large to small - have not yet taken any meaningful steps to generate revenue from their web presence. I think that this situation should be rectified. For starters, dance companies, like most artists and arts organizations, need to generate more revenue. But most importantly there are practical steps that dance companies can take today that will help them generate additional sources of revenue by exploiting the opportunities offered by the online world. Digital content can be sold in the form of videos, online fundraising campaigns can be launched and larger audiences can be attracted to upcoming performances.

I'll continue to write about these various online revenue generating opportunities for dancers and dance companies in upcoming posts.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:15 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 24, 2006

Fundraising Through Text Messaging

I came across this fascinating story about the Sweet Relief Musicians' Fund that provides financial assistance for career musicians who are facing illness, disability or age-related problems. (via Textually.org)

One of the ways that this organization raises money is by encouraging people to make $4.99 donations via their cell phones. Donations are made by using your mobile phone's text messaging service and the charge is automatically added to your phone bill.

Justin Oberman of Mopocket blog has an excellent write-up about Sweet Relief Musicians' Fund and how the process of raising funds via text messages works (along with some of its current limitations). He also links to Mobile Accord, a company that has a service called mgive that creates mobile fundraising campaigns for not-for-profits.

Seeking donations via mobile phones has some major advantages over traditional fundraising strategies. The most important one is that you can potentially encourage large numbers of people to act instantly. In addition, just about everybody has a mobile phone and can send text messages.

This program for musicians sounds like a great idea for dancers as well. It might make sense to explore including this type of mobile fundraising capability with on-going fundraising efforts that provide financial support for dancers in need.

Posted by Doug Fox at 2:22 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 21, 2006

Design Tips for Dance Websites

Here are ten tips for creating websites to promote dance:

1) Objectives: Start with your objectives in mind. What is it that you want visitors to your website to do? Buy tickets? Sign-up for dance classes? With these objectives in mind, how can you design a website that will help your visitors achieve these objectives?

2) Text: Ensure that website visitors can read the text on your webpages. Internet users access the web with different web browsers and screen resolutions. It may be the case that on your computer the text is easy to read, but another users with a very high screen resolution may see very small print when they access your home page and the print may be too difficult to read.

3) Navigation: Creating a sensible navigation system is critical. Users should be able to find the information that they want as quickly and effortlessly as possible. So it's important to spend time designing a navigation system that helps direct users to the content and tools that they seek.

4) Clarity over design: It's more important for a site to be functional than for a site to feature a beautiful design. Of course having an attractive site is a major plus. But most of the time, users have specific objectives when they visit your site. They want to know the dates and times of a performance. They want to find and print driving directions to a theater. They want to purchase tickets. If a fancy design ever interferes with providing this type of straightforward functionality, then your website is not delivering what your customers need.

5) Constant updates: Websites should always be updated. If users visit a site that doesn't feature the latest performance and/or class schedules, they will leave the site in a fraction of a second. Ideally, you should have a way to make changes to your website through an easy to use content management system that does not require knowledge of HTML. You should be able to add text and schedules and push a button to update your website.

6) Weblogs: As I've written many times, weblogs (blogs) are invaluable. First, they are easy to update. But more importantly, blogs are a great way to communicate directly with your audience. Most websites just include traditional marketing copy that doesn't usually grab the attention of readers. But if choreographers and dancers write in the first person and communicate directly with their audiences, they will get more people excited and interested in upcoming performances.

7) No frames and no little text boxes: It is never a good idea to embed text in small, scrollable text boxes that are a pain in the neck to navigate. The focus should always be on providing users with easy to access content that does not require struggling with little directional arrows that are too difficult to use.

8) Repertory: I'm often surprised by how short and unhelpful descriptions are on many dance websites for upcoming performances. Why not write extended descriptions of performances so that readers can learn about your dance programs in-depth before attending the performance? I like what the San Francisco Ballet offers in terms of program notes and study guides.

9) Pictures: There's nothing like good pictures to enhance a dance website. Once again, however, I'm not thrilled with the quality of the pictures that I've seen on dance sites. It pictures are carefully chosen and clearly annotated, they can add significant value to the user experience.

10) Video: Add video segments of your upcoming performances. In some cases, due to contractual limitations or copyright issues, it may not be possible to add video clips. But if at all possible, try to add videos of performance highlights and interviews. Make sure you test the videos on different computers to ensure that your website visitors will not have trouble access these clips.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:21 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 20, 2006

The Many Problems with Dance Websites

For many months I've been thinking about putting together a list of the top 25 dance websites. The reason why I haven't done this yet is because I think most dance company, performance venue and dance studio websites are miserable.

The main problems I have with dance and related sites is that the navigation system is not logical, it is too difficult to find what you're looking for, the web designer/developer takes control away from the user and the e-commerce system for purchasing tickets is a mess.

The Kennedy Center Website

For example, I've bought tickets online a few times from the Kennedy Center here in Washington, DC. I've never liked the design of their vertical navigation bar on the left-hand side of the page. Click on "Find a Performance." You'll notice that there are two separate listings for dance that are not even next to each other: "Search Ballet" and "Search Dance." Why don't they have one dance category and then by selecting this single dance category website visitors can choose a specific sub-categories of dance?

Also, why do the two options for dance use the word "search." The first thing that you see when you click on either "Search Ballet" or "Search Dance" is a list of upcoming performances. Then, on the right-hand side of the page you can conduct a search.

For each program, the Kennedy Center does provide an ample description of each event and it is clear what the dates and times of the performances are and whether any tickets are left. But then once you initiate the process of purchasing a ticket, there are a number of problems.

First, you have to be a registered user of the site to purchase a ticket. The better e-commerce systems allow a dual-track approach. You can buy a ticket as a user, which speeds-up the process because some data is pre-populated for you in the address and other fields, or you have the option of simply starting the ticket purchasing process from scratch each time you buy a ticket without having to be a registered user.

Second, every time I buy a ticket I'm notified that I can't continue unless I fill-in my promotional code. But I don't have a promotional code - so I don't understand what is happening here.

Alvin Ailey Website

Two weeks ago I saw a performance of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Kennedy Center. Wonderful performance, but terrible website. You'll notice that when you visit the Alvin Ailey website the first thing that happens is that a smaller window pops-open on your screen with a navigation system you can use to locate different types of information.

It is always a terrible idea for web designers to force open another browser to provide access to information about your organization. First off, many users turn-off pop-up windows. So it's possible that some/many users will never be able to access your website. Second, what's the point of this? Keep things simple and give people access to information that they are looking for. And, third, don't ever take control away from the user. You'll notice in the pop-up window, that the URL address line has been intentionally removed so that users have to close this window before they can easily visit other websites.

While I'm at it, forcing a new browser window open to provide access to your website content is equally as bad as showing a Flash animation on your home page. While most users can view Flash animations, these presentations take extra time to download and users don't like to wait. So while your wonderful animation is loading, users are off to other websites.

Continuing with the Alvin Ailey site, I clicked on "The Company" and then "Repertory" in the top navigation menu to read about "Revelations" - Alvin Ailey's famous 1960 work. While I guess it's nice that you can watch a short video clip, the description is embedded in a frame, I think, and you have to use these pain in the neck little navigation arrows to read the entire text. As a general rule, text of any type should never be embedded in little windows that make it difficult for users to read and navigate.

The Kennedy Center and Alvin Ailey websites are just two of the many hundreds (probably thousands) of dance/performance websites with many problems.

If you know of good websites in the dance world, please let me know about them. As I said at the outset, I'd like to put together a list of top 25 websites and I'm sure there are excellent sites out there - somewhere - I hope.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:22 AM - Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

January 12, 2006

Double Your Dance Audiences

Here's how to double the size of the audience at your next dance performance:

1) Let's say you have a dance piece that's 15 minutes in duration. Take a camcorder and videotape the entire dance work.

2) Put the entire video on your website or blog. Make two versions available: one with a musical soundtrack and the second with an annotated audio guide. This second version would be the same as listening to an interview with the director or actors as you're watching a movie DVD. But in the case of a dance performance, the artistic director, choreographer and/or dancers would describe the piece as it unfolds.

3) Promote the two video versions of your dance piece like crazy. For instance, list your videos on Google Video, Yahoo Video Search, YouTube and Revver. And also create a podcast channel for your video so you can distribute it through iTunes. Finally, email every dance blogger and tell them what you're doing - you are sure to get a lot of exposure.

4) Make sure that both versions of your dance video include ample promotional information about your next performance so that viewers know where to buy tickets and see the event.

5) In addition, make the audio annotation guide available separately on your website also for free one week before your performance. Encourage your website viewers to transfer this audio guide to their portable music players and take it with them to your performance.

6) At your performance, perform this dance piece twice. The first performance is so that attendees can listen to the annotated audio guide while watching your performance. The second time so that viewers can enjoy the performance that much more because they will have significantly more background about the piece.

The notion that you can't give away video of dance performances because your audience will decrease in size is an unproven myth. More people go to musical concerts specifically because they have already listened to the music and/or watched a groups' videos.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:32 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 10, 2006

Video Options Proliferate - Untapped Opportunity for Dancers

Cable TV with its hundreds of channels offers very limited programming variety compared to what's coming down the pipeline. Online video distribution options are proliferating and the Internet will increasingly be the source of programs that are watched on home entertainment systems.

Internet-based TV services (TV shows that are distributed via the Internet Protocol - IPTV) are in their early test stages and will enable users to record multiple shows at the same time and access content that incorporates video, text and pictures. Essentially, we'll no longer think of TV, whether cable or satellite, as separate from the Internet - all of these media tools will be considered part of one video search engine and distribution network. We are not there yet, but we are not that far away either.

For more about the emergence of IPTV, read John Markoff's column in New York Times, "Coming Soon to TV Land: The Internet Actually" (registration required).

In terms of exclusively online video distribution, Google just launched an expanded video service that, like Apple's iTunes, allows users to purchase video content. See "Google Entering Video-On-Demand Business" by Elinor Mills in News.com. And visit Google Video to see what video content is available for sale.

An interesting feature of the Google Video Store is that content owners can set their own prices. A drawback with the Google video system, however as Wired News points out, is that a proprietary encryption system is used for videos that are sold in the Google Video Store and these videos cannot be transferred to portable devices.

There is also Yahoo Video Search, which allows you to distribute videos for free and similar services such as YouTube and Revver that can be used by content creators to make their videos available on the web at no charge as well.
.
All of these video distribution networks, both the free and pay-per-view services, offer marketing and revenue opportunities for dancers and dance companies. I've done searches for dance videos, and all I have come up with so far are amateur videos and nothing to exciting or professional. I'd really like to see professional dancers post videos of performances, dance on camera productions or instructional programs to these video hosting and marketing services. Just from the marketing side, if your video is among the most popular or best rated, you can end-up with home page exposure on these video sites and potentially attract thousands or, possibly, tens of thousands of viewers. These viewers can then link to your site and learn more about your upcoming performances.

The pay-per-view possibilities for dance have not yet been explored. I will write more about this soon, but I think that selling videos online can eventually be a significant source of revenue for dancers, dance companies and dance instructors.

Posted by Doug Fox at 5:30 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 3, 2006

Thinking about Dance in New Ways

Here are my suggestions on how dancers and dance companies can be more successful in 2006.

A number of these recommendations are based on the two white papers I wrote toward the end of 2005:

- Embracing Blogs: A New Blueprint for Promoting Dance on the Internet

- Building a New Dance Economy: Expanding Opportunities for Dancers and Choreographers

14 Suggestions for 2006:

1) Build exciting and compelling websites that focus on achieving specific economic benefits. Unfortunately, most websites that promote dance companies and dancers are just not very good. But there are relatively simple steps that can be taken to improve these dance websites.

2) Embrace blogs. Weblogs (or blogs) offer a low-cost, highly effective way for dancers, choreographers and dance companies to build their own audiences and communicate directly with donors and patrons. Blogging within the dance community is in its very early stages and I hope hundreds of new dance blogs are introduced this year. One of the very important positive benefits of blogs is that they can contribute to preserving the artistic integrity of artists. If dance companies take responsibility for building their own audiences by sharing their vision directly with likely theatergoers and donors, dancers and choreographers will be less beholden to others when it comes to deciding what will and will not be staged - more to come soon on this connection between blogging and artistic freedom.

3) Take and disseminate digital pictures and videos. Performing artists have been traditionally and understandably reluctant to take pictures and videos of performances and rehearsals and make them publicly available. But this reluctance is causing marketing challenges for dancers. In order to get wide exposure for upcoming dance performances, it is important that dance companies make quality digital pictures and digital video clips available on their own websites and available to other websites that wish to promote these performances.

4) Pursue new online sponsorship opportunities for donors and supporters. There is no reason that your financial supporters cannot have video and pictures about their products and services promoted through your website. Instead of just giving a listing for a financial contributor in your program guide or on your website, why not conduct a video interview with the CEO of a company and put that video on your website or blog? Nobody does this and this is a great way to give invaluable exposure to your best supporters. It is very prestigious to be associated with the arts and if an executive from a company can talk on camera about why they support you and what they do for the arts community in general, you'll have the opportunity to reach many more sponsors.

5) Raise more money from small donations. If you improve your website as described above and launch a blog, you will have a more compelling marketing presence for reaching larger audiences. At the same time, your enhanced digital marketing efforts will also make it significantly easier to solicit donations from people who visit your website. For example, if your blog provides engaging first person accounts of upcoming performances from dancers and choreographers, blog readers will be more likely to support your on-going efforts through small contributions.

6) Develop and sell digital dance assets. In most instances, dancers and dance companies make money from performances, grants, sponsors and donations. The amount of money that comes in from these revenue sources is usually not enough. I think now is the time for the dance community to start creating, distributing and selling digital assets in the form of dance on camera offerings, performances, routines and class instruction. Here's just one example: millions of people are already purchasing TV episodes of leading shows from Apple's iTunes and downloading them to their iPods. There is no reason that dancers cannot sell content in the same manner.

7) Form new partnerships. In many cases, dancers and dance companies will not be able to implement the above six suggestions without partnering with new media companies, Internet marketing firms or independent contractors/companies that provide these design, marketing, digital distribution and fundraising services. I think it is important for the dance community to start exploring new business models and partnerships that will enable dance companies to work with these different types of experts and organizations in order to improve their financial picture and implement successful digital marketing campaigns.

8) Educate young dancers about emerging digital dance careers. Digital tools, technologies and environments are creating unprecedented opportunities for dancers to seek challenging new paths and outlets for their talent and creativity. From digital dance on camera productions to interactive gaming environments, the opportunities for dancers have never been greater. Read my November 22, 2005 post about "Emerging Digital Dance Careers." I think there is a need for directors of dance associations and dance programs at colleges and universities to get together to explore these emerging careers and to develop a game plan for sharing with dance students what these digital dance opportunities are all about. At the same time, as some of these new career options grow in importance, there may be a need to offer new types of dance classes to educate students about these new career possibilities.

9) Create a universal dance notation language. Yes, there are dance notation systems such as Labanotation, but there is no widely used and recognized notation language. Without such a widely embraced notation system, dance will never reach its full potential. Please read my white paper, "Building a New Dance Economy: Expanding Opportunities for Dancers and Choreographers," which explains why I believe that the lack of a universal notation language poses a big challenge for the dance community.

10) Embrace motion tracking systems on a large-scale for recording dance routines, classes and performances. Motion tracking systems are used today within the dance world on limited scale. But motion tracking systems should be embraced on a global basis to record dance performances in the new universal dance notation language described immediately above.

11) Open motion tracking-based dance notation studios in cities around the world. If there is a universal dance notation language, then it becomes economically feasible to build dance recording studios around the globe that record dance routines, classes and performances with motion tracking technology. Motion tracking technologies will come way down in price because of heavy demand for these tools.

12) Get serious about protecting the intellectual property rights of dancers. Dancers for the most part are not seeking intellectual property protections for their creative work. The bottom line is that dancers and choreographers are losing an opportunity to make money through sales and licensing because they don't have such copyright protections. By following the three recommendations above, dancers will be able to submit their routines and performances in a universal dance notation language in order to receive copyright protections.

13) Support the creation of innovative independent dance websites. Partly as a result of creating a universal dance notation language, improved intellectual property protections, the rise of blogging and the increased use of digital video and pictures tools, it will become possible for a wide range of new dance websites to emerge. Some possibilities: A community blog where people call-in to leave an audio review of a performance they just saw. A video search engine that advertising agencies and corporate marketing departments can access to find dance companies whose work they wish to license for an upcoming ad campaign. A video search engine that meeting, convention and special event organizers can access to find dancers for a performance showcase and class at an annual conference. These are just a few of the possibilities. There will be many more such sites as dancers increasingly embrace the digital world.

14) New advocacy, educational and support organization for dancers, choreographers and dance companies. The Internet is underused by dance associations. Given the low-cost, incredible reach and instant nature of the Internet, there is no reason that dance professionals should not have an equally low-cost membership organization to join that looks after there interests on a national and/or international level. Consider what the possibilities would be if a large percentage of dancers could join an Internet-centric dance association for say $35 a year that provided professional support, low-cost health and other benefits, constant advocacy on their behalf, cutting-edge, timely education and compelling online community resources.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:30 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Great Dance in 2006

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and best wishes for the New Year.

I look forward to continuing to learn about and cover dance around the world with a strong focus on technology developments and Internet marketing.

Plans for 2006:

- Write and research a workbook with the title "Dancing into the Future," which will offer extensive coverage of all aspects of technology that relate to dance. I posted the initial outline for this book in December. You'll see in this initial outline that I was first thinking of writing a series of publications - the first focusing on dance companies. But in the end, I've decided to write one larger publication that covers all aspects of technology that relates to dance.

- Launch an audio podcast for the dance world, which I'm starting this month. Many of the interviews will be for my upcoming publication, but I'll also be interviewing people who are making news and have interesting insights about different aspects of dance. I'm hoping that I can do many of the Interviews using Internet telephony software such as Skype and Vonage. These Voice over IP programs (this is term for software that allows you to make telephone calls over the Internet) are much better than I thought. I've been using Skype to talk to a friend of mine in England. If both you and the person you're talking with have Skype installed, there is no cost for the call - - not bad for making international calls. In addition, with Skype you can host conference calls as well. So if I interview people that are using one of the Voice over IP programs, I can record the interview directly to my hard drive and then quickly post it to my blog.

But I also have a digital recorder for interviewing people over the regular telephone system or in person. My guess is that I'll probably start by conducting informal interviews with dance bloggers to test out different recording approaches and to figure out what people are interested in listening to.

Please don't hesitate to make suggestions of people I should interview for upcoming audio interviews.

- Develop a series of seminars that cover how dancers can use the Internet and other digital technologies to build audiences, sell products and enhance public relations efforts. I've conducted Internet and technology educational programs for many years. I love conducting these programs. I've always enjoyed explaining and demonstrating how new and emerging technologies can be used for marketing, promotional and educational purposes. The first educational program that I develop will probably focus on how dancers and dance companies can develop websites, publish blogs and conduct Internet marketing campaigns.

- Take more jazz dance classes. Right now my legs feel like rubber. I took a class last night with Maurice Johnson at Joy of Motion here in DC. The class was fun and challenging. I never took a class with Maurice before. Last semester I took a 13-week Intro to Jazz class, also at Joy of Motion, with Doug Yeuell who is the dance center's executive director. Doug is a wonderful instructor. I'm going to try to take at least two jazz classes a week. As I conduct interviews and research for my upcoming book, I think I'll be spending a lot of time in New York so I'll probably take jazz classes there as well. If you have suggestions for where and with whom I should take jazz classes, please let me know what you think. I'd like to be exposed to as many instructors and teaching styles as possible.

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:30 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 6, 2005

Pepsi Samba Online Dance Competition

Pepsi in Australia is promoting its tropical cola drink Pepsi Samba via an online dance competition where participants upload their short dance videos to win cash and other prizes. On the site you can vote for the best and worst videos of the day, upload your own clips, play a dance game and download wallpaper and screensavers. Plus, you can download ringtones and wallpaper for your cell phone.

What I like about this site is the strong focus on interactivity and user involvement. Everything is designed to encourage people to participate. I think that fostering this type of interaction is the best way to brand a product online. Plus, if you feature a bottle of Pepsi Samba in your dance video, you can win even more cash.

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:26 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 2, 2005

Promoting Dance Through Hybrid Digital-Real World Technologies

Last week I spent a lot of time reading the stories on The Pondering Primate blog. The author, who goes by the name Vangorilla, covers mobile technologies and the emergence of new applications that integrate the online and physical worlds.

Two of the technologies covered recently in The Pondering Primate struck me as potentially interesting for dance and the arts world in general.

The first technology is Kooltag developed by Tagit. (You can read The Pondering Primate story, "Tagit Offers Physical World Connection").

Here's how Kooltag works: A person has a cell phone with a built-in camera. He comes across a brochure, ad, flyer or any other physical material that includes a two-diminsional bar code (a 2D barcode is similar to the barcode used to scan groceries at supermarkets except it stores more data). He uses his camera phone to take a picture of the 2D barcode and the software on the cell phone than grabs the associated media such as webpages, video, audio or blogs.

For example, let's say that you mail a postcard for an upcoming dance performance. On this postcard, you could include a 2D barcode. Then recipients could use their phones to take a snapshot of it. Once they take the picture of your barcode, the user will be automatically presented with videos, images and web pages that provide more details about your upcoming performance. This type of technology could also be used for mobile ticketing solutions as well.

The second technology is Hypertag. (You can read the story in The Pondering Primate "Aura's Hypertags Loved by Consumers").

Here's how Hypertag works: You start with a phone or other handheld device that supports infra-red or Bluetooth data transmissions (both infra-red and Bluetooth are popular ways of wirelessly sending digital data short distances - one or both of these technologies is built into most mobile devices). You come across an advertising billboard, poster or sign that features an embedded Hypertag. You point your mobile device at the tag and then you instantly receive content in the form of ring tones, games or other data that the advertiser wishes to have delivered to your device.

Visit this page on the Hypertag website to learn how this technology could be used as part of a museum tour. A user could point a mobile device at a tag next to a painting and then would receive images, audio, video or additional information about the picture.

One possible application of Hypertags for a dance performance could be the following: A person at a performance venue could point their mobile device at a billboard outside the theater. Instantly a detailed program guide is downloaded to the handheld device that includes a video introduction to the performance along with text, pictures and links. The downloaded package could even include a complete annotated audio guide to the performance that users listened to as the performance takes place.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:30 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 28, 2005

Who Stands Up for Dance?

There have been some unfortunate recent news stories relating to dance that have me wondering which dance associations or organizations fight to ensure the on-going success, continuity and profitability of dance.

First, here are the stories:

- In "The Squeeze on BDC" Rachel Feinerman of Downtown Dancer discusses the likely closing of Broadway Dance Center, which is being forced to vacate its dance studio space in Midtown Manhattan. The New York Times on November 23rd writes about the on-going legal battle between BDC, with 3,000 dance students per week, and the new owner of the commercial building where the studio is located. BDC has set-up a new website, SupportBDC.org, to encourage supporters of this dance studio to take action to preserve the dance studio at its current location.

- The Colorado Ballet, as reported by RockyMountainNews.com on November 16, 2005 in "Ballet's Finances Wipe Out Six Shows," canceled six of its 30 performances of this year's staging of The Nutcracker. The cancellation was due to a lack of ticket sales. Edward McPherson in Onward and Upward has two posts about the cutting back of Nutcracker performances (Post 1 and Post 2). In his second post, Edward attributes declining Nutcracker ticket sales to competition from Radio City Rockettes.

- On November 9th, IndyStar.com reported that Indianapolis-based Ballet Internationale, in operation for 32 years, was closing its doors on the day of the article and there would be no performances of The Nutcracker this holiday season.

- The NYC-based Dance Notation Bureau, which documents and preserves classic and contemporary dance works, was forced for financial reasons to layoff almost its entire staff on October 28th. DNB provides updates (click "Rallying Round the DNB; Need Still Urgent" link) on its efforts to raise more funding to continue their work. The Dance Insider was the first to break this story on October 31st. (The Dance Insider followed-up this story on November 8th). The New York Times wrote a piece on November 7th, "Dance Preservation Organization, in Financial Turmoil, Lays of Most of Staff" (If you want to read this NYT article, you unfortunately have to pay).

(I've written two pieces about the DNB and dance notation: "Dance Insider Calls for New Management for Dance Notation Bureau" and "Dance Notation and Why Dance Pieces are Not Documented." I hope to finish this series of posts soon.)

In most industries and professions, there are usually associations or advocacy groups that keep their members updated about the latest news and developments that affect their industry, and take leadership roles in spearheading coordinated action to address collective challenges.

My question for the dance world is who is in charge? Do associations and other groups that represent different interests within the dance community work independently or together to address common concerns? Do they take joint-action to educate their constituencies about pressing topics? Do they launch coordinated public marketing campaigns so that the public at-large knows about important issues and are encouraged to take action?

Let's go back to news stories I wrote about above:

- Is the Broadway Dance Center on its own? Are local dance associations and other dance-related entities supporting the efforts of BDC to keep its current studio location? What for example is Dance/NYC doing? Dance/NYC, a branch of Dance/USA, is dedicated to the needs of dance in the New York City area. One of its stated aims is to address "issues of space and real estate" for dance companies and studios. Robert Yesselman, director of Dance/NYC, offered excellent testimony (PDF) to the Committee on Cultural Affairs of the NY City Council on October 28th in which he describes the tremendous real estate challenges faced by dance artists and offers specific recommendations for improving the situation. But, if you go to Dance/NYC home page, headlines section or real estate section, there is nothing about Broadway Dance Center. That strikes me as odd. Isn't this an issue that Dance/NYC should be rallying the dance community around? Shouldn't information be provided to Dance/NYC website visitors on how to contribute money or participate in the upcoming rally on December 1st in front of BDC studios?

- In the case of the cut-back in Nutcracker performances by Colorado Ballet and the closing of Ballet Internationale, who is holding dialogues within the dance community and who is planning an action plan to address the specific challenges of dance companies outside the largest cities? Maybe these conversations do take place behind the scenes, but there ought to be a large-scale public conversation tied to a specific action plan to ensure the financial health and vitality of performing arts companies in cities and towns throughout the US. Dance/USA in its November 16th edition of its email newsletter "The Spin" did include a news item, "Ballet Internationale Closes After 32 Years," which quotes a story from The Indianapolis Star. But that's it. Has or is Dance/USA formulating a gameplan to ensure the vitality of dance companies in second and third tier cities? If yes, what is this gameplan and how come it's not promoted through its website?

- And finally, what is the dance industry's position regarding the Dance Notation Bureau (DNB). Is DNB on its own? Must it fend for itself and not expect the support of other dance organizations? Now maybe it does get support from other dance entities, but nobody has bothered to publicize this information online. I haven't come across any information on any dance website that mentions the DNB's financial troubles and encourages dance fans and dancers to make donations. (A few weblogs have written about this story including mine) Does nobody within the dance community care about notating dances or the DNB? When Paul Ben-Itzak shares his strong opinions about the DNB, does anybody in the dance world have any reaction? He wrote:

...I now believe that if this invaluable organization is to continue with its precious mission and fulfill its utility, the DNB needs an entirely new and more dynamic board leadership, including people who either have money or have the clout to raise it.

But not a word in response. No public discussion. No public debate. No nothing!

From the lack of online response by entities that represent the dance community to the above stories and an evaluation of information that is primarily publicly available on the Internet, these are my conclusions:

1) The associations and organizations that represent dance interests do not cooperate and provide little of concrete value to the dance community at-large.

2) Too much time is spent complaining and not enough action is taken. The dance community complains about a) not enough press coverage, b) not enough US government support for dance, c) not enough grants to support art, d) not enough donations, and e) not enough real estate. But what, in the end, do dance associations and organizations actually do to improve and strengthen the dance community. How are dance companies being helped and how are dancers being helped?

3) The dance community has absolutely no idea of how to leverage the power and ubiquity of the Internet to reach millions of customers and supporters.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe great things are happening behind the scenes; maybe important initiatives and undertakings are mapped-out at industry conferences; or maybe fundraising events are solving the financial and economic woes of the dance community. But the fact remains that none of these worthwhile initiatives and activities, if they exist at all, are reaching the online world. And the Internet today is the most important medium for discussing pressing issues, reaching a huge audience and mobilizing constituents for action.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:05 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 18, 2005

Advertisers Embrace Dancing

Here are two fun advertisements that feature dancing characters - one a dancing Doughboy and the other a dancing Citroen:

I came across the Pillsbury Dancin' Doughboy on Leigh Witchel's dance blog.

The Dancin' Doughboy is a Flash animation that allows you to create your own dance routine by selecting moves and choosing your song. As Rachel Feinerman from Downtown Dancer says in comment to Leigh's post this Flash application is similar to The Ellen Degeneres Dance Maker. But unfortuneatly, it doesn't seem like this Dance Maker game is still available. Here's the post I wrote about it in October: "Bust A Move with Ellen Degeneres".

The second dancing ad is for the Citroen C4. This is also a Flash animation that features a video of a Citroen C4 transformed into a robotic dancer. The dancer deserves credit for a solid stretching regime before initiating its dance routine. It's fun to watch. (To watch ad click link on bottom left that reads "See the TV Ad")

The following screen shot from Citroen ad is from Car Pages.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:03 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 17, 2005

Dance Videos for Auditions

Some questions:

1) What percentage of dancers create videos (DVD/VHS) for their auditions?

2) How do dancers create these videos and how much money do they spend?

3) Does creating a good quality video make a big difference in terms of the odds of getting a job?

4) If you don't have an audition video are you at a disadvantage?

5) What are dance companies/shows/schools/others looking for in a good video?

6) Are there many auditions where you can submit a video instead of performing at a live audition? What are pros and cons?

I was thinking about these questions as I was searching for articles and resources that had to do with either making dance audition videos or guidelines for submitting these videos:

- Dance Magazine article by Eric Wolfram, "Fast Forward: 12 Tips to a Winning Audition Video"

- Photo and video tips for dancers from Mark Twain

- Jazz Dance video specifications for NFAA.ARTS Awards

- Video audition guidelines for Rockette Summer Intensive (PDF)

- Summer Dance Institute auditions

- Julliard Summer Dance Intensive video/DVD requirements

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:42 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 16, 2005

Rachel Feinerman on "Embracing Blogs" White Paper

Rachel Feinerman has post, "You Say You Want a Revolution" in her Downtown Dancer blog in which she offers kind thoughts about my white paper, "Embracing Blogs":

For those of you who haven’t yet noticed, Doug Fox of Great Dance has been leading a call for a revolution. His white paper on dance companies and use of technology and his recent post on changing the inherent relationship dance companies have with print reviews and building audiences, is nothing short of revolutionary.

In her post Rachel also talks about how the dance community has tried various approaches to reaching larger audiences. She includes links to TV shows and innovative dance programs that have had mixed success in reaching out to people who usually do not attend performances.

Posted by Doug Fox at 7:09 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Continuing the Conversation about the Dance Blogosphere

Leigh Witchel offers his thoughts about my white paper, "Embracing Blogs: A New Blueprint for Promoting Dance on the Internet."

A blog may be inexpensive but it is labor-intensive. The things Doug mentions - cultivation of a voice and consistency especially – are not to be taken lightly. Writing is a skill. It takes me a good hour to do a decent blog entry.

As Leigh points out writing a blog can be time-consuming - I often spend more time than I realize writing and editing a single blog entry. In my white paper I did not explicitly deal with topic of how much effort would have to be spent by a dancer or dance company to update their blogs. My guess and hope is that over time, a number of dance companies will turn to blogs as one of their primary marketing/communication mediums for reaching their audiences (dance audiences, sponsors, press and others). And, in the process, less time and resources will be spent on other, more traditional forms of communication such as creating direct mailing pieces and writing press releases. Since blogs, as I explain in my white paper, offer a better way to communicate and interact with audiences, the extra time spent sustaining quality blogs will be justifiable.

Yes, writing is a skill, but at the same time, successful blogs can be written and presented in many different ways by people who share their stories and insights in different manners. A photoblog, for example, that consists of pictures from performances or rehearsals with brief text annotations may prove to be very engaging.

Good blogging isn’t just a diary or an advertisement. It’s the careful cultivation of a public persona...My suggestion would be that if you enter into the blogosphere because you want to contribute to the discussion, you will do something of value. If you enter it to promote your dance concert people will, and should, smell it a mile off.

The issue of how dancers and dance companies use their blogs is critical. I agree 100% with Leigh that anybody who is serious about building a successful blog should carefully consider the "public persona" they wish to create. It will take time and energy. Using the example of promoting an upcoming performance, the question is how does a dance company write about it in their blog? I think the goal is to provide value to readers. Maybe you educate them, maybe you discuss the intentions of the choreographer or maybe you seek feedback and suggestions. But you definitely don't post a blatant promo piece and leave it at that - although you should highlight upcoming performances that is the goal in the end. For the most part, I avoid blogs that just list upcoming classes and performances - to me the people/organizations publishing this marketing material are using blogs, but they are not blogging in any meaningful manner.

Amateur voices in the blogosphere are essential. The blogosphere thrives on having a large number of voices. I’d also like to self-interestedly say something for recognizing the value of the pros...

...One reason I love writing for Danceview Times is that it adds the value of new media (immediacy, access and SPACE!) while preserving a level of quality associated with print. But there's plenty of dross on the Internet because of the low barrier to startup. I started writing because I thought too many people were looking at the dancers and too few at the dance. I find it disheartening when I see "You too can be a critic" articles. Writing on dance isn’t about voicing your opinions – I mean, who really cares what I think of Christopher Wheeldon or Ashley Bouder? I love her and you loathe her and that’s that. Why do I love her and what can I show you about her? Can I show you a different way of looking at a blackbird? The dance writers I admire are champions of an aesthetic. I skip the ones who write a self-centered and self-aggrandizing litany of opinions.

I want to stress that I'm not questioning the value of professional dance critics. The purpose of my white paper and recent blog post is to explore how the audience for dance can be expanded. One of my answers is that by having more bloggers writing about dance online, both professionals and amateurs, more people will learn about and experience dance for themselves. Clearly some blogs will be horrendous and others will be wonderful; some blogs will cover topics that may seem trivial to experienced dance-goers and others will feature posts that provide more "meaningful" commentary. In the end, I think it's all good if it grabs the attention of dance newcomers and helps dance companies be more successful.

I hope that Rachel, Doug and I aren't setting up an echo chamber of links and trackbacks. Rachel Howard wrote hopefully yesterday about the blossoming of the dance blogosphere. I think we need a few more people to join in before we can savor the bloom on the rose - so make a comment or post your own entry!

As things stand now the small number of dance bloggers does represent a type of echo chamber. But I think it is important that we are starting to build upon, react to and critique each other's ideas, and learn from each other in the process. More and more people within the dance world will visit our blogs and will see the comments and trackbacks - they'll see that we are in the early stages of building a dance-focused blogosphere. So the existence of our interactions are bound to give others ideas of how they can contribute and create their own vehicles for growing the conversation about dance.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:53 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 15, 2005

Bypassing the Mainstream Media to Promote Dance

In previous post I linked to blogs and online newspapers that have recently featured stories about the decline of dance coverage in local papers.

This paucity of dance coverage is one of the major complaints within the dance community.

Here's where I stand on this topic: dance companies, presenters and dance critics should accept as fact that any direct effort to encourage newspapers and magazines to increase coverage of dance will not be successful. Letter writing campaigns to newspaper publishers and editors, for example, are a waste of time and energy. I agree with much of Rachel Feinerman's statement:

I’m not discouraging the community from fighting for the newspaper space we’re going to lose but one has to wonder whether what we have now is even worth fighting for. How worthwhile are the small paragraphs that barely have enough room to name the show and the choreographer?

So if the mainstream press will not cover dance, then how will dance companies, presenters and performance venues build audiences?

Here's my four-part game plan for bypassing the traditional media:

1) Build Your Own Multimedia Distribution Channel

As I described in my 24-page white paper, "Embracing Blogs: A New Blueprint for Promoting Dance on the Internet," the most important first step that dance companies can take is to build their own multimedia weblog to ensure large-scale promotion for upcoming dance performances.

If you can't get the coverage you want and need in the local media, then build a direct communications channel with your own audience. It is not expensive or difficult to create a blog and promote it on the Web.

2) Recognize New Categories and Types of Dance Writers

When thinking about getting coverage for your upcoming performances, it's important to think about dance coverage in new ways.

There are certain assumptions that we take for granted when we think about published articles written about dance performances:

- Assumption One: Only professional dance critics (as opposed to hobbyists) will write about performances

- Assumption Two: The written pieces will be reviews (as opposed to, say, a viewer guide on how to watch a dance piece) of dance performances

- Assumption Three: Reviews will be delivered almost exclusively through words (as opposed to pictures, audio descriptions and video clips) and will usually be in print format - although more reviews are now appearing online

Now, let's think about these underlying assumptions in the context of how dance promotion and criticism can be presented in the online world.

Essentially, each of these assumptions is way too limiting when it comes to the web. If you uncritically accept these assumptions, then you will significantly limit the type of promotion you will receive online for your dance performances.

Assumption One: Professional Dance Critics

Terry Teachout has a piece in the Wall Street Journal, "You, Too, Can Be a Critic," that explores how art journalism is expanding through weblogs. He identifies an emerging type of online arts writing that is done by practitioner bloggers - artists who also offer their own arts criticism.

But Terry is not going far enough. Not only can professional critics and practitioner bloggers write about dance and the arts online, but hobbyists and enthusiasts who simply want to share their passion and insights can and do blog as well. Admittedly, Terry is focusing specifically on art criticism; I'm focusing on the larger pool of anybody and everybody who may write about dance.

Assumption Two: Just Dance Reviews

We are so used to reading dance reviews that we never consider that there are other ways to convey information about dance.

Many years ago (about 1984), I read the autobiography of the Spanish-born filmmaker Luis Bunuel (for the life of me I can't find this book on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble or the web). In addition to recalling that he drank everyday and smoked a daily pack of Ducados into his 80s, I remember that he told an interesting story about the early days of silent movies in Mexico.

When silent movies were first shown to audiences, the series of moving images did not present a coherent narrative to viewers. Essentially nobody had any clue what was happening on the screen. So a person called an "explicador" stood up-front by the side of the screen and explained how to understand the storyline and the interactions among the actors. Over time, if I recall correctly, viewers developed an intuitive understanding of how to interpret movies and no longer required the aid of an explicador.

At the same time I was reading Luis Bunuel's autobiography I was watching my favorite baseball announcer Tim McCarver (well I've watched Tim McCarver over many years). The reason why I think McCarver is great is because he offers strategic insights into the game that I never thought about. Even though I played baseball growing up, McCarver would offer a way of looking at plays that I had never contemplated. I can't say the same for most football announcers, which frustrates me to death. I've played in pick-up games over the years, but I've never played in an organized football league. So it would be nice if for once a TV football announcer would offer some insight into the strategy and tactics of professional and college football teams, but they almost never do.

With Bunuel's silent movie "explicadors" and McCarver's play-by-play insights in mind, I'd like to introduce a new type of dance writer. This is a writer whose focus would be to reach out well beyond devoted, very knowledgeable fans of dance to the much larger audience of people who would be more than happy to become dance enthusiasts if somebody would simply show the way.

Current dance criticism is often not very accessible to people who haven't been immersed in dance for years. So dance writing in the form of reviews does not serve the purpose of growing the community of dance fans.

Taking myself as an example: I do not always understand the dance reviews that I read. I would like to understand them and I'm sure that over time I will as I attend more dance performances and continue taking dance classes (I'm taking Jazz classes right now at Joy of Motion in DC).

What I really could use - and I'm sure many others would benefit as well - is an "explicador" in the form of Tim McCarver. I want knowledgeable dance enthusiasts writing in their blogs about dance in a manner that is more educational than critical. I want to learn how to understand a dance piece, and what I should be looking for and thinking about as I watch a dance piece. Essentially I want a non-academic, dancework-specific dance appreciation course. But I don't want it in the abstract I want these types of insights for dance performances I will see or just saw.

When it comes to the web, there is no premium on space as there is with newsprint. So there is no reason that this type of introductory dance writing cannot exist side-by-side with reviews and commentary by professional dance critics and practitioner bloggers.

Assumption Three: Text-Based Reviews

Words, words and more words are not the only way to cover dance. It is increasingly easy to share pictures, audio clips and videos with audiences. As of today, I don't think that there is a single blog that provides multimedia coverage of upcoming or past dance performances. This lack of use of multimedia content is too bad because there is nothing like engaging video to get people excited about upcoming performances.

So to wrap up this section on identifying underlying assumptions, I think that when we consider how the web can be harnessed to cover dance, it's important that we don't allow ourselves to be boxed into the prevailing notions that only professional dance critics can cover dance and that this coverage must be in the form of written reviews - there are many additional ways for us proceed.

And if we start with the notion that there are many different types of people who can write about dance (professional critics, practitioner-bloggers and amateurs) and that dance can be written about in different ways (criticism and introductory guides), then we dramatically increase the number of outlets on the web that may write about your upcoming dance performances.

3) Prepare Your Own Multimedia Content

As new types of dance coverage take root through blogs and websites, it is very important that dance companies, presenters and venues play a proactive role in providing a wide-range of multimedia content to these new outlets.

In other words, dance companies must make good quality digital pictures and video clips available of upcoming and past performances to both professional and non-professional websites/blogs that cover dance. This multimedia content should be placed on a dance company's website and anybody who covers dance should be encouraged to use the videos and pictures on their own sites in order to provide coverage of these dance performances.

There seems to be an incredible reluctance on the part of dance companies to share images and videos of dance performances. Maybe dance companies want to protect their creative work - that is clearly understandable. But if the goal is to get as much coverage as possible in order to build audiences, then, I think, it is imperative that dance companies devote the time and effort to creating and distributing this multimedia content to as many websites/blogs as possible. If protecting copyrighted content is important, it is not difficult to add logos and watermarks to video files and digital pictures to ensure proper attribution and recognition.

4) Support Local Bloggers and Networks of Bloggers

In many cities and regions, we will soon see an increase in the number of local bloggers who are writing about dance - these bloggers may be professional critics or they may be amateurs.

In some cases, local bloggers are likely to join together in formal or informal networks in order to provide greater coverage of the local dance scene.

I think that it is very important that dance companies support and encourage these bloggers. Dance blogging is going to start growing exponentially, and, along with your direct blogging efforts, these independent blogs will begin to attract a lot of attention from people who are considering what dance performances to attend.

So one of the reasons why you will want to provide ample multimedia content about your dance performances as I described right above is so that these local bloggers are encouraged to feature your dance programs.

Something else to keep in mind: The more blogs that cover your upcoming dance performances the higher your own blog will be listed in popular search engines. Search engines often determine how they list results based upon the "authority" of a website. "Authority" means the number of websites that link to your website. So if a lot of blogs link to you, then you will have a high level of "authority" and your website will be displayed higher up in search results.

Conclusion

The mainstream press cannot be convinced to increase their coverage of dance. Given that coverage will only decrease in these traditional outlets, it is necessary for dance companies to take direct charge of getting as much publicity as possible.

To ensure wide-spread coverage, dance companies as well as presenting organizations and venues should:

- Create and promote their own multimedia blogs
- Recognize that there are many ways that dance can be covered online in order to reach die-hard dance fans as well as newcomers to dance
- Provide multimedia content to these emerging online media outlets, and
- Support emerging local dance bloggers and networks of bloggers

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:15 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

November 14, 2005

Dwindling Coverage of Dance in Newspapers

There are a number of recent blog posts and articles that address the topic of shrinking coverage of dance and the arts in local newspapers.

Below I include links and brief summaries of these pieces. In my next post, I'll share my thoughts:

- In NYC Dance Journal, Shannon Jowett writes that The Village Voice will soon be cutting back its dance coverage. He encourages dance fans to contact the paper to encourage continued coverage of the New York Dance Scene.

- Rachel Feinerman in Downtown Dancer, also referring to the pending Village Voice cut-back of dance coverage, believes that it may not be worth fighting for such limited dance coverage in the first place and its best to look toward weblogs and the Internet to increase coverage of dance.

- In Rachel's second post about the need for more dance space, she highlights and agrees with comment by Gail of Let Go of Your Butt blog that the online world is an ideal medium for dance criticism given its ability to share video clips and foster dialogue.

- In the Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout has a piece, "You, Too, Can Be a Critic," that discusses the declining coverage of the arts in newspapers, which is being replaced, in part, by an increasing number of art critics who are now sharing their perspectives through weblogs. Terry believes that a new category of practitioner-bloggers (critics who are also practicing artists themselves) will have a positive effect for arts journalism. (You can also read Terry's blog About Last Night).

- And Rachel Howard in a review of Bebe Miller's "Landing/Place" at the end of October points out that her local newspaper, the Chronicle, did not feature an article about this performance. Rachel encourages her readers to write to the paper to encourage more coverage of dance.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 11, 2005

"Butts In The Seats" Reviews Blogging White Paper

Joe at the "Butts In The Seats" blog wrote a nice piece about my new white paper, "Embracing Blogs: A New Blueprint for Promoting Dance on the Internet".

Joe pointed out one of limitations of my paper:

The only problem I saw with his paper was that the need to have donations and other transactions pass through a secure server wasn't mentioned. If you are a novice at blogs, you probably need to know that as well.

No question that there are important issues to address regarding secure e-commerce transactions before soliciting funds online. What I had in mind, although I didn't say this in my paper, was that dance companies would probably use third-aparty applications to do the actual collection and processing of donations. This is an important topic to cover in the future and I'd like to learn more about how dance and other arts organizations are collecting contributions online.

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:06 AM - Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dance and the 99 Cent Video

Producers of TV shows and music videos are in the early stages of trying to figure out how to generate revenue by making their programs available via a pay-per-view model.

Click to view larger image of this screen shot of dance videos and TV shows available through iTunes

Apple, through its iTunes service, kicked-off the trend by making songs available for iPods at 99 cents. Now you can go to iTunes and buy music videos and popular TV programs for just $1.99 a piece. TV networks don't want to miss the bandwagon. Both NBC and CBS just announced plans to make their hit shows available for 99 cents a piece.

And the producers of the Emmy Awards, recognizing the increasing popularity of video content for cell phones, handhelds and other alternative devices, have created a new awards category for these emerging video formats.

These new distribution channels for video content will soon offer dancers and dance companies a new way to make money. Whether you want to sell a video of a stage performance, a dance on camera film, or a specially created video for online distribution, there is no reason that you cannot soon be selling videos for anywhere from $0.99 to $5.00 - and making good money in the process.

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:20 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 7, 2005

Embracing Blogs White Paper Now Available

I've just uploaded a new white paper: "Embracing Blogs: A New Blueprint for Promoting Dance on the Internet"

This paper is in PDF format and requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Here's the brief overview of this 24-page document:

This white paper delivers a concrete plan for how dance companies can create and promote Internet marketing campaigns that increase audience sizes, generate more revenue, get more press coverage, create more knowledgeable audiences, and inspire greater enthusiasm for all forms of dance.

I'd appreciate your thoughts and feedback about this blueprint.

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:14 PM - Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

November 4, 2005

MoMA on iTunes

In my post yesterday about podcasting in the arts world, I left out the Museum of Modern Art.

I just realized that MoMA features a large number of audio tours on iTunes. Here's a screen shot. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Also, you can visit the audio page on the MoMA website to learn more about their podcasts, and to watch audio tours in conjunction with Flash animations that provide a visual component to these programs.

Posted by Doug Fox at 5:12 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 3, 2005

Where Are the Dance Podcasts?

It's good to see that in the visual and performing arts world audio podcasts are beginning to catch on.

Andrew Taylor has a post about some of these new podcasts:

- The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has launched an E-Label version of its classics on iTunes. From the press release you can link to MSO's music on ITunes.

- The Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee has a number of recent podcasts of exhibits at the Frist. I'm listening right now to one done by Exhibits Curator Mark Scala who is explaining a few works from the Hudson River School. He's giving a live tour and asking the audience questions as he discusses the paintings. Sounds interesting but I think I have to be looking at the paintings to benefit from this audio tour.

- GalleryCasts seems to be a new directory of art-related podcasts - there are currently four podcasts available.

- Stanford University has created Standford on iTunes, which includes a good number of audio files from lectures, music, and books and authors on its special section on iTunes - very impressive and very free.

So the question I have is when will the dance world join the podcasting fun? I think that video podcasts in particular would be a great way to promote upcoming dance performances.

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:47 PM - Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 2, 2005

Retail Dance Festival in San Francisco

The 2005 Retail Dance Festival takes place this weekend at Union Square in San Francisco. Retail Dance, launched in 2001, features the work of local choreographers whose pieces are performed in retail showrooms, store windows, hotels and restaurants. Consumers get to experience dance free of charge, retailers underwrite the brief performances, and dancers and choreographers are compensated and have an opportunity to promote their upcoming performances and classes as well.

This festival is presented by choreographer Kim Shipp who created the concept of Retail Dance in 1998. And this year's festival features the work of eight choreographers whose work will be performed at six different locations over two days.

I like this idea of retailer-sponsored dance performances - it definitely benefits all participants. This concept ought to be explored in other cities.

The works are based upon the marketing needs of the retailers. The press release reads, "It is [the dance works] an artistic collaboration between a choreographer and a business in which the content of the work is inspired by the retailer’s site, product, or special event."

The event producers are happy to embrace the commercial nature of this dance event. Their home page features the following quote from a Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal review of a previous year's festival: "Once witnessed, you might dub it 'product-pitching pirouettes' or 'moshing for merchandise.' How about a little dancing with your shopping experience?"

My complaint is with the website for Retail Dance. It's too somber (just black and white) and not very interesting. Retail Dance just calls out for colorful pictures and videos. Why not charge the retailers a bit more and get them to underwrite a website with video clips of the performances and video interviews with the store owneres/managers? This way the retailers would benefit from both the actual event and from on-going promotion on the web.

Posted by Doug Fox at 4:08 PM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 26, 2005

Dance Camera West Website

Most websites that I come across in the dance world do not do the creators justice. They tend to be poorly designed, difficult to navigate and lacking in clarity. I think this problem should be corrected so that the online marketing efforts of dance companies and related organizations match the vision, talent and creativity of the performances they are intended to promote.

One website I do especially like is for the Dance Camera West Film Festival. The copy is clear and concise, the navigation options are logical and well layed out, and the color scheme and graphics are appealing. I also think that the 3-minute video promo for this festival is wonderful. It's an enticing trailer that grabs your attention and motivates you to go to the next festival.

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:50 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chocolate Kisses and New Marketing Metaphors

Andrew Taylor in his the Artfulmanager blog posted message, "Construct your own marketing metaphor," relating recent study about what makes a nearby jar of candy most tempting.

In a nutshell, if a candy jar is not opaque and is easily reachable, then people are likely to eat more of the chocolate kisses contained in the jar.

Based upon this finding, Andrew speculated that there was probably a "profound marketing metaphor for marketing the arts in these results."

So I gave it my best shot:

There sure is.

The short answer, especially in the realm of performing arts, is that, despite the advent of low-cost, easy-to-use, practically ubiquitous, multimedia-based collaborative tools, just about all arts organizations are still promoting upcoming performances in opaque jars that aren’t even within arm's length. And because art promoters are not embracing these collaborative tools, audiences have absolutely no idea how many chocolate kisses are inside the candy jar until they arrive at a venue and the curtain rises. Bottom line: a lot of kisses, unfortunately, go uneaten -- which may be a good thing if you're stuck in a chair all day in front of a computer. But as far as the arts go, it's a serious problem.

I'm sure the above needs some elaboration:

Most art marketers are still in the sell the sizzle not the steak mentality of building audiences. When you only had the ability to print flyers, send mass mailings and advertise through traditional media channels, selling the sizzle was about all you could do. You can't offer somebody a compelling taste if you don't have the tools to deliver a taste.

But things have changed. You have websites, blogs, podcasting, streaming video, Flash animations and more that provide marketers with tremendous opportunities to engage audiences in new, exciting and compelling ways. But guess what? Arts organizations are using these new tools as if the old rules still apply. They continue to promote unreachable opaque jars of chocolate kisses as the sole inducement to get people into the theater. In other words, today's audiences, despite the proliferation of instant communication technologies, know little more about a performance entering a theater than they did 5, 10 or 20 years ago.

Does that make sense? Wouldn't more people attend performances if they had a deeper understanding about a theatrical or dance performance before they entered a theater? If they could see video clips of rehearsals, audio interviews with the choreographer and pictures of practice sessions, wouldn't that engage people and get more people into the theater?

The underlying problem is not that these interactive tools don't exist. The underlying problem is not that these tools are too expensive or too difficult to use. The problem is that people in the arts world are operating under the wrong philosophy.

So the moral is if the jar is opaque, you are not giving your audience a preliminary taste of the action. But if you de-opaque the jar move it just a little closer to your audience and let them get a solid preliminary bite of the upcoming action before they buy a ticket, then you will fill-up the auditorium to the rafters!

Posted by Doug Fox at 6:34 AM - Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 18, 2005

Where Are the Pictures of the Dance Performance?

There's an August 8th post at uncoy.com, "Dance Publicity Photographs: Promotion of Dance in the Press," by Alec (don't know last name) that caught my attention:

I am often disappointed with the dance photos which I am able to present with the pieces at Impulstanz. Unfortunately modern dance companies believe that the audience has no right to see what the show actually looks like. They provide their own publicity stills and do not allow newspapers or anyone else to take photographs of the actual performances.

While I understand these dance companies would like to protect their image, at the very least there should be an official Impulstanz photographer shooting every show in rehearsal and offering the company director or manager to approve or disapprove shots from the rehearsal photo session. The technology exists.

Reviews of the work would be more vivid and useful for all concerned with accurate photo materials which correspond to what is actually on stage. Newspapers would probably be happier to run newsworthy photographs rather than somebody's contrived poster piece. While I understand these dance companies would like to protect their image, at the very least there should be an official Impulstanz photographer shooting every show in rehearsal and offering the company director or manager to approve or disapprove shots from the rehearsal photo session. The technology exists.

Alec raises good point about the paucity of good quality pictures of modern dance companies. I'm often annoyed when I'm searching online for upcoming dance performances. A huge percentage of the time, I come across a very brief one to two sentence description of a dance performance -- no extended descriptions and no pictures. And the odds of finding a video clip are next to zilch.

Yesterday, I wrote about an upcoming dance performance by the San Francisco-based Capacitor. This dance company actually provides high-quality pictures online, a video clip and a detailed press release about this performance. The availability of these resources should be part of the standard promotional campaign for all dance performances. But, sadly, this is not the case.

To me the lack of engaging online marketing materials for upcoming dance performances is inexplicable and I have trouble fathoming its causes. Don't dance companies need larger audiences? Aren't most dance companies struggling to increase fund raising efforts? And don't dance companies want more exposure in the press???

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:59 AM - Permalink | Comments (1)

October 10, 2005

The iPod Nano and Dance Mobs

Stefan Engeseth has a solution to help Apple overcome the negative publicity generated by battery problems with the new iPod Nano.

In a October 6, 2005 post, "'iPod Dance' - A nonstop music solution with a perpetual batterty," Stefan describes how human movement, in the form of dancing, can be harnessed to power the iPod Nanos.

He recommends that Apple kick-off a marketing campaign via flash dances that feature Madonna dancing in the streets of New York. Read Stefan's post and comments to get a better idea of his recommendation.

I've always been intrigued by the idea of flash dancers - also called mobile clubbing or smart mobs. The idea is straightforward: A group of people communicate via email, instant messaging or text messaging and agree to meet at a designated public space at a specific date and time. When they arrive, somebody plays music via a portable music player, everybody dances for, say, 15 minutes and everybody leaves. That's it.

But in its own way, it's a pretty revolutionary idea. This type of event could not take place before ubiquitous communication tools existed that enabled groups of people to instantaneously communicate and determine on their own when and where they would gather to dance. No need for a venue, no need for expensive marketing programs, no DJ to decide what music to play and, overall, no pre-planning of any type.

There have been a number of examples of smart dance mobs over the past 2-3 years. Here are some articles and examples:

- Mobile Clubbing at Liverpool Street Station

- Flash Dance promotion during South by Southwest Festival earlier this year in Austin, Texas

- "From Flash-Mob To Mo-Club" November 2004 post to Robin Good's blog

- Pictures from Argentine Tango Flash Mob in June 2004

Posted by Doug Fox at 8:20 AM - Permalink | Comments (1)