Check out this video from the 30’s. In the middle it says “‘The Great White Way’ is the kaleidoscopic cradle of the theatre and Home Sweet Home to actors, musicians, chorus girls and hot-cha boys.”
Oh the outfits! The coats and hats! The mustaches!
All good things must come to an end. Check out Life in a Martial Institution before it ends August 31. Click here to visit the site.
Join the new Rock of Ages social network at www.80srockfans.com
I am joining the blogosphere this week and discussing my new marketing obsession. Check out yearbookyourself.com if your haven’t yet. The website is very simple. It allows users to upload a picture of themselves and it will transform the picture into a yearbook picture from a certain year. You can choose from several years, from the 1950s all the way to the year 2000. This website is so much fun. I love it. It is also a pretty brilliant marketing campaign for a league of malls across the country. You enter in a mall, hopefully one near you and with each picture and year that comes up it gives you a little blurb about the trends from that period and then match you with stores that fit that trend (1950s is very Banana Republic, mid-1990s is very Skater punk). Anyway its awesome. Check out some pictures of myself, one from 1960 and one from 1996. I need to go shopping now!
1960 (this one actually isn’t far off from what I actually look like):
1996 (I definitely had this shirt):
If you haven’t seen this ad for CW’s teen show, Gossip Girls featuring the Parents’ Television Council’s scathing review yet, you will now: they are everywhere.
Gossip Girls could have responded to the Parent’s Television Council with a “very special” episode showing teenagers the consequences of risky behavior. Instead, the show created an entire advertising campaign around negativity. There’s two other ads in the campaign featuring the quotes “every parent’s nightmare” from the Boston Herald and “a nasty piece of work” from the New York Post.
Is the ad campaign itself “nasty?” Sure, but I think it’s clever and different enough to break through to the target demographic who want to do everything their parents find “inappropriate.”
While trying to find bad 80’s commercials on YouTube for the upcoming Rock of Ages, I stumbled upon this guy: Brandon Nichols. I love this guy! He is an example of what all actors will have to do to get seen in the near future.
Here’s how he did it:
1. He created all of his music/video free on One True Media, then, created a free website on wix.com.
2. He uploaded his videos to YouTube and added keywords like Broadway, Musicals, etc. This made it easy to find Brandon when people searched for those terms. They loved him, and subscribed, saw other videos and then commented and responded wiht their videos.
3. Brandon used his original style and sang show tunes to the pictures of the show he was singing to. The whole thing is bizarre and really…oh, what’s the word…REAL. Something Broadway could use more of.
It’s going to be interesting to see where the industry and Brandon go next. For Brandon, if it’s not a career on Broadway, it’s definitely a career in internet marketing.
Our friends at Spot will join forces with the London Agency DeWynters. Read about it here.
Read this very interesting article about theatre institutions taking their place on Broadway.
One of our clients is Life in a Marital Institution: 20 years of monogamy in one terrifying hour. It’s a great show, with intimate storytelling by James Braly, who reminds me (and plenty of reviewers) of Spalding Gray. James tells stories about his marriage to Susan, who breastfed her children until they were 6 years old.
That’s right: 6 years old (and this is not even the strangest story in the show).
So, the producer thought of a great ad, to be blasted to The Onion readers, and on Facebook:
Got Breastmilk ?
Life In A Marital Institution’s James Braly is “Gifted…and, frankly, just a little strange!” – The New York Times
www.LifeInAMaritalInstitution.
Alas, Facebook rejected the ad. Why?
The text of this ad contains language that is unacceptable or inappropriate. Per sections 3 and 8 of Facebook ’s Advertising Guidelines, ad text must relate directly to the content of the landing page and may not include any user attribute unless it is directly relevant to the offer. The text may not contain, facilitate or promote offensive, profane, vulgar, obscene, adult or inappropriate language.
Now, I understand that Facebook is trying to protect its site and its users from Spam. Integrity is a good thing.
But, really, Facebook users can’t take a little milk mustache ‘n breastmilk reference?
Our friend Andy Hamingson is the new Executive Director of The Public. We couldn’t be more happy. Congrats, Andy! Read the article in Playbill.
