During the month of November, vanity will take a backseat while I grow a moustache for Movember to raise awareness and and a few bucks to fight prostate cancer. And I’m offering you a once-in-a-lifetime deal.
Donate to my moustachioed campaign and I will write a song for you, and post a video of the performance on your Facebook profile.
Give $50 or more and the song will be all about you (or a topic of your choice). Give $5–$49 and you’ll be included in a song along with other donors. (E.g. a couple giving $25 each will get one song about the two of them, or I’ll lump five $10 donors into a group ditty.) It’s proportional: the more you give, the more the tune is about you.
Click here to donate on my Mo Space page. Just so we’re clear about expectations, my mandolin and singing skills are lousy. (Don’t be misled by the above photo of Freddie Mercury.) But this is an exercise in humility, and you’ll get a good laugh at my expense — and for a good cause. So please give, and I’ll dust off the archtop and my vocal chords.
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November 5, 2011 ·
Having returned from vacation, I’m spending more time digging through data from this year’s Saskatchewan Jazz Festival, and reflecting upon what lessons I can glean from my marketing campaign. Besides the introduction of our iPhone and Android app, one of the most interesting changes this year was the amount of buzz and activity on Twitter.
In past years, I feel that Saskatchewan lacked a critical mass of Twitter users, and our involvement on the social network wasn’t particularly fruitful. This year, however, the festival’s follower count jumped, people were tweeting about the shows, and we successfully used Twitter to engage the public, promote our events, and listen to what people were saying about us.
Looking back on the campaign, there are many takeaways from the festival’s activity on Twitter, but I want to highlight three that I thought would be most helpful for other arts organizations.
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August 31, 2011 ·
Last night in Saskatoon, Tourism Saskatchewan held their annual Awards of Excellence Gala, where the Saskatchewan Jazz Festival was in the running for the Online Marketing Campaign of the Year Award. After consuming the plates of chocolates and ground cherries adorning our table (how I do love ground cherries!), we were pleased to learn that we won.
While it’s certainly nice to have a chunk of pretty glass to keep papers from blowing around the office, I hope that the award is just one more sign that the festival’s brand is connecting with more and more people across the province and region.
Incidentally, at last year’s awards gala we were a finalist for an award handed out to the top event marketing campaign. We ultimately lost to a NASCAR race, in what quite likely will be the only time I find myself in competition with America’s favourite couch potato pastime.
April 21, 2011 ·
Last week I was fortunate enough to hear a talk by CBC president Hubert Lacroix on the future of the public broadcaster. Unsurprisingly, much of the discussion was focused on digital platforms and social media, and how this has changed how we interact with each other.
To crudely paraphrase Mr. Lacroix, if you sat down beside a stranger at Starbucks and asked to see their baby photos, or questioned what they got up to Friday night, they’re likely to look at you funny and tell you to get lost. But once we hop onto Facebook, that type of behaviour is normalized.
One thing I love about Twitter is that such interaction with people you’ve never met is not only perfectly acceptable, it’s encouraged. For me, engaging those you don’t already know is what makes Twitter fascinating.
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April 17, 2011 ·
I was recently invited to participate in an installment of the National Post’s Culture Club. Described as a “Boy George-free effort to bring the water cooler experience online,” the project gathers arts and entertainment critics to discuss topical cultural issues.
In a bid to encourage debate about art and ethics, OCAD recently invited artist Adel Abdessemed to speak to students and exhibit his controversial work. The National Post discussion picked up on this, asking us a simple question without a simple answer: When does art cross the line?
You can read the edited discussion on the Post’s website or in today’s dead-tree version of their newspaper.
Image: Taxidermia by Adel Abdessemed (photo source).
December 9, 2010 ·
