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Some final thoughts about Fringe marketing from a full-time professional magician.

First, for those who are in the dark, the Boulder International Fringe Festival is a 12-day festival of live theater, circus art, performance art, spoken word, puppetry, music, dance, multi-media, film, visual art, storytelling, and yes…sometimes magic. Performers pay a fee to participate, and receive in return: a venue, support staff, and some marketing. After that, 100% of the ticket sales goes to the performer, so the onus is on the artist to sell tickets.

A brief story. Years ago, I was active in a Boulder, Colorado, community theater group. The group would produce 3 or 4 plays each year and I acted in some of the productions, stage managed others, and even sat behind the ticket counter at times. At show time, despite the consist high quality of our productions, the auditorium (more often then not) was mostly empty. And the House Manager and the Stage Manager would confer in the lobby, gazing out into the parking lot to see if any stragglers were forthcoming. And during the Winter months the following conversation would ensue:

SM: So…do you think we’ll get anymore people tonight?

HM: Well, it’s been snowing all evening, and no one wants to go out when the weather is bad.

SM: Yeah this bad weather has really kept people away from the theater. I guess everyone is staying at home tonight.

HM: It’s a pity, the show is quite good.

Of course if it were Spring or Summer, the conversation would go like this:

SM: So…do you think we’ll get anymore people tonight?

HM: Well, the weather’s so nice this evening, and no one wants be sitting in a dark theater when the weather is so nice.

SM: Yeah this good weather has really kept people away from the theater. I guess everyone is enjoying the pleasant weather tonight.

HM: It’s a pity, the show is quite good.

The point is this. There will ALWAYS be obstacles that will deter people from coming to your show. Your job as a salesperson is to make your show so compelling that it overcomes obstacles. Imagine your friend is be driving home from a hard day at the office, when he remembers that your performance is tonight. Will he (or she) say, “I’ve had a hard day at the office. I think I’ll just go home and relax and skip the performance.”? Or will he (or she) say, “I’ve had a hard day at the office. I think I’ll go the the Fringe Festival and relax and have some fun.”?

The difference will depend on your ability to sell your show.

Earlier I mentioned that you should premier your show before the Fringe so that you’re confident in your ability to deliver the goods. Your confidence will help convince your friends that they should see your show.

So you’ve spoken with everyone you know about the show. You’ve asked them to come, though few people have actually committed.

About 5 weeks prior to the show, I began my letter writing campaign. Just a brief note to remind people that the big day is approaching, and that I’d be very happy if they could attend. I include a postcard with the dates and times. (It’s likely that I already gave them a postcard in person, but I send them another one, just in case they’ve misplaced it.)

By the way, if anyone asks, “What night is the best night to attend?” I tell them to come opening night, but to be sure to reserve their tickets in advance. (I’ll explain why in a bit…)

Also, I didn’t give out very many comps. The oft cited theory is that if you give away free tickets, it will generate word-of-mouth buzz which will translate into greater attendance. In my experience, people are grateful for the free tickets, but it does little to boost future ticket sales. True, if you’ve only sold 10 tickets, you can then fill the house with comps and thus create the illusion of a sold-out performance, but I had set my sights higher — I wanted every show to genuinely sell-out.

About 3 weeks out, I wrote a press release and got my name in the paper. Don’t worry if you’re not picked up by any of the major papers, even a small town paper will give you a little visibility. And you’re going to leverage this moment of fame. When I got a newspaper to pick up my story, I began emailing all my friends with a link to the on-line edition and the article generated even more interest in my show.

About 1 week out, I sent out another email with a Mapquest link since many of my friends were coming up from Denver and would not be familiar with my Boulder venue. Also, I gave them tips on where they could find parking, and advised them again to reserve their tickets in advance.

Remember how I told everyone to come on opening night if they could? Well my opening night performance played to a Standing Room Only crowd. And the sell-out crowd gave me one more opportunity to remind people about the show. So I sent out an email that night to all my friends warning them that the show was a big hit, and that people were turned away at the door. I advised everyone to reserve their tickets now, or risk being denied the opportunity to attend.

And with that, I ceased marketing and turned my focus to giving great performances.

Well, it was hard work, but all my efforts paid off. Of my six performances at the Fringe Festival, four of them sold out, and I earned the 2007 Encore! Performance Award for highest attendance at my venue. Was able to turn a handsome profit too. I know there was a good deal of buzz throughout the Fringe community with people wondering how I got so many people to come to my show.

Well that’s how I did it.

[Update: June 27, 2008. I forgot to mention when writing my friends I would use phrases like, "It's a show your whole family will enjoy." Or, "Enjoy a night out with your friends or co-workers." I've had too many experiences of having a friend show up, by themselves, on closing night, and tell me after the performance, "I really enjoyed that. I'll have to tell my co-workers about the show." But, of course it's too late.

For some reason, when I invited them to come to the show, it never occurred that they might also bring their friends, co-workers, and/or family. So I decided that I would help plant the idea. Just a reminder that it's more fun to Fringe with a friend.]

Continuing from where I left off yesterday…

The next tool I used to promote my magic performance at the Fringe was a postcard with all the specific details about my show. Postcards are, hands down, the best form of print material you can have for the Fringe.

First, they are relatively inexpensive to produce at about $.15 apiece for 1,000 postcards. I used an online print vendor called 48HourPrint, but there are many others (like ModernPostcards) that will do as good or better.

Allow me to interject one personal exhortation. Do yourself a favor and pay someone to design your postcard for you. I know that we all have software that will allow us to layout photos and text, but we don’t all have an eye for good design. And if your postcard looks amateurish, people will assume that your performance will be amateurish too. So make sure that your promotional materials are every bit as good as your performance is. Thus ends the personal diatribe.

You can design your postcard as a self-mailer, provided you leave certain areas free of print for the post office. Your print vendor will often provide templates showing you which areas are verboten.

I chose not to use my postcards as a self-mailer because I would have to sacrifice valuable space, and because I’m not convinced that enough people will come to see a play they’ve never heard of before (mine was an original work, as I believe most Fringe performances are) just because they received a postcard.

Let’s examine some of the marketing challenges specific to Fringe performances. As I alluded to above, unless you’re doing Hamlet or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof you will need to find a way to convey what your performance is about. A postcard is a very poor vehicle for this (due to space limitations), so it will need to be supplemented somehow. I opted to speak with people face-to-face, and to write personal letters.

Your performance has several dates & times and they are irregularly distributed. Postcards do very well here. By giving your prospect a postcard, he or she will have a record of each performance date each start time. Carry postcards with you at all times and hand them out liberally. It sure beats having someone try to write down, “…Thursday the 19th at 8:30, Friday the 20th at 7:00, Saturday the 21st — no show…”

Because of the variety of dates and times for my magic performance, I decided not to produce any posters (nor did I write chalk messages on the sidewalk, nor did I use any other marketing devices of this ilk). Posters can work to promote a Fringe show — but only to a degree. And there’s the rub. Because I wanted to be as profitable as possible, I needed to keep my expenses down. This required that I use only the marketing tools that would produce the most bang for the buck (and the most torque for my time).

Posters can work for bands, because there is less to remember (Radiohead, Saturday, June 7th at 8:00, Fox Theatre). And posters can even be effective for a more traditional theater run (The Odd Couple, Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00, Sundays at 2:00, through the month of June at the Dairy Center).

But because I needed to convey so much detailed information, I realized that I needed a promotional piece that people could walk away with.

You’ll need to map out a strategy for how you will use your postcards to determine how many postcards to produce. There’s no point in printing 5,000 postcards if you only know 20 people (I hope you know more than 20 people…).

For my show, I make a list of everyone I knew in Colorado for whom I had a mailing address (I didn’t send them as self-mailers, instead I included the postcard in an envelope with a short letter inviting them to come). Then I make a list of all the networking events I would attend between now and opening night and set a distribution goal for each event. I made a list of postcard friendly businesses that allow people to leave stacks of promotional material, and calculated how many postcards I would need.

OK. That’s what I know about using postcards. I think I’ll do one more post about promoting your Fringe show to wrap up some loose ends. But again, I’ve got a magic gig to prepare for, so I’ll stop right here.

I’m looking forward to the Boulder International Fringe Festival coming up in August. There will be a magician and a mentalist this year (but I will not be performing). It is one of Colorado’s true festival gems and is not to be missed. And although I won’t be participating in the Festival this year, many of my Fringe friends have been asking me for advice due to the tremendous success I had last year (4 of my 6 performances were sold out…). Here’s what I learned four-walling my magic show — though these ideas will apply to any type of show.

First, you need to spend a lot of time promoting your show. As artists, you may want to devote time to working on your performance, but it’s time to become a business person. My advice is that you finish working on your performance now. Set it aside, and begin focusing on marketing.

If the work is new you may have planned to premiere the work at the Fringe Festival. I recommend against this. Go ahead and schedule some performances now, in advance of the Fringe. Premieres are overrated. There are always problems with a new work that will be found after the first few performances. Fix them now and you’ll have a show that’s even more Fringe-worthy.

The other reason for debuting the show now (instead of at the Festival) is that you’re going to need to start selling the show now. And you can’t sell the show, if you don’t know what you’ve got. When you talk about your show with other people, they’ll want to know what the show is like. Is it funny? Is it thought-provoking? Is it gut-wrenching? If you’re not finished writing your show, if you have never performed it for anyone before, then you’re not going to be able to speak with any authority. And you need to be able to speak with authority if you want to convince people to come see your show. People can tell if you’re uncertain. And they won’t buy from you if you’re uncertain.

So get the show up and running in front of a live audience. Get some feedback; make some fixes. Then spend the next two months promoting your show.

More advice: Begin talking with people about your show now. Whenever someone asks you, “What’s new?” Be prepared to tell them that you’re excited to be in the Fringe Festival in August, tell them briefly about the show and then say, “I really hope you can make it. Will you be able to come?”

It is important that you remember to ask people to come! If you forget to ask them to come they might think, “Maybe the show isn’t something I’d enjoy. Maybe it’s too avant-garde for me.” People will think all sorts of crazy things if you don’t ask them to come. So make sure you ask. If they say yes, then thank them and tell them how much it will mean to you to have them in the audience.

As a side note, I am shocked at how many of my friends will say, “I wasn’t sure if I should come or not. I was afraid it would make you nervous if you saw me in the audience.”

The only explanation I can think of is that they went to see another friend in a performance, and after the show their friend said, “I saw your name on the reservation list tonight, and it made me so nervous that I could hardly concentrate on my performance.”

If you’ve ever said that to any of your friends, please STOP. You’re making it really difficult for the rest of us to sell tickets to our friends.

But back to the issue at hand. In truth, when you ask someone, for the first time, to come to your show, most people will not want to commit. Many people will begin to choke and stammer, and they’ll mutter something about needing to check their schedule. That’s OK. It is perfectly natural, after all, you’ve only spoken to them for 60 seconds about the show. They’re not ready to buy. Like the expert fisherman (or fisherwoman) that you are, you can practice “catch and release” and set them free unharmed. Just tell them that you understand and that you’ll be sure to give them more information when it’s closer to the event.

This is enough to get you started. Get your performance ready to go now. Get it to the stage now (rather than later) so you can polish the rough spots. And begin telling everyone you know that you expect them to come see you show. Remember, “catch and release.”

I’ll write more at a later date about how to follow up, but now I need to get ready for a performance this afternoon…

(Ran the Bolder Boulder 10K today, so I’m relaxing and cogitating, because I’m too sore to move about. I had hoped for a better time, but at 1 hour 16 minutes, it was my slowest time since I began running the BB 13 years ago. Actually, I was in need of a miracle, as magic kept me too busy to train this year — and at my age, training is no longer a luxury. But enough with the personal tidbits, you came here for hardier fare…)

A question some of my magician colleagues in Colorado have asked is, “How much magic do you need to know to make it as a full-time professional magician?” My standard answer is that you need to know everything possible about the art. One of the great boons I received was the opportunity to apprentice in a magic shop for six years; during which time, I was exposed to a wide swath of differing magic styles.

The need to know a great deal of magic flies in the face of some highly-respected magicians like Eugene Burger, who says that when he became a full-time professional, his performing repertoire consisted of six effects.

In addition there is the old standard that a magician should “Learn six effects, but learn them well.”

I believe that the advice regarding “six effects” is meant to counter the obsession that some amateurs have with amassing hundreds (nay, thousands) of esoteric magical variations. None of which are adequately mastered. And none of which are discernibly different from one another.

The wisdom of “six effects” is that it forces the magician to focus on and to perfect his or her performance of a few pieces of magic, rather than accumulating more secrets that are never worthy of performance.

Still, the advice to learn “six effects” — while an admirable ideal — lacks much in the realm of practicality.

When I perform mix & mingle magic (also know as “strolling magic” or “walk-around magic”) I can get by with a repertoire of six effects. But if the DJ (or band) is too loud to converse, then I may find it necessary to switch to a second set of six effects, magic that can be performed without speaking. And if the lights are dim, I have at my disposal a third set of six effects for low-light situations.

When I work from the stage, I have a standard set of magic that I rely on for audiences up to 200 people. But when performing for audiences of more than 200 (without the aid of a video camera) I have another set of magic.

When I develop material for the stage, I classify it, not only by the number of people that can see it, but also by the technical requirements. Some magic requires the use of a wireless clip-on microphone. Other magic can be done with a wireless hand-held microphone, and other magic can be done with a corded hand-held microphone. Some magic requires specific sound or lighting cues and the attendant rehearsals.

All of these situations describe venues that I work in. If I only have “six effects” at my beck and call, I would need to turn away a good number of performances. If you’re interested in been a full-time professional magician (that’s making any money), you’re going to need good deal more than six effects. But please note that I’ve expanded my repertoire with a purpose. Collecting magic that doesn’t make you a more versatile (more bookable) performer is an acceptable hobby, but a poor use of time for the full-time professional.

The number of times an event planner actively looks to hire a magician for a corporate event must be very small indeed. (At least that’s the case here in Colorado, where magic — as entertainment for grown-ups — tends to fly under the radar.)

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a need, it simply means that, as magicians, we have to spend a lot of our time explaining how magic can help.

To begin with, magic can be used as a theme for many different events or products. For fund-raisers we can demonstrate “The Magic of Giving.” For a product launch, “The Magic of the New XTR2000.” For a sales kick-off, “Make the Magic Happen.”

And if we’re skilled at developing new bits of magic, we can even provide magic that illustrates the features of the XTR2000, or we can assist the CEO in performing a bit of magic to rev up his or her audience, or use magic to demonstrate the impact of the donor’s gift. If you can find a way to entertain people while informing them about your client’s product, you’ll always find people who are interested in booking you.

Using magic in this way, to help convey a message, is one of the most overlooked ways that we can help. Even if the client does not want to commission a customize piece of magic, we can still convey a message. If I’m working a client appreciation event, I will say to all the guests, “On behalf of Company X, thanks for being a client; we appreciate your business.” If it’s an event for employees and their families, I will tell the employees, “Ms. CEO has asked me to thanks each of you for your hard work on Project X.” I do this whether I’m working from the stage or doing mix & mingle magic at a reception.

The truth is that very few people need someone who can do card tricks, but there are people who need help hosting their event. There are people who need you to make their guests feel welcome. There are people who need you to thank their guests for attending. And there are people who need you to make their guests feel special.

An all together different way that magic can help a corporate meeting planner is to entertain the guests during the slow spots to keep the energy up and to keep the momentum going. Often, after the last business session, guests decide to skip the reception and go back to their rooms before dinner. As magicians we can provide incentive for people to attend the reception and can kick-start the festivities.

Also, as restaurateurs have long known, magicians can entertain guests while they wait for their food. At a banquet, people take their seats and the waitstaff begins serving the first course, but it may take 30 minutes to get the salads out to the last table. Then another 30 minutes go by before the entrée arrives. For events where the chef and the front captain are slammed and can’t get the food out any faster (or where tables must wait their turn to go to the excruciatingly slow buffet line), a couple of magicians, offering table-side entertainment, can help make the time pass more agreeably.

One final idea that we can bring to the table when meeting with an event planner. Very often business events can become content heavy. Throughout the day, the attendees are loaded-down with a ton of information. So much so, that they reach their saturation point. And before they can learn one more fact or figure, they need a break. They need to relax and have some fun.

Magic (either from the stage or up-close) can help people decompress, can help people relax and refresh. Magic gets people laughing and having fun, it allows them to blow-off some steam, and prepares them to learn more. And magic is safer than alcohol.

So while most corporate event planners won’t think of magic as a solution to their problems, there are a great many ways that magicians can help make an event better.

Being, at core, a methodical person, and having worked extensively with mnemonic (memory) triggers, I like to organize annual events around my birthday (which happens to be today).

My birthday reminds me (mnemonically) that I need to change the batteries in my smoke detectors at home.

And it reminds me that it’s time to buy a new set of maps for Colorado.

As a magician who works all along the Front Range, I need to know my way around the Denver Metro area and Boulder. So I always carry a set of maps with me.

Of course like most people today, I make use of Google Maps and MapQuest, however, I’ve found it unwise to rely solely on online maps, not because they are often wrong (although that has happened on rare occasion), but because traffic may dictate that I make an unplanned change of course.

Last Thursday, on the way to the airport, I spotted a massive accident up ahead. Traffic had come to a complete stop and was just beginning to back up. Fortunately, I there was still an exit available (but I had to act quickly) so I ducked off the highway, pulled into a gas station, plotted a new course, and was on my way.

I only had a few seconds to decide to get off the highway, and having the maps in my car meant that I could change course on the spur of the moment and get to the airport on time. If I had passed the exit, I would have been stuck for who-knows-how-long.

So until I get a GPS, I purchase a fresh set of Mapsco maps every year. What a pragmatic way to mark my birthday.

The business of being a magician is not what it seems. Clearly, it was not what I expected when I undertook this undertaking as a business, almost two years ago.

As a variety arts performer, naturally I perform. Also, there is new material to be developed, and the long process of practice and rehearsal. And then there is sales and marketing, the phone calls and meetings with potential clients.

As a performer, I was accustomed to devoting my time and energy to performance. And as an artisan, I was prepared for the effort required to create and hone innovative magic effects. But amount of time and the level of skill needed for sales and marketing took me by surprise.

On any given day, 8 hours are consumed by phone calls, auditions, mailings, networking, follow up phone calls, writing (and rewriting) copy, updating websites, tracking expenditures, and forecasting revenue. But first and foremost, it is about getting myself in front of people who are in the market for my services.

Which leave a scant 4 hours per day for actual performances, and for developing new material.

I suspect that the demands of the profession of magic are not unlike the demands on a freelance computer programmer. There must be a great deal of time devoted to finding work. And then the billable hours when you’re working a project. And finally there’s time spent in the classroom learning new languages and acquiring new certifications. All three categories must be balanced properly for the business to succeed.

While the business side of the business came as a surprise to me, I certainly don’t begrudge it (though as my business grows, I will look to hire someone to take over the sales and marketing); sharing my artistic vision with others is important enough to me that the effort required pales in comparison.

Still, when amateur magicians ask me if they should try becoming a full-time professional, I generally discourage them from doing so. I can see in their eyes that they look forward, with eager anticipation, to spending endless hours creating new magic effects and performing for rapt audiences, while and endless stream of clients beat a path to their door, looking to hire the magician.