Email Marketing Resources

If you want to stay on top of the email marketing game, the following are useful resources from our marketing consultants here at ISI

marketingsherpa.com
verticalresponse.com
clickz.com
emailinsider (part of mediapost.com)
mailchimp.com
exacttarget.com
emaillabs at lyris.com
imediaconnection.com
email roundtable.(perhaps emailexperience.org or worldhum.com)

The State of the American Musical

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10235/1081725-325.stm?cmpid=entertainment.xml

The above takes you to an interview with Hal Prince, a 60  year veteran of producing and directing Broadway musicals.  He has several worthwhile observations, but to me the most poignant is the comment that producers are providing artistic patronage (versus the corporate attitude for monetary results).  Broadway has changed dramatically in the 20 years since I entered the business, and I do believe that the Hollywood corporate influx has done nothing of lasting value for the product. I am all for taking great ideas from all sectors (making musicals out of plays, for example), but you must do it right. The artistry is the only lasting legacy -- a star will sell a ticket in the short term, the artistry will make it last. Corporate short-term gains will obliterate the landscape -- as a pretty face has little transformational capacity. The 21st century, post-recession audience is no longer looking for a quick fix, but rather a long-lasting, communal, transformational, experience.

Digital Theatre

I am increasingly encouraged with the growing engagement of audiences for theatre distributed through digital means (in movie theatres or via players on the internet). However, these changes seem to be occurring mostly "across the pond" where, it seems, unions are working with theatres to help grow audiences wherever they might find them.  Britain's National Theatre and now the Edinborough Fringe are available digitally.  Here in the United States we assume that it is through the ease of public funding that our peers are able to attain what we can barely consider due to the incredibly high labor costs due to our unions. (The cost of a one day filming of a stage play with 6 actors is approximately $28,000 while paying those same actors for a week is only $3800).  Until we are able to bridge THAT financial gap, the jump to the screen will be few and far between, supported through corporations who want their names across the screen not due to the actual demand for an interesting piece of art by audiences.

  Technology and theatre are friends in England where there is a digital theatre app letting you know what's playing at your nearby stage. 

Opera Woes

With the recent revelation of the continued woes of the WNO, it is interesting to see how nothing has truly changed since nobles funded the arts in the Renaissance. Those who fund, have control.  That being said, as the WNO considers a merger with the KC, they should realize that their control of their day-to-day existence will immediately change.   There is always opportunity in change -- but there will also be lost, and from the recent Washington Post article, I sense that artistic loss is anticipated.

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