Over the past 7 plus years, I have been involved in a number of projects in the DC hip hop music community that require promotion. The conventional wisdom for promoting such an event (DJ night, weekly, show, etc) is to print 5000 glossy 4×6 flyers and then distribute them to your perceived audience. In this blog post, I argue that this approach to promotion does not result in increased turnout or revenue. In fact, the associated costs of design, printing, and time spent promoting actually does more damage to the promoter over the long run – in actual financial terms as well as a reduced mindshare in the local community.
Costs
Let’s start with costs. Flyer design runs anywhere from $100-$200. The average flyer print job (5000, 4X6 glossy) costs about $160. So we basically talking about an average cost of $300 for a run of 5000 flyers. Before you pay DJs, performers, or anyone else involved, you are $300 in the hole. Not a good look homey – step your game up.
Expiry
Most flyers are tied to a specific event or series of events. This means that after a certain point in time the flyers become useless. Useless flyers end up in the trash or tucked somewhere in a box in your closet. Trust me, I have mad old flyers laying around my house. Ask yourself, what’s the point? You are wasting valuable money, time and resources.
Goals
Your goal as a promoter should be to turn out an audience for an event, and use to use your events to build a base to help support future events . Most ‘promoters’ think that by simply passing out flyers (or leaving stacks of 300 flyers at stores, clubs, bars and restaurants) that they are doing their job. Not so. Look at the Vam Jam last week at Rock and Roll hotel. They ran 5000 glossy 4×6s, I saw mad flyers for the event, distributed hand to hand and laying in stacks around town – there were 20 people there. Something’s not working…
Look at the Black Cat and the 930 club
The Black Cat and the 930 club are two of the most successful venues in DC. Neither one puts out traditional flyers but consistently turn out well attended events. Both clubs do short runs of paper flyers, either B&W or color, and turn out more people than you could ever hope to. Why? Because over the years they have organized a base, established lines of communication with their base (direct marketing, newspaper ads) and provided consistent events to re-engage their base. Do what they do.
Eco-Social costs.
Commercial CMYK printing is bad for the environment, people litter unwanted flyers, and most are printed in non-union shops. You do the math.
Scion, Kool and Coors Lite.
If every wannabe promoter in town thinks they need flyers, guess who is going to help them print them. You got it, corporations. It opens the door to ’sponsorship’ by forces who do not care about your well-being. That is not how we upset the setup.
Mindshare
The landscape of events, promoters, and venues in DC is very crowded. How do you expect to stand out? Bigger flyers, more flyers, hotter flyers? Try an RSS feed, or direct email marketing to your base. Good luck…and don’t even get me started on promoting via MySpace…
What does work?
Non-SPAM emails, blogs, a well maintained website. Text message promotion, video promotion, flyers that don’t expire, stickers, wheatpasted posters, city paper ads (costly, but effective). Read Guerrilla Marketing ASAP.
In conclusion
Unless you are an established promoter working with a high capacity venue (~1000+), a run of 5000 date-sensitive 4 x 6 color glossy flyers is a losing proposition. It is not an effective tool to promote an event as it does not engage your audience in bi-directional communication. The environmental impact needs to be considered – both with regards to the wasted paper resources and the carbon footprint (shipping, transporting, distributing, etc.) In addition, by supporting non-union print shops, promoters are contributing to the weakening of the labor movement.
Flyers work best when what is being promoted exists in perpetuity, and the flyer engages the recipient to connect back to the promoter (free music downloads, free admission, etc.) By simply following in the (mis)footsteps of those promoters who came before you, you are contributing to the wasting of resources and the crowded landscape of events and promotions. So called promoters need to think outside of the box of flyers and envision new methodologies for engaging and organizing their base.
Filed under: 9:30 Club, DC, DC Blogs, Hip Hop, Hip Hop Blogs, Hip Hop News, Music, Organizing, Upset The Setup | 3 Comments
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Ken from ECB had this to say at District Soul. Good points:
I completely Dis-agree with this statement. I have been promoting events for ten years + now and I have found one thing, flyers work if you know how to make them work.
1. DO NOT PUT FLYERS ON CARS, PEOPLE THROW THEM ON THE GROUND AND NEVER EVER LOOK AT THEM.
2. PUTTING FLYERS IN STORES AND IN RESTURANTS DOES NOT WORK, YOU MAY GET 1 PERSON TO PICK ONE UP OUT OF EVERY 100 THAT WALKS INTO THAT DELI EXC….
3. HIRING PROMOTIONAL TEAMS USUALLY DOES NOT WORK, BECAUSE THEY NEVER PROMOTE CORRECTLY, THEY STICK THEM IN CAR WINDOWS AND THAT IS IT.
What works, is handing them out to people that walk by and stopping them and taking a few seconds to tell them about the night. Dont be afraid to get personal with people. You can usually pick out the young hipster crowd in dc with ease and generally there is a 50 percent good response to this. You will get people that say, no thanks of course. But you get alot of people who are generally interested. Those people will come out and then it starts to become word of mouth.
I have seen the difference personally. In Miami, people were freaked out that I was handing out fliers to a party that I was playing and talking to people about it. They were like, wow, your a promoter also. The same thing happened when Tim and I were working the door to our event in Miami, Jt Donaldson was cracking up when he came in and saw me working the cash register.
I even had this one girl go “im on ECB’s List and I said, no your not and she was like, go get Ken, he will tell you and I was like, I am Ken and she didnt beleive me until she saw me later play. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen to this day.”
But getting back to the subject, Putting fliers in people’s hands and saying, hey come check out this night, its different from your normal club night in dc, we are not here trying to promote some top 40 hiphop night, this is gonna be more of a fantasy land for adults who love to dance and experience new music, fresh from the streets exc…
People are tired of the same bullshit, put a half naked girl in a binkini on a flyer with two thugged out guys smokin blunts doesnt usually put people into a club. Honestly, its scares more people in this conservative city if anything else.
So when it comes down to flyers, its the approach
FLYERS WORK, you just have to WORK at it. and not be afraid to talk to your guests face to face when handing them to people.
My 2 Bones
heelo I like that u know how to promote. I am a stylist in maryland at the blvd. I was looking for someone to pass out my flyers since i have a crazy schedule and I fear the person on person contact. I have a box of flyers just sitting in my trunk. What do suggest I do. If you know anyone who promotes can u give me the info. Thank
Kudos Eurok! I agree with you wholeheartedly. I have been saying this for years. Some of my most well attended events tend to be based on content. People go to events that interest them. You can give someone a flyer, but if they don’t care, the time you spent chatting them up is wasted. I also think that word of mouth is often underrated. The monthly “Soul Overdose” event that I do at Jin, gets new people every time who “heard” how dope it is. I would love your insight on what is a serious problem for me–the taking for granted. I have connected with almost everyone on my email list and I get kudos and emails saying “You doing your think girl, keep it up.” But those people don’t show. They are up on everything I’m doing, but never come out. How do you get people to come out, who support you, love what you do, but are just lazy?
Smooches,
Kat