Introduction
The role of the publicity manager is to take the publicity designer's designs and translate them into actual physical objects. This can require printing on Athena or Copy Tech, ordering postcards, or acquiring t-shirts. This may also involve publicity stunts. This document will first examine the forms of publicity that should be used every semester, as well as some general notes about standards for publicity management.
Originally compiled by Hanna S. Kuznetsov in February 2009
Nota Bene: publicity changes with changing times. explore your options. be clever.
Publicity Materials
Teasers
1. Black and white, sized 8.5 x 11, unless you have magical access to other printers.
2. Print using athena printers.
3. The main goal of the teasers is to grab people's attention, not to give people detailed information. They should definitely include group name, production name. They can include show dates, websites, and location.
4. These should posted around campus starting a week before put-in. They can continue going up throughout the production, even alongside the real posters.
Posters
1. These are color 11x17 prints. Make sure the file is a flattened image, saved as PDF, and at least 300dpi (pixels per inch).
2. To print them, email or otherwise talk to June Milligan at Copy Tech and tell her to set up our usual ad swap, whereby we get 200 free color posters in return for putting the copytech ad in our program. Also request tickets when setting up the ad swap. Email her 1-2 weeks before you actually print posters at copytech to give her warning.
3. Submit the file to be printed on the copytech online form. Be sure to choose "other" and write "11x17 color prints". Don't tell them they're "posters" because they think those are glossy plasticky things, not what we want.
4. Sometimes it is a good idea to get just one printed and look at it, decide you like it, then go for all 200.
5. Start putting these up around campus starting at put-in and continuing until the show closes. People need to help, but it's hard to get them to help. we decided at some point that people could get generic "hours" for postering, especially if they're low on some other form of "hours". The usual conversion rate for hanging posters is 1 prod hour for every 20 posters.
6. Everyone in the production can have 1 for themselves, but no more than that.
T-shirt
1. People pay for them themselves.
2. The earlier people get them, the earlier walking talking publicity bodies will start roaming around campus. Aim for them to arrive by at least the Friday before put-in.
3. Shirts should include the name of the show, "MIT Shakespeare Ensemble" and other relevant information as the publicity designer requests. Tradition holds that the shirt includes a quote from the show and some pretty drawing. Assume these will be printed in one color ink on one color shirt.
4. Good places to order from include NEDesign and QRST's. NEDesign is usually cheaper, but a little less reliable. QRST's has been known to give discounts if you pay them in cash. If you order from NEDesign, make sure to do so at least a week before you want the shirts. It will probably take a week for them to be made.
Postcards
1. This will use up the bulk of the publicity budget
2. Vistaprint or overnightprints are usually good options. Choose between them based on who has the best discounts at the moment. Hint for vistaprint: you can often get a better deal on vertical orientation postcards by rotating the image instead of the postcard.
3. If you google "cheap custom postcards" or "custom postcards free" or "custom postcards discount", you'll get the magic discount version of postcard websites that aren't necessarily available if you just go straight to their URL.
4. I usually get 1000 postcards. the next increment down from that is 500, and i find that i can usually get rid of at least 800, which means it's worth getting the larger amount. but if they're not discounted that semester, then just go with 500.
5. When postcards arrive, give at least 10 to each actor, if not more. Tell them to give them to friends. drop them around campus, in athena clusters, next to stacks of the tech. also keep a lot of them in booth and spread them out so people grab them. try to get rid of as many as possible!
Drop Poster
We have not done this in a while.
You should attempt to get a drop poster space either in the Student Center or in the Infinite. The size you can make it depends on where it is and how you are making it. Reserve space through Virtual EMS. There are 3 good options for making one.
1. Just paint/draw it yourself on some large paper. Make sure it's big and bold.
2. Contact Sara Brown at Renaldi and ask to use their Plotter (large format printer). If you go this route, your poster should probably be mostly white so you use too much ink. Be sure to offer to pay, but if it's a reasonably spec'd poster, she'll probably give it to you for free.
3. Find a disgruntled Course 4 student to print it.
You can get this drop poster space by reserving it through CAC here.
Advertisements
Facebook (ask Memory Master to do this!)
Facebook advertising is super important. Ask request for access to the Faccebook page if you don't have it already. Next, make an event for the show. The pub designer should make a banner for use on the FB ad (can also be used for emails). You can see older events on the page as a template.
The next thing you want to do is boost the event to reach more people. If there's a friendly alum who works at Facebook, they get ad credit for working there that they might use for you ($250). Otherwise, you can input the maximum amount you want to spend on the ad and for how long you want it to run.
You want to be sure to specify the location as local to Cambridge/Boston. Tags you can use for the outreach can be "theater", "shakespeare", "comedy" or "tragedy", "MIT", etc. Use your creativity.
Then voila! You have an ad!
Tech Ad
Generally, the number of people who get reservations from the Tech Ad are very low - 6.3% for Hamlet (F17) and 0.8% for Lear (S18), so your budget is probably best spent elsewhere. If you decide you want it, a quarterpage ad is $50.
Check their website for specs for a quarterpage ad. email their ads department ahead of time warning them that we would like to do this. pick 2 good days (i generally pick the 2 fridays of the show) to advertise on, and tell them to run it once on each of those days. oh yeah and it's black and white.
Note on the strange forms of The Tech. 4 quarter page ads are greater than one full page.
Hi Hamlet,
This should be good, however, I just want to explain one detail to prevent any misunderstanding in the future. The Tech gives ASA student groups 80 free column-inches of space (equivalent to one full page ad) each academic year, and your group has already used 40 of your free column-inches of space with two 4x5 ads last October. Thus, you have 40 free column-inches, or one half page of space, remaining for this year, as you correctly stated. However, if you look on our website, you'll see that what we call a quarter page ad is actually either a 3x8 or a 4x6 ad, both of which would be 24 column-inches. If you would run two ads at this size, you would end up running 8 column-inches over your free space, and would be charged $7.50 per column-inch for that overrun.
Thus, if you want to advertise for free, each of your ads should be 20 column-inches (a real quarter page, not what we call a quarter page ad). Sorry for any confusion this might bring up, but I figure it's better for you to know about this now than later. Please send us the files and we'll be good to go. Thank you,
Horatio
Advertising Manager
LSC Slide
We have not done this in a while.
Go to the LSC website to get specs for slide design and give these to the designer. Send an email to LSC asking for an swap, projecting our ad for two weekends in return for a full program page ad. They used to give us inserts, but recently they've switched to just having their ad as part of the program. The slide is a full color digital file.
Infinite Display
Infinite Display control the projectors in the Student Center, Stata, and the Infinite. They don't usually do ad swaps, but it might not be a bad idea to ask them for one anyway. Look at their slide for specs. It should be a full color widescreeen image. Student groups get 3 days of free Infinite Display space per semester. See here for details. It's only $15/day – we should probably start doing this again.
Spam is your friend. People will probably reply to you complaining, but not that many. You'll also get some bouncing emails and "away from office" emails. but it's totally worth it.
Make sure to BCC email lists or you will get flak. If you want to avoid typing each mailing list below into an email every time, you can BCC <lend-me-your-ears@mit.edu> instead, which contains the lists that can be frequently spammed.
Lists to send emails to should include:
<ensemble@mit.edu> - members of the ensemble
<ensemble-dartes@mit.edu> - shakedartes, people who are interested in joining the Ensemble
<ensemble-friends@mit.edu> - people who have participated in our shows but aren't interested in joining or being full members
<town-crier@mit.edu> - a not well known ensemble list that has people who just want show publicity, and no spam about being involved in shows.
<mtg-social@mit.edu>
<savoyards-discuss@mit.edu>
<dramashop@mit.edu>
<mitcp@mit.edu>
<rkb@mit.edu>
<arts-announce@mit.edu>
<ta-performances@mit.edu>
Recent and current Ensemble show lists.
Lists to spam less often:
<ensemble-alum-ma@mit.edu> - ensemble alums in the boston area
<ensemble-alum@mit.edu> - ensemble alums all over (it's good to remind officers to update both of these, as they often forget)
Dorm Lists:
<ec-discuss@mit.edu>
<random-hall-talk@mit.edu>
<baker-forum@mit.edu>
<bc-talk@mit.edu>
<mccormick-announce@mit.edu>
<macgregor@mit.edu>
<nh-forum@mit.edu>
<next-forum@mit.edu>
<sponge-talk@mit.edu>
<sh-public@mit.edu>
Note: when including bc-talk@mit.edu, it's traditional to include your underwear color at the bottom in the form of the phrase "(insert color here) for bc-talk". No one's going to check if the color is accurate, and it's often fun to include a show-relevant color or description.
Other options (optional):
Go through the internet and find various boston-area theatre departments at different schools, also boston-area community theatres, professional theatres, whatever. no need to spam them continually, one publicity email should probably suffice. just try to get it out to people. high school theatre and literature teachers are good targets, too, because sometimes they bring their whole class on a field trip. what i've done in the past is send one email to boston area theatre people, and one specially written email to boston-area teachers, inviting them to bring their classes of students to see our play. if you want to do that, you should do it in the beginning of the semester, because field trips take a while to organize.
Sidenote: the theatre arts mailing lists change often. Keep track of them. Currently, they are: ta-performances, ta-auditions, ta-crew, and ta-academic. In case it's not clear, these are, in the following order: show publicity, auditions announcements, techies wanted, and academic stuff within the department. Don't misuse them, otherwise the theatre lady will yell at you. These have changed twice during my time at MIT. These might change in the future 
A sample Email blurb: (include that nifty banner your pub designer made!)
The MIT Shakespeare Ensemble presents
The Tempest
By William Shakespeare
Directed by J Paul Nicholas
Our last performance is tonight!
Reserve Tickets at ensemble.mit.edu/tickets
Magic and mischief abound when the Queen of Naples and her court find themselves mysteriously shipwrecked on a deserted island. Join us for a night filled with sorcery, alcohol-inspired homicidal plotting, and young lust.
*Performances*
March 24 at 8:00pm
La Sala De Puerto Rico (MIT Student Center)
84 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA
MIT, Harvard, Wellesley Students: $6
MIT Community, Seniors, Other Students: $9
General Admission: $12
The Internet
There are many other places on the internet (both inside and outside of MIT) where you can put up advertisements. We're supposed to only advertise to the MIT community. But some places are definitely fine:
netheater411.com (super straightforward)
MIT Events Calendar
Others places you stumble across. find them, use them, put up ads, reuse the blurb, put up a little graphic image if you have one.
Facebook Event
Make one (BEFORE prod week). Invite all your friends. Post publicity stunt footage if you like. Send out reminders (yes you can do that).
MIT Publications
* Photos *
This is probably best done by someone in the Ensemble, who would have the time to take a lot of pictures.
However, if you'd like, contact both The Tech and Technique (costs money, plus they might not respond) to have someone take pictures. They need to be warned ahead of time and told that they should come for the final dress rehearsal. It is too distracting to have them take pictures during a show, this should be avoided at all costs.
*Reviews*
Request a reviewer from The Tech by emailing their arts department. bribe them with 1 or 2 comp tickets. it is very possible that no one will come. Even in the best case scenario, a review won't come out until Second Friday at the earliest. Evidently we've also gotten Larry Stark's "Theatre Mirror" to come review our shows, but we haven't done this in a while.
NETheater411
Program
Traditionally, programs include bios of everyone involved with the show. Start collecting these early. A good deadline is to make sure that quotes are in a week and a half before the show so the designer has time to place them in the program and you have time to print them.
Print them on Wednesday or Thursday before opening night and start folding!
BE SURE TO CREDIT THE FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHER
Ticket Reservations
Ticket reservations should be up about a month before the show starts. Information on how to put up ticket reservations can be found here.
Graduate Students
GSC Anno email list that goes out to all grad students. Need to fill this out three weeks before the performances. It takes one week to process and then appears in the following two weekly event emails. Should say this is an MIT-wide event and should mention whether there are grad students in the cast or crew to ensure people think its relevant to grad students:
http://gsc.mit.edu/anno/submissions/
Sloan email list that goes out to all Sloan students, which is probably the bulk of all grad students. Specifically you should target the Student Life email list. Need to fill this out a week before the performance. I’m not sure signing in as a guest will give you access to fill out the form; you may need to find a course 16 grad student with a Sloan account. Saying there is a Sloan student in the cast or crew will probably make it much more likely they will accept the announcement.
Graduate dorm executive officers lists, ask to forward an event announcement to their residents. Can just say this is an MIT-wide event; they are usually not picky about forwarding announcements:
Ashdown:
Edgerton
Sidney-Pacific
Tang
Warehouse
Eastgate
Westgate
Suggested Deadlines
Because the main graphic used on the posters is reused on pretty much everything else, it's important to get the teasers and posters done as early as possible, to leave time for shipping of postcards and t-shirts (which can take anywhere between 1 and 3 weeks, depending on issues).
Deadlines go vaguely in the following order:
1. Semifinal Teaser
2. Final Teaser, Semifinal Poster
3. Final Poster, Postcards
4. T-shirts
5. Ads
You don't have to make things due on a prod meeting day, you can choose deadlines based on shipping, etc. it's important that you do your homework and figure out what the deadlines are going to be really early so you can tell the producer, so he/she can put it in the designer's contract.
That's easy to do for the spring show, since you can just come up with it over winter break and send it out at the beginning of IAP, giving everyone a good month to work on it before the semester even starts. that's important because the spring rehearsal period is only 4 weeks before put-in, which means that IAP is a really good time for the designer to start working (and prod meetings start about halfway through IAP anyway). The fall rehearsal period is 6 weeks before put-in, which gives you buffer time, especially if you only become publicity manager at the beginning of term as opposed to over the summer.
In either event, you should coordinate with the Publicity Designer and the Producer when forming deadlines.
Make sure that you have an extra plastic table, with a table skirt, available for front of house. In order to run box office, you will need:
- A cash box, with change. You can get $1 bills from Bank of America in the Student Center, and will typically need $200 - $300 dollars in change, assuming we still charge $6 for tickets.
- Programs. Printing takes a long time, so don't do it right before the show.
- Reservations transferred from the internet into a physical piece of paper. Consolidated into one list is useful, and alphabetized would be especially sexy
- Tickets. These are printed at copy tech. It's probably best if you get them printed when you get the posters printed. Talk to June Milligan. Also see if they'll cut them for you- it's quite the pain if you have to cut them yourself. Templates can be found in the Ensemble Locker. Good luck getting them to work.
Lobby 10 Booth
Contrary to the name, this does not always happen in Lobby 10. Make sure that you reserve a space, the earlier the better. This can be done through Virtual EMS. Everyone involved in the show is typically required to sign up for some number of hours. Do your best to get everyone to sign up. Starting at 9am can be tricky for some, so it's usually helpful to send out a reminder each day, just so veryone's aware of what happens. There should also be an Officer of the Day. Make sure that they're doing they're job as well. Needed at booth are:
- The Publicity Board, so people know what group is being advertised
- Show Posters, so they know what show is going up.
- Postcards, so they remember what show is going up.
- Your laptop, so they can reserve tickets online.
To make life easier, all this should be stored in one spot in the office during prod week. That way we don't have to get CAC to let us into West Lounge every morning
Publicity Stunts
What better way to advertise theater than theater? As an added touch of publicity, there is also the possibility of doing certain publicity stunts out there to increase awareness. This endeavor is ideal when the publicity team is not just two people (1 publicity manager and 1 publicity designer) but rather when there are plural managers so that one's focus can be overseeing the execution of these stunts. A couple of quick notes about these stunts:
* Scenes seem to work better than monologues, though some monologues work really well.
* Fights are awesome to watch and get people's attention. Most people won't stay for a scene or listen to the dialogue
* Lobby 7 is great, if we can get it again, especially during the day and in between show weekends
* Noon seems to work better than 5pm
* We could probably do two stunts instead of three
* You totally don't have to do this if you don't want to do it
The appropriate authorities should be contacted for permission in performing in the areas selected, especially if you're planning on doing something that could be misinterpreted as dangerous (like stabbing Caesar on the steps of 77 Mass Ave in broad daylight). Usually, this will involve emailing the CAC a lot and scheduling a time to meet with the manager on duty to discuss reservations. You should generally expect a bit of administrative lag and should begin contact with them well in advance of your proposed stunt date. Things will start moving a bit rapidly the closer you get to the stunt date so you should prepare to visit the CAC office a lot during the week of the stunt to ensure that they haven't forgotten about you (they'll tend to do that!).
Organization
This will vary depending on the show. First pick out the spaces and reserve them. If it's anything abnormal (sound systems, fighting, FAKE weapons, etc...) contact Chris Nayler for an ok and possibly the police. Just avoid knives, they make life difficult. Do all the reservations several months before the show opens and all the okay's about a month before the show opens. Note: the Info Center is in charge of Lobby 7. They may hate us and may not lend us their space again. Lobby 7 steps seem to be public domain though (but I'm not sure about this). Maybe that space will work better. Remember to discuss which spaces are available for the type of scene that you want to do and which spaces are closed off for a stunt with the CAC. If you're going to be doing anything regarding loud noises, you're going to have to do an audio test with a CAC manager on duty to make sure you're not bothering anyone in the general vicinity.
Timing: One should be the week of opening night (Tuesday or Wednesday) and one should be the week between show weekends (also a Tuesday or Wednesday). Rehearsing the scenes in the space is a really good idea. Time maybe could be set aside during normal rehearsal. Make sure people are free before planning the scenes! Double check availability a couple days before the scene goes. Don't rely on only one scene or monologue for a stunt because people may not be on time/come. Having a wide variety also makes the time commitment a little less on the actors. Be flexible and make sure the stunt lasts longer than 5-10 minutes. (20-30 minutes is pretty good, if it's monologues then an hour might work too). Props are probably not a good idea, just because they may be easily lost and require registration with campus police. This is a pain in the butt, but is possible if you don't mind a bit of paperwork.
Scenes should be done in full costume and people should hand out postcards while the scene is running. Scenes may need to be adapted to fit the space. Generally focus less on dialogue and more on the characterizations and attention grabbing bits (kissing, fighting, shouting, etc work well). The audience will probably not last longer than 5 seconds so expect that. Try to involve the passerbys in the scene. Go up to them and talk to them directly. Follow them, harass them (within reason), etc. Also, someone should be there 30 minutes before, during, about 15 minutes after the stunt to oversee everything and make sure costumes and props are there. This person does not need to be the same for each stunt.
Get these publicized using teaser posters! Also maybe email publicity? It depends on how you want people to view them: spontaneously, or as a part of the show. Also: get a video of this and post it to the event page! Especially for something big like a stabbing! Even if it crappy phone quality it will generate a lot of interest.