Introduction
The role of the publicity manager is to take the publicity designers designs and translate them into actual physical objects. This can require printing on Athena or Copy Tech, ordering postcards, or acquiring t-shirts. 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.
Ensemble Logo
Another note: The Ensemble has an official font. It is called “The Real Font.” This should ONLY be used for the words “The MIT Shakespeare Ensemble”. It should under no circumstances be used, ever, for any other text. This is called “branding”. It is our logo. You should own this font file, and you should use it when using our group name on any and all publicity. You should also make sure that the Publicity Designer has this file, and that he/she is aware of the branding rule.
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".
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 may them in cash.
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!
Advertisements
Tech Ad
ASA groups get a halfpage of ad space free in the tech per semester (i.e. a full page per year). It is wise to split this up in 2: use 2 quarterpage ads per show (one for the fall, one for the spring). 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 Hanna,
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,
Joe Maurer
Advertising Manager
LSC Slide
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.