Wolf Krakowski emails a link to Vilna: A Yiddish song, sung by Fraidy Katz, which he directed.
A reader is looking for a violin teacher in Brooklyn who teaches youngsters. Any suggestions for him?
Zvi writes:
I noticed you wrote a few articles about your woes of the Jewish Advertising world.My response:
I'm wondering if you've had any positive experiences of specific media and can make suggestions.
Specifically, I'm curious if you've tried smaller publications, such as shul or school newsletters?
Also, have you considered the advantage of Branding a product/band, through continued advertising, as opposed to a specific ad->sale result? When you said, "if people were looking for them specifically, they might find their phone number in one of these papers", I suspect that is the result of long-term and effective branding. It is possible that by seeing that ad many times, and associating it with the positive experience of reading that paper, the person has grown familiar and trusting to that band.
Interested in hearing your experience and feedback.
I have had positive results on the local level with targeted small advertising campaigns. However, they have to be distinctive, meaning not just running a business card sized (or smaller) ad exactly where all of my competitors are advertising. The ubiquitous small ads typical of the Jewish band listings in the Jewish Press, for example, do not achieve this, IMO. I prefer to find advertising opportunities where my competitors aren’t, rather than where they are.
As far as long term effective branding... When you write: “When you said, "if people were looking for them specifically, they might find their phone number in one of these papers, I suspect that is the result of long-term and effective branding”, the successful branding has been achieved by the paper running the ads for their entertainment section itself, not by the ads themselves for the bands. In other words, based on my experience as well as extensive conversations with some formerly regular advertisers, when they are looking for a specific phone number (and even that is less common in recent years, given the ubiquity of the internet), people might know to turn to that section because they know there are ads there. However, the ads themselves are generally not productive.
In my opinion, given the nature of live music, it is much more effective to direct advertising dollars elsewhere.
Some quick examples:
For the price of a typical ad buy, the band could pay a small group of musicians to perform live at a public charity event.
For the same price, the band could give away hundreds of demo CD’s (assuming they’ve already recorded the material.)
Either of these is much more likely to bring in work, compared to an ad. Plus, you don’t have the negatives of those ads which I’d mentioned in my posts on the subject.
