Sell the Story First

Fellow Arts Marketers, I feel your pain.

I know how difficult it is to come up with four sentences that encapsulate all the great reasons someone should come see your play/exhibit/concert.  Especially if your organization specializes in the classics, finding fresh ways to describe four-hundred year-old plots can feel impossible.

And, of course, your Artistic Director is urging you to include information about what makes this production special— the famous Broadway designer, the choreographer from France, the fact that all these actors are reprising characters from another play earlier in the season– all of which are wonderful things that make the production unique and are possibly the driving reason that this particular title is in the season.

And so you sit down to write “the blurb” (at midnight, after your house management shift and three committee meetings) and you find yourself writing an opening line like this (a few details have been changed to protect the innocent):

Carmen: Georges Bizet’s melodic score of opera’s most-recognized tunes augment Jean Pierre’s inspiring choreography in a stunning performance of this century-old classic.

Or this:

Three Sisters: Discover the humor and heartbreak of one of the world’s greatest plays, revealed through the lyricism of two leading voices in contemporary theatre: two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Sarah Ruhl and director Les Waters, whose acclaimed collaborations include the Tony Award-nominated In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) on Broadway.

Or this:

La Traviata returns to our stage for the first time since 2008 featuring American tenor Bob Smith (“a sumptuously lyric tenor– Opera America”) and an all-star cast in a production directed by George Pierre.*

*This sentence is actually a mash-up of several opening sentences from various opera company blurbs– but really, they almost all read like this.

Bad news, folks.  Your audience lost interest in the first sentence and is now looking at pictures of cats somewhere else on the internet.  Not because your production isn’t awesome (it is!) but because you didn’t sell the story first.

We are living in a golden age of stories.  Between my kindle, Netflix, cable television, and my computer, I can access literally millions of stories whenever I want.  True crime, romance, science fiction, historical epics, westerns, biographies, and scores of mash-ups, re-tellings, re-imaginings, and re-makes.  And as writers and creatives find more and more ways to deliver stories, they get more ambitious in their storytelling– look at “Breaking Bad” or “A Song of Fire and Ice” or “LOST” or… you get the idea.

This isn’t bad news for the “traditional” arts.  On the contrary, this could be GREAT news because we have a truckload of great stories and a unique delivery system–actual breathing humans occupying the same room as the audience while acting/singing/dancing/playing instruments.  But instead of selling our great stories to the general public, we keep marketing our shows to the people we probably don’t need to “sell” to at all: our devotees.

Devotees care about casting and top talent. They will be impressed by review quotes from top national critics.  They will call the box office to find out if you are “messing up” Shakespeare by presenting it in anything other than Elizabethan dress.  Of course, you have to keep these people happy– they are probably the majority of your donors and subscribers.

But– since the Devotees are already, you know, devoted, they can be expected to read your entire blurb, go to your website, and corner your Artistic Director awkwardly at intermission.  They’ll dig for all that good information about what makes this production unique.

HOWEVER– new audiences–those magical and fickle creatures we all keep chasing with grant money and new staff members and free cocktail hours– have ZERO interest in your talking points– because they likely have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Your curious new audience member cannot name a single Broadway director or designer and or any playwright other than Shakespeare (who he remembers as being very boring in English class).  She does not know any of our insider language for describing art like “melodic” or “evocative” or “lyricism.”  He doesn’t know the other works by the author, doesn’t read the publications you’re quoting, and certainly doesn’t care how long it has been since you last performed this opera. She certainly is not so familiar with this “famous” work that you can assume she knows the characters, plot, and most famous passages.  So when she comes across sentences like the ones above, she is confused and bored and moving on.

That doesn’t mean these people are uneducated or undiscerning in their tastes. Being new to the art form means they have no point of reference.  And we can’t start the relationship by being patronizing and “educating” them about the art form– ugh.  We need to hook them into trying an experience that they will enjoy so much that they will want to learn more and try it again.

So what can we do?  Friends, we have to do what every other purveyor of stories is doing and sell the story first.  

Think of the voice-over for a movie trailer.  How do they all start?

“Cindy swore she’d never leave her job, until three adorable orphans arrived on her doorstep.”

“In a world where emotions are outlawed, they committed the ultimate crime: they fell in love.”

“He promised his mother that this was his last job.”

Trailers dump up us into the story at the inciting incident– the moment when the plot kicks the interesting characters into a new situation that requires them to act.  The writers of these trailers bait the hook with the story to get our noses out of our popcorn.  Sure, they’ll also show us the famous actors on screen and if Spielberg is directing, his name might be the first thing you hear. But in less than 10 seconds, they have to sell us on the story.

Great story hooks can create best-sellers out of  mediocre material.  The Twilight series is some truly terrible writing, but the basic hook– Girl falls in love with immortal vampire, can they ever be together? — is such a compelling idea that Stephenie Meyer is now a millionaire and there are entire shelves of Young Adult fiction devoted to supernatural romance.

We’re lucky.  We know that many of the plays, operas, ballets, we are producing are not only good stories but also good stories well-told.  Some of this material has been entertaining audiences for centuries– it’s that good.  So- why don’t we lead with our best foot forward? Why do we not put front and center the idea that compelled the original author of the work to write it in the first place? Surely, a plot or character that could inspire Shakespeare or Verdi to spend months writing, could also inspire someone to buy a ticket.

For the three examples above, I found good story nuggets buried somewhere later in the blurb (or on Wikipedia).

A feisty woman determined to maintain her independence is torn between two men obsessed with possessing her.

(Whoa!  thinks new audience member,  that sounds hot.  Bingo! Carmen is hot!)

Transplanted from their beloved Moscow to a provincial Russian town, three sisters—school teacher Olga, unhappily married Masha, idealistic Irina—yearn for the city of their childhood, where they imagine their lives will be transformed and fulfilled.

(Not much plot to lead with in a Chekhov play, but at least you’ve introduced me to three intriguing characters and their compelling and familiar situation. Nice.)

Violetta gives up her luxurious lifestyle as a kept woman to experience true love with Alfredo – until his family comes between them.

(Drama and romance.  Men, take note, this sounds like a good date night.– I also have to say– I had to look through FOUR different opera company websites before I found this sentence.  Every site went on about how La Traviata is one of the most famous, most produced and most beloved operas, with tons of information about the artists involved. Only ONE of them told me what the story is.  Opera marketers, I love you and I want to learn to enjoy opera.  But I’m not buying a $60 ticket to your show if you won’t tell me its basic premise in a simple sentence.)

We’re good writers– we know how to tell the story. We’re just burying it under a lot of arts insider nonsense.  Find the story nugget in your blurb and make it your first and second sentence.  Then pad it out with some genre/mood adjectives (heart-warming!  pulse-pounding! knee-slapping!) and then tell your devotees about the big name star and that great review quote.

If we really want to be making art for everyone– that is, if we truly believe that classical theatre, opera, ballet is still relevant to contemporary audiences, and as satisfying an experience as any movie, TV show, reality game, or internet meme– then we have to bait the hook with what everyone truly craves– a great story, well-told.

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