e-liz

how to be an improviser on Facebook, part 2

The inestimable John Perich has just published an incredibly thorough and well-stated critique of something I quickly slapped onto the Internet in a moment of ire. He raises a number of valid points, ultimately agreeing with much of what I said, but disputing my conclusion (i.e. “stop spamming your friends”).

In contrast, I actually agree with Perich’s conclusion, but find most of his reasoning questionable.

Perich opens with an anecdote about his friend’s band. A long-distance friend of his sent Facebook messages for years and years about this band he’s in, and finally after four years of spamming, Perich went to a show that was convenient for him, enjoyed it, and is now a fan.

That’s great. And not surprising. I don’t doubt that this method of marketing can help an aspiring creative person acquire fans. I’m sure every one of us can think of an anecdote like John’s about how someone annoyed us until we finally became their customer because of (or in spite of?) all of their marketing noise.

The question is not whether this can work, but whether it is the best way - or hell, the only way - to generate attention and business:

Liz’s point is that spamming your friends is asshole behavior. My point is that, if you want to get word out there, you have to be an asshole.

I imagine this is the underlying assumption behind all of the Facebook spam we improvisers send each other. I think it’s incorrect. And I think we can both agree that it’s at least insufficiently challenged.

Try asking the next performer who sends you a Facebook event invite the following two questions:

1. Aside from this Facebook event, what else are you doing to market your show in order to ensure that the seats are filled with paying customers who will likely continue to come back and see more of your shows? What else have you considered doing? Why did you choose to do this?

2. So far, how has this Facebook event contributed to ensuring that the seats are filled with paying customers who will likely continue to come back and see more of your shows? How does this contribution stack up against alternative marketing strategies - or no marketing at all?

Do these questions seem inappropriately aggressive to be asking your friends? Sorry. These are basic questions marketers have to be able to answer. And if you want to be an asshole like a marketer, you ought to be held accountable like one.

There’s a whole conversation that could spawn off from this about whether low cost / low yield strategies are worse than high cost / high yield. I’m not going to have that talk here. There are more informed writers on the subject (Liz being one) who can discuss it in depth. I bring up the cost/yield analysis to point out that the asshole strategy is a strategy. It’s a way of getting fans. It’s not something improvisers brainstormed to make our lives miserable, along with Being The Loudest at Parties, or Arguing With Director’s Notes.

My take on low cost / low yield versus high cost / high yield is a lengthy variation on “it depends.” But that’s a different debate. Both of those, unquestionably, are strategies.

If someone can explain to me “this is our marketing strategy because ______,” and reference some insight, some rationale and preferably some demonstrated results from the strategy they chose, I will gladly excuse them from this public outing, and would give serious consideration to their argument that in certain situations you have to be an insufferable douche to get fans.

My guess is that the typical improv group on Facebook cannot actually make that argument and back it up. They are not doing this because they’ve made a serious inquiry into a variety of marketing strategies, considered the cost and ROI, and settled on spamming their friends because they concluded that this would be the most efficient or effective thing to do, instead of or in addition to any of the other possible approaches to marketing (both assholey and otherwise).

No. They’re doing it because they see other people doing it, and because Facebook has this obvious functionality that many people know how to use. Those two insights accelerate and merge into the impression: This Is How You Do Marketing.

That impression is mistaken.

Many of the artists I know are, if not introverts, very insecure. They harbor a lot of doubts about how they appear to others. They want to be liked and they spend a lot of time thinking about how to be more liked.

I believe that promotion is one of the most crucial variables in determining whether an artist succeeds or fails. And I think telling insecure people, “Don’t use these means to promote yourself,” is the worst thing they could hear. They don’t need another reason not to talk about their passion. They already have a hundred.

Insecurity stemming from introversion is not a valid excuse for repeatedly doing something annoying that may or may not even work. Not on Facebook, and not in life. Like I said above: if you deem yourself professional enough to be engaging in irritating activities that you consider Marketing, you should be professional enough to try to justify what you’re doing… and “I’m so insecure! We should all be happy I’m even putting myself out there!” is not a good enough justification.

But I will take Perich’s concluding point here:

“Don’t” is not as useful a conversation as “should.”

This is true. So I will now rephrase my original recommendations as things to do, rather than to refrain from doing:

• Respect the permission your friends have given you to contact them - and be honest with yourself about when you’re abusing that permission.
• Brainstorm at least four other ways you can promote your show that do not involve a Facebook event.
• Take that moment you were going to spend “suggesting” your fan page to friends, and use it to upload a video.
• Take that moment you were going to spend “inviting” 500 friends to your show, and use it to send a quick message to a few performer friends, asking about what they’re currently working on and then mentioning your show.
• Define your objectives. How many people do you need to get to the show in order for it to be “successful”? How many of those people do you want to be repeat audience members who come to every show? How many of those people do you want to be non-improvisers? Do you want your show to be reviewed, or to be accepted into festivals, or to be picked up for a long-term run at a certain venue?
• Test things against these objectives. What happens you don’t promote your show on Facebook (this can be incredibly informative and surprising)? What happens when you try pitching your show to local entertainment or comedy bloggers? What happens when you offer 2-for-1 admission, or take show suggestions in advance via Twitter, or stream your show online for people to watch from other cities, or…?

If you really, honestly do all of these things and ultimately decide to keep spamming your friends with event invites, fine. Anyone who falls into this category is welcome to email me to explain their process and rationale, and I would be happy to feature you in a case study right here on this blog. I look forward to seeing who accepts this challenge.

Tangentially (but importantly), Perich takes a sidebar in this discussion to put forth the theory that there is an essential tension between being a successful artist and being a decent human being who relates successfully with other human beings:

You will have to decide which you want more: your art or their friendship. […] the path to art is paved through your friends. You have to choose between friends and fans.

I have always considered this argument the last refuge of the natural misanthrope who finds himself also doing some type of art. There is some comforting belief, I suppose, in thinking that because you are an Artist, you are so special that you must make the heartbreaking choice to sacrifice your relationships in the name of your craft, and that this choice is intentional.

The fact is, tension between being good to others and being successful in personal pursuits is universal - whether you’re an artist, a politician, a scientist or the world’s best garbage collector. Some people are good at managing this tension; some are not.

“Good art” <-> “Bad personal life” is a romantic and satisfying story to tell ourselves, but is it true? It seems true. I mean, I keep hearing it, so it must be true, right?

We remember stories about geniuses in every field who were immensely talented but insufferable to the people around them, and conclude that there must be some necessary correlation between those things. In the meantime, we ignore all counterexamples on both sides: all of the bestselling authors who have stable marriages, and all of the fiercely antisocial mathematicians who never end up discovering anything. Because those stories are incredibly common, and incredibly boring.

You can be an artist and still be cool and smart. And you should. See above.