The Playgoer: Enough with the Facebook already

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Monday, May 10, 2010

Enough with the Facebook already

Uber-arts manager Michael Kaiser (he runs the Kennedy Center, after all) puts his finger on it:

It is not the nature of marketing that attracts any segment of an audience but the work itself. Of course we must use marketing techniques that reach the audience we hope to attract, but simply putting something on Facebook does not guarantee that younger people will come.
Yes.  Dear theatre companies--stop pressuring me to join your Facebook page.  I know you all need friends.  But who wants to be friends with a marketing department.


And, by the way, you can now follow The Playgoer on...Facebook!

Can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess...

3 comments:

isaac butler said...

So let me get this straight: Michael Kaiser is saying exactly what I said in October on my blog:
http://parabasis.typepad.com/blog/2009/10/nobrainer-secrets-revealed.html

But yet we're supposed to continue praising him for his "insight" and "new thinking"?

This has been yet another installment of Michael Kaiser is Overrated.

Playgoer said...

Sorry, Isaac, that I didn't remember the details of that earlier post. But I hardly meant to say praise him for anything, or declare "All kneel and bow down to illustrious Michaer Kaiser!", or anything like that.

And "overrated"? That would imply he's even "rated" by anyone. I know I don't spend much time looking to him for wisdom. I just subscribe to his Huffington feed. The man's hardly a household name. And I bet even YOU have more Facebook friends than he does, Isaac!

isaac butler said...

Ha,

That's probably true. I wasn't reacting to you (sorry to get all pissy in your comments). It's more that whenever arts advocacy or arts admin issues come up, or whenever Kaiser publishes one of his columns in the HuffPo, I feel like people I'm in contact with fall all over themselves to praise him and convince themselves that he's some forward thinking genius. He's not. He's the equivalent of a center-leftist... a little bit unorthodox or reformist but unwilling to challenge major basic assumptions about anything.

The biggest example: he still thinks the problems in the arts can be solved by recruiting and paying administrators better, when they already have the benefits and comparatively higher salaries than artists.