Drew McManus on the Orchestra business | est. 2003

Get On The Bandwagon

Fri, Oct 10, 2005
by Drew McManus
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Today’s Cincinnati Enquirer article by Chuck Martin ribs a new marketing venture by the Cincinnati Symphony to attract a younger demographic which includes offering temporary tattoos that say “Get Your Beethoven On”. In response, he put together his own list of ideas to help improve CSO attendance. After reading his article my wife, the ever creative musician decided to offer some other suggestions for tattoo text…



Following the CSO’s composer oriented lead she came up with the following suggestions:


  1. “Get Your Offenbach On”
  2. “Get Your Orff On”
  3. “Get Your Cage On” (a cross marketing suggestion for those who are also interested in BDSM)
  4. “Get Your Foote On” (another targeted offering)

Then there’s the guest artist oriented tattoos:


  1. “Get Your Ahn On” (say that five times fast)
  2. “Get Your Ma On” (God help you if you end up with a dyslexic tattoo artist)
  3. “Get Your Ax On” (another targeted offering)

The CSO could reach out to opera buffs with the following offerings:


  1. “Get Your Manon On” (try saying that five times fast as well)
  2. “Get Your Faust On”

Finally, there’s a few conductor oriented offerings worth considering:


  1. “Get Your Runnicles On”
  2. “Get Your Wigglesworth On”
  3. “Get Your Wang On” (ok, that’s a good enough place to stop)

I’m sure some of you readers out there must to have some additional suggestions. Please take the time to submit them as a comment below.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

View all posts by Drew McManus | Website

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Adaptistration by Drew McManus LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://adaptistration.com/about/terms-of-use-and-permissions/.

PROFESSIONAL DISCLOSURE

Given the author’s position as an arts consultant and technology provider, he does not publish articles examining or focusing on current clients without first obtaining the client’s written permission.

EDITORIAL COMMITMENT

In order to ensure accuracy and provide a comprehensive perspective on any topic, I allow any individual or person officially representing an organization that appears in any Adaptistration article to submit a response which will be published, unedited. Responses are limited to 200 words and must address the issues at hand and the individuals and/or organizations must also be willing to maintain an open dialog for continued discussion.