Coattail Advertising: Good Or Bad?

Brian Sacawa posted an intriguing piece at his Sound Directions blog on 5/4/2010 about a Cleveland Orchestra radio spot for a Carmina Burana performance that ties directly into the Cleveland Cavaliers playoff bid. Sacawa wonders if this sort of coattail advertisement is ultimately worthwhile via a thorough and thought provoking piece…

Granted, it can be all too easy to get wrapped up in details with this topic. I recall having an email based conversation about all of this with a consulting colleague who works in the for profit world and after several exchanges, the consensus settled around this:

• So long as you can benefit in a one off bump in sales, the ad time/space is free or next to nothing, and you don’t have to spend more than an hour putting it together, run with it.
• Anything else is a counterproductive time drain.

Sacawa’s article made me think of something I posted here back in 2005 about the Chicago Symphony hanging a banner on the front of the building congratulating the Chicago White Sox for winning the World Series. After reading through the comments, it seems those readers had a similar outlook as that above. But I’m curious to know what folks in the business think now in the era of the economic downturn.

As an amusing anecdote, that White Sox/Chicago Symphony blog post continues to be one the most visited posts at Adaptistration due mostly to it being picked up at a few well traveled White Sox discussion boards. Interestingly enough, one board produced a fascinating discussion whereas the other quickly adopted the “if you aren’t 100% pro-Sox, you suck and everything you do sucks.” To this day, I continue to get random pieces of hate mail littered stemming from that same discussion board post.

If nothing else, Sox fans are passionate fans. It makes me wonder what the business would be like if orchestra patrons had that much fervor…