Can You Come Up With The Ultimate Orchestra Slogan?

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Orchestra slogans can be a slippery slope, remember the dreadful Philadelphia Orchestra “Unexpect Yourself” campaign/slogan from 2010? But when they work, they can really stick and give a nice force multiplier boost to overall ticket sales, awareness, and good old fashioned buzz. To that end, the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera (CSO) recently launched a social media call for slogans and/or catchphrases they can use for their 2014/15 season.

For now, the CSO is soliciting input via their Facebook page and promises voting in the near future:

In addition to offering up your ideas, I’m curious to know which orchestra slogans have caught your attention as of late and which ones, good and bad, have stuck with you over the years.

In completely candor, I can’t recall a single orchestra slogan that comes to mind for positive reasons but that’s just me and my hunch is you’re less jaded on this topic so I’m looking forward to seeing what you can come up with.

If you want to make a contribution to the CSO’s efforts but can’t get your creative on, try kick starting it with a slogan generator; granted, you should avoid using these in a professional capacity but on the bright side, some of the results are worth a good laugh.

Full disclosure mode: the CSO is a client and my wife is the CSO’s concertmaster.

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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4 thoughts on “Can You Come Up With The Ultimate Orchestra Slogan?”

  1. For a recent season or two, the Seattle Symphony adopted “Listen Boldly.” It corresponded with Ludovic Morlot’s adventurous programming for the main subscription series, and the creation of the “Symphony Untuxed” and “[Untitled]” series. I’m probably in the minority but I loved the slogan because it firmly imprinted in my mind that I had many more opportunities to hear pieces and composers with which I had no prior experience, instead of the routine Beethoven/Brahms/Tchaikovsky core, which I love, too, but there is no shortage of opportunities to hear them!

    I thought “Listen Boldly” was spot on.

  3. You mean “The Symphony Meisters” suggested by slogangenerator isn’t good?

    I actually like surrealist’s better. Maybe because they are English, they generate higher quality slogans like “Everything We Do Is Driven By Symphony”, “Is It Live or Is It Symphony?” “All You Add Is Symphony” and “We Don’t Make Symphony, We Make Symphony Better”

    Though I was perplexed by “The Symphony With The Hole” I am guessing it is based on some other product because it vaguely sounds familiar, but I can’t place it

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