You Get An Extra Day To KILL DE WABBIT!

On January 22, 2015 we took a look at how a New York Philharmonic (NYPhil) promo video on Facebook for their Bugs Bunny At The Symphony II show managed to go viral along with its impact on ticket sales. As a worthwhile follow-up, it is worth pointing out sales were so high, the NYPhil added an additional performance to the original three.

The show’s co-creator, George Daugherty, posted a note on his Facebook account announcing the additional show on 2/12/2015 and at the time this article was written, the original promo video has more than 5.1 million views and 100,000 shares.

If nothing else, this event certainly sets a new best case scenario benchmark in the ongoing debate over the value of social media marketing.

Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II

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.

Related Posts

3 thoughts on “You Get An Extra Day To KILL DE WABBIT!”

  1. I think the NYP does a tremendous job with social media, effectively balancing the needs of both the Marketing and PR offices. They set the bar pretty high early on with the fake Twitter hack they staged to promote Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen back in 2011 (I think). They’re Facebook feed is full of great content from their archives, excellent audio, and tons of Chris Lee’s fantastic images.

    What’s interesting to me is that this is a pretty low-fi video (a static camera in the back of the house, with minimal editing, that’s it), and it’s got over 5M views and the post was shared over 107K times. Those are big numbers even for the NYP. Of course, content is king, and this concert is something everybody can enjoy.

    But I think this shows that there are so few certainties with new media. You can spend a ton of time and resources on highly polished social media content, but there’s no guarantee it will generate more interest than something created more simply.

    If you don’t mind me sharing an example of what I mean, we put together a very nice Veterans Day video last November — a no-brainer for a Washington, DC-based premier military band. We’re fortunate to have a talented videographer/filmmaker in the organization, so it looked great and didn’t cost us anything. The feedback was good, but it paled in comparison to a quick photo taken of one of our musicians performing in a snow-covered Arlington National Cemetery, which racked up 283K likes and was shared over 53K times.

    New media is an important tool for connecting with and building audiences, but far from an exact science.

Leave a Comment