San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

Agency working on noteworth advertising for symphony




By David Hendricks

from the San Antonio Express News 7/2/99



Designing advertising campaigns for any product demands creativity from ad agencies.

But when the product is art itself, the challenge is even more daunting and intriguing.

That is the attitude BromleyAguilar+Associates is taking as it creates the fall advertising campaign for the San Antonio Symphony.

BromleyAguilar not only is designing the ad campaign for the symphony for free, but it also hopes to win awards for the work that will run in newspapers, billboards, radio and television.

The main goals, though, are numerical: increase season ticket sales for the 1999-2000 season by 5 percent, hike single-ticket sales by 10 percent and increase symphony revenues overall by 5 percent.

That may seem modest, but it actually would represent a significant step for the symphony, which drew decent-sized audiences during the 1998-99 season after a late start due to a financial crisis last September.

Nothing draws crowds like a crowd, and it won't take a big leap in attendance to start a snowball effect. And the more seats that are filled at the Majestic Theater, the more corporations will be motivated to provide financial support.

That's what it will take to put the symphony on firmer financial footing as it builds up its too-small endowment and seeks to pay its talented musicians enough to keep them in San Antonio.

So Wednesday afternoon, BromleyAguilar Vice President Amy Niederhauser sat down with four of the agency's associate directors to lay out the challenge. The directors will compete with each other during the next two weeks to come up with best the idea.

They talked about how to overcome the false images that the symphony plays only for an elite audience, that the concerts may be boring or hard to understand and that going to concerts might be expensive.

"Everyone has a passion for some kind of music," Niederhauser said. "We have to grab that passion and light up the love of music."

They described how orchestral concerts often are highly personal experiences that occur within a group activity and how live concerts by musicians living in San Antonio in a special auditorium such as the Majestic provide the "experience" people seek.

The ad directors also acknowledged the risk factor in marketing a symphony orchestra. Most orchestral advertising elsewhere is conservative and predictable. But a really effective ad carries some risk because it can end up as a flop.

The BromleyAguilar agency will study previous advertising, but I hope they will revisit the 1977-78 campaign, the one time symphony advertising became the talk of the town.

Most people here then would remember the billboards that featured a close-up photo of the young Belgian conductor of the San Antonio Symphony then, Francois Huybrechts.

"Make a date with Francois" the billboards urged, at once conveying numerous ideas about the mysteries and possibilities - that the unexpected might happen at the symphony.

It was daring, and people liked it. And I hope that the new fall campaign also will press the idea that surprises are in store at symphony concerts.

As a symphony patron of more than 21 years, I have seen many unexpected pleasures occur because the San Antonio audience feels a close relationship with its orchestra, as if one instead of separate.

My favorite example is from about 20 years ago, when a conductor challenged the audience to hear music in a new way. He told an anecdote about an African tribal chief who, when hearing an orchestral concert for the first time, enjoyed the sounds of the musicians tuning up and didn't want to hear the real music.

Later, after intermission, the San Antonio Symphony musicians tuned up for the concert's second half. When they finished, the audience stood roaring and applauding its approval in a huge ovation. The conductor wandered on stage completely befuddled until he got the joke, which was on him, of course.

That's the kind of experience and spontaneous fun people should know about. Communicating that in a print or short broadcast ad is difficult.

But the creative minds at BromleyAguilar are good, and they are at work. The new campaign begins Aug. 1. The concert season starts Sept. 9. Let the music, and the ads, soar.



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