The art of promotion

by Louise Kennedy for Boston Sunday Globe

Who couldn’t use a makeover? One local communications firm helps arts groups put a fresh face forward


In posters and programs, Sametz Blackstone replaced the color production stills of dancers onstage with elegant black-and-white photos of dancers. Program booklets have also been reworked to include more information for new audience members. “Both at the Ballet and the Symphony, they have a front of the book now to talk to people that are not part of the club,” says Roger Sametz. “Before, it was all about the product. Now it talks about what the experience is like.”

In posters and programs, Sametz Blackstone replaced the color production stills of dancers onstage with elegant black-and-white photos of dancers. Program booklets have also been reworked to include more information for new audience members. “Both at the Ballet and the Symphony, they have a front of the book now to talk to people that are not part of the club,” says Roger Sametz. “Before, it was all about the product. Now it talks about what the experience is like.”

Sametz Blackstone developed “Boston Now,” a pocket-size monthly guide to arts events throughout the city. The twist? It’s organized by neighborhood, in hopes of encouraging residents to realize how much is going on right outside their doors. “The concept behind ‘Boston Now’ is ‘the neighbor in the know,’”—the friendly tipster who tells you all the most interesting things going on in town, says Sametz vice president Andrew Maydoney. Sametz Blackstone is also helping the Office of Cultural Affairs find ways to keep funding “Boston Now.”

In addition, “Boston Now” does “wild postings” on construction sites and other blank walls around town— cheap, vivid posters with information about offbeat events. “Part of accessibility for the arts is having accessible communication,” Maydoney says. “It’s not that it’s just money to make it. The fun is using the same kind of thought processes, probing, and methodology to come up with results.”


Branding is this firm’s specialty

“When you’ve got integration across media—the banners, the press materials, the Web site—it all builds toward something,” he says. “Every dollar costs you 80 cents” because each piece is not only marketing a particular event or product but also reinforcing the overall image of the institution. He concedes, though, that it sometimes causes problems for his firm when it’s trying to market itself because, in the client’s budget, “there is no category for ‘integrated communication.’”

“When you’ve got integration across media—the banners, the press materials, the website—it all builds toward something. Every dollar costs you 80 cents because each piece is not only marketing a particular event or product but also reinforcing the overall image of the institution.” Roger Sametz

Explaining to potential clients what Sametz Blackstone can do is “an elevator speech that takes 80 floors,” Sametz says. “Not a good thing. Especially in our business. But when they get it, we stay with them for years.”

Indeed, the firm seems to win some clients from the many larger design or marketing shops that do similar work because of its commitment to looking at each institution comprehensively. About five years ago, the BSO switched from a larger New York agency to Sametz, says marketing director Kim Noltemy, in part because of the firm’s interest in “getting to understand the organization at a really deep level.”

The BSO is a complicated organization— not just because, with the Symphony, Tanglewood, and Pops, it has three distinct branches whose connection is not always well understood by the public, but also because it has a lot of different constituencies, from musicians to trustees, students, and one-time ticket buyers, and a long history that, while distinguished, can sometimes intimidate potential new audiences.

Meanwhile, it faces the same challenges —attracting new audiences, responding to the devastating changes in the recording industry, and balancing artistic and economic concerns—that have nearly sunk other symphonies across the country.

“The need to evolve is obvious, and yet we have this history,” says managing director Mark Volpe. “The challenge is how to respect that tradition; how do you build on that tradition, but also how do you evolve?” And in facing that challenge, he notes, “there are occasional tensions.”

Take, for example, the question of the colophon vs. the pipes. The colophon is the symbol that the BSO has used for decades: an engraved garland, complete with trumpet-wielding cherubs, surrounding a subdued rendering of the orchestra’s name. And the pipes? They’re part of a new image that appeared this season on the banners outside Symphony Hall and in a few ads inside the program. The name is in a sleeker, more modern-looking typeface, with an almost abstract design of pan pipes and a historical instrument, the natural trumpet.

That image has raised the hackles of some Symphony loyalists. For one thing, they object, the orchestra doesn’t use those instruments. And Noltemy is quick to emphasize that it’s not a new logo, just “a kind of design element.”

The colophon, she adds, “is extremely difficult to reproduce on marketing materials. It can’t really be reproduced on banners” or in electronic media, as it would need to be on the Web site. Beyond that, Noltemy says, the colophon looks like an old-fashioned seal—an image that goes against the more open, egalitarian image the BSO is striving to project. “

A seal kind of contradicts an accessibility campaign,” Noltemy says. “If you have a more kind of open-feel ad campaign, and then you put a seal on it, it kind of contradicts, even if it could be done.” But she concedes that the debate over the images has raised some tensions within the BSO. “It’s very subjective design stuff,” she says. “I think our stuff is more scrutinized than one would expect, by our audience around the city, our board members; we have so many constituencies around the city. We try to have the right balance, reaching out to people and yet not alienating anyone else.”

In the case of the seal and the pipes, the balance will probably remain as it is, with the seal appearing in some contexts but the new mark becoming more common, especially when materials need to include parallel, representative images from each of the BSO’s three branches. But balancing the old and the new is always tricky, especially in a town like Boston.

“I’ve worked in four markets,” says the BSO’s Volpe. “And Boston, much more so than others, has a real focus on heritage and tradition and paying respect to that. I learned that early on here. You push too hard too fast, and the push comes right back at you.”

Who knew that a little colophon could mean so much? Well, Roger Sametz, for one.


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