And so on …

Next week, I’ll put to bed a newsletter redesign that’s part of a larger re-branding campaign (new logo, motto, stylebook … the works) for Southeastern Children’s Home, a new client via Ferncreek Creative. Dissatisfied with the total absence of close photos available for the piece (the cover, in particular), I drove to Duncan to see if I could capture a suitable image myself. As often happens, three hours of work produced only one usable frame … but it’s a very good frame and that’s all I needed. We go to press next week, at which point I’ll send the invoice that will pay for my new bathroom countertops. (And on a related note, I did replace the countertop cabinet bracing and front finished framing … a nice one-day shop project in Inman.)

The Mauritius playbill should be complete next week, too, but it will have to wait for final approval until October 1 (i.e., the last minute) to give stray credits every opportunity to be included.

Oh, yes … the New Play Festival. It concluded today with record overall attendance figures, a fact I attribute in some small part to our promotional mascot, the New Play Chicken, a life-like robotic Sega “Dream Chick” ordered direct from Hong Kong. We photographed the chicken with various folks around town, including the mayor, and published the photos everywhere. One even made it into our local daily, the Gannett-owned Greenville News.

The most frustrating thing about marketing is the difficulty one has in determining its effectiveness. Would the festival have sold as well sans chicken? Will Mauritius, by closing night, have benefitted from our film noire marketing treatment? Do slogans like “Two women. Two con men. Two stamps worth dying for.” really sell tickets? Beats me. But we’re having fun and sales are trending up, so we might at least assume that our marketing efforts aren’t hurting the theater.