Hey everyone.

I'm curious on how the collegiate groups out there advertise and promote their concerts and auditions? I've done as much as I can through print and other means but I've been hitting a wall when it comes to my group.

Here are SUNY Buffalo we have 27,000 grads and undergrads. Every year we struggle to break 15 people when it comes to auditions. This year we had 18, thats rights, 18 out of potentially 15,000 male students.

For our concerts we manage to get around 200 people, mostly family and friends, so still this number is alarmingly low.

We were lucky to find a quality set of guys for the group, but I fear we may soon cease to exist if things keep going the way they are.

The problem is, we barely do any type of advertising on campus by singing. Which is kinda silly since we are a SINGING group, we should advertise by showing people what we do. But the guys in the group feel like this isn't worth it, and that any kind of performing outside our concerts and paid gigs wont really do anything to the general public. They are really nice guys don't get me wrong, its just I wish they would see what could be if we really pushed advertising to the roof.

So I guess what I'm asking is you thoughts and ideas on creative ways to get the student body involved and informed that wouldn't exactly entail the group to go sing somewhere for 30 mins. But also, ways and things I could do that would excite the guys into wanting to get out there and promote the shows.

Any ideas?

Post edited by: MikeX, at: 2008/04/16 00:23

I'm the CASA Ambassador in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Since most a cappella in the region is on the campuses (primarily at Vassar College), I've thought about some of the issues you raise.

I've particularly wondered about me being the only audience member at most college shows who is not a student. Is there value is reaching out to a broader audience from the surrounding community? The shows I attend tend to fill their venues, but I can see reasons to bring in a more diverse audience. It would benefit college-community relations, and would bring the music to a wider audience (always a prime goal for me). Performers, on the other hand, might feel their creativity constrained by pressure to limit sexual innuendo when listeners are the age of their parents. (The Vassar Accidentals have gestures reserved for college audiences when singing "coming for to carry me home" and for "I'm gonna keep my sheep skin on" in L'il Red Riding Hood).

If you have a local ambassador, he or she might be helpful in connecting to audiences off campus. You might make the case to the office of community relations that a cappella is a good way to reach out to the local population (Vassar sponsors street festivals that include several collegiate groups).

You also asked about recruiting singers. I've thought about that as the adviser to a high school a cappella group. With the growing number of pre-college groups, should we think about setting up connections to hook up incoming freshman with groups at the colleges?

Is it anyone's experience that several years of singing a cappella in high school makes for better members in a college group? Should that be a consideration in selecting new singers?

Jonathan

OK: This is the second time recently that I've posted once and had it appear twice.

Jonathan

Post edited by: jheiles, at: 2008/04/17 19:23

Singing in highly-populated areas around campus is honestly (in my experience, anyway)to get the word out. Hand out flyers to everyone who walks by, designate a member to talk to people who stand and watch, sign babies, do WHATEVER to get people interested. It's possible that a large chunk of your campus population doesn't know you exist, and impromptu singing is a great way to catch them off-guard and get their attention.

As far as auditions go, I'm guessing you'd be targeting freshmen, so see what events the school's putting on for freshmen before classes start and make sure you at least have members at all or most of them. See if any performance-oriented events need opening acts -- I don't know how receptive your university is to a cappella, but there's definitely no harm in asking! Just hurl yourselves out there the first few weeks of school.