Day 18 of 33

When Marketing Initiatives Backfire!

More on that in a moment. I had a fun day today. We had another good rehearsal and are homing in on tech rehearsals. The designers come to watch a run tomorrow and we get into the theater on Sunday. Generally, tech is crazy, but I have a feeling this one won't be so bad.

After rehearsal, I went back to the San Diego Museum of Art, where they had an exhibit of Spanish master painters called From Greco to Dali. I learned a decent amount about Spanish painters in my High School Spanish classes (Kudos, Senora!), so I was interested in going.

It was a nice exhibit, and just my size. It was very interesting to see the distinct change from the early religious styles to realistic to surrealistic. I thought it would have been such a nice finishing touch to the exhibit if they could have tied in local art that perhaps tied back to Spanish influences.

I headed home for dinner and to run some lines with a cast member. However, I began to hear the call of the nerds. The Comic Con opened today and, while I really have no interest in most comics or superheroes, the gravitational pull of so many nerds in one place pulled me in. I hopped on my bike and sped downtown. The highlight of my night was going to be a free performance from Cirque du Soleil on the side of Petco Park, the baseball stadium.

I had a great time at Comic Con. The people-watching alone was worth the trip. Most events were reserved for people with badges or tickets, but there were some fun things to do. One of my first stops was into the faux-museum set up by Conan O'Brien featuring all the fan art for his comic persona, The Flaming C. Literally, they managed to fill an entire store with fan art, and gave out food and swag to boot.


Many of the restaurants had been taken over by tv networks or companies. One of the pictures above is at the "Cowboys and Aliens" Saloon, named for the upcoming movie. The SyFy channel took over the Hard Rock Cafe and turned it into the CafeDiem from Eureka.

I found two more temporary exhibits that must have taken over empty storefronts or warehouses. One was for Monstergeddon, a superhero themed Monster truck show. They were showing off some of their cars and selling tickets for their next show, coming to San Diego. Most importantly, I found the SEGA Arcade. They had an entire club littered with gaming systems to promote their upcoming games. True to their word, many of the games had an arcade feel to them. I tried playing a handheld game, and then a destruction game for XBox. The Highlight, though, was a new hands free Zombie Slasher that they were featuring in its own private room. The game used the Microsoft Kinect hardware so that you use no remotes, but stand and control your character as you bash and slice hordes of zombies. I found it sort of frustrating. It might take time to get used to, or it might need some tweaking.

I walked around for a little more, but we were getting close to the Cirque show. In my limited experience with Cirque shows, I knew they were better with a buzz. I downed a beer at a hopping outdoor bar, and headed to the ballpark. People were already taken seat in the prime real estate, so I found a comfy piece of pavement and waited out the next 25 minutes.

The audience counted down the final ten seconds and then grew completely silent in anticipation. The show started amid cheers, but then they apparently had some technical difficulties with the sound. They played around for a minute or so, with a mostly supportive crowd (it was free, after all) and then got it up and running.

They performed a fight between about 10 characters running up and down a wall, although it seemed like you had an aerial view of the fight. There were only 2 live characters, though, and the rest were being projected. In my opinion, I thought it was OK at best, but I understood their real performance was in Vegas and they were lacking some. The fight came to a close and everyone got ready for the next scene.

Instead, we were greeted with a sign that read "See the rest of the show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas". The entirety of the show, INCLUDING technical difficulties, was 7 minutes. A roar went up from the crowd and people started booing the performance. They had built up this performance, and people like me found themselves waiting for over 3 times longer than the show lasted.

When marketing your event, it's important not to show too much to give away, but to show enough to get people interested. A good show may have sold tickets. This definitely did not. Bad move.