The Actor's Business Cycle - Advertising
Turning Your Marketing Ideas Into Show Business Reality
The concept of the Actor’s Business Cycle, or ABC™, has been adapted from the corporate world; these well known ideas have a great deal of relevance in the realm of show business. Taken step by step, these easy to understand concepts will provide you with a powerful tool to realize your career goals. After you have figured out how to position yourself in a new market/marketplace, which in the ABC™ is “Step 3 - Creating and Marketing the New You”, you’ll be adapting your various advertising materials for use in your ongoing advertising campaign. But most actors run into trouble here because they confuse marketing with advertising.
The Difference between Marketing and Advertising
There’s a lot of confusion surrounding these two terms, so let’s begin with some definitions:
- Marketing (v) - The total of activities involved in creating a unique product/service and transferring it from the creator (you) to the consumer (the director, producer, etc.) including advertising, shipping and selling.
- Advertising (v) - To announce or praise a product/service in some public medium of communication in order to induce people to buy or use it.
See, advertising is one of the activities involved in marketing. If you want to market yourself as a comedic leading lady who works in the classical theatre, you create and send out advertising to tell people about it; such as, mailing out a flyer in hopes of getting an agent, etc., to come see your play. Get it?
Ready, Aim, Fire
Once you have identified the consumers in this new market, you have to decide what medium(s) will be best used to tell them about your “widget”…that is YOU. Then you need to create your advertising materials.
Advertising materials (n) - Various items, used either individually or in various combinations, for the selling of a product/service. In its most basic form, your picture and resume are a form of advertising.
Your choice of advertising materials will be governed by several things:
- Is there a preferred medium, style and material that the consumer is used to seeing the “widget” advertised? Film directors are used to seeing film/TV reels along with an actor’s picture and resume. An audio producer on the other hand wants neither, but rather your narration demo on CD.
- What is the cost of these particular materials? A homemade postcard that you had printed up at Kinko’s, promoting your latest play, may be more expensive than just ordering another batch of the photo postcards with your headshot on them.
- What is the cost of using these various mediums? While email is free, sometimes you’ll want to create a special flyer, poster or card to highlight your work. Throw in envelopes and postage and it can be a bit pricey.
The quality of the materials, as well as the quality and quantity of the information you provide, will be critical in how effective your advertising comes across to the consumer. Poorly crafted materials with incomplete information will leave a definite impression in the consumer’s mind. This is the step in the Actor’s Business Cyclewhere actors spend the majority of their time; trying to get the attention of the casting director, agent, etc., in hopes of being called in for an audition or interview.
One last thing; you should be aware that in any piece of advertising there are promises being made to the consumer. They fall into two categories:
- Explicit Promises - These are stated promises that the widget will be guaranteed to look, act and perform as it is shown in the advertisement. Simply put, do you still look like your headshot and can you really speak fluent French and swordfight?
- Implicit Promises - These are pledges which, though not stated in writing, concern the quality of the widget and the consumer’s experience in using it. As you gain credits on your resume, it becomes implied that you are a mature professional who knows and does her job very well.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” - John Wanamaker
Since it’s always best to start at the beginning, read “The Actor’s Business Cycle - Getting Started to get caught up on this important series.
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