With Super Tuesday on the horizon I have been thinking a lot about setting expectations. Don't worry, I'll relate this to the arts in a second.
Take a look at this memo from the Barack Obama campaign. It is setting the expectations for the race tomorrow.
We can easily see how important this is in politics. Let's say Barack is 150 delegates behind Clinton after tomorrow. Setting expectations can be the difference between the media having one story "Obama lags behind Clinton" and the other "Obama gaining on Clinton".
Now let's look at this in the arts
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Over at the day job at Court Theatre, we are preparing to mount Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel. Most of our target audience will be familar with the piece.
And that is a huge problem for us.
When most people think Carousel (assuming they think of it at all) they probably think of the shiny, Technicolor version of both the Broadway play and the movie.
The version we will producing at Court is not going to be bright and shiny. It is going to focus more on the hard life of 1890's New England (where the play was first based).
So what we are doing on the marketing end is working on visuals that helps to set a NEW expectation for Carousel and erases the OLD happy, shiny, expectation.
Imagine what would happen if we didn't do this. Picture a customer who comes in with one version of Carousel in her head and then gets another. She is probably going to hate the show . . . and then talk about her hatred on the Internet which is something we want avoid. :)
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