Where in the world am I today?: Peace River, AB, Canada on my way home to North Vancouver, BC, Canada
Just heading home from a three city mini tour today (Ottawa, Edmonton, Peace River) and along with some fantastic memories of the shows and people I met and performed for, I’m also bringing home several newspaper clippings that feature me doing what I do. All three newspaper shots featured in the picture that accompanies this post came from my time at the Edmonton Street Performer’s Festival. This festival seems particularly good at drumming up press for performers and in the hospitality suite during the festival there’s usually a wall of Fame featuring all of the newspaper coverage from the festival which is pretty cool.
I make an effort to collect all of the newspaper articles that I appear in. Why? Well I think it’s perhaps in part because I have a bit of a compulsive nature for documenting my where abouts and the things I get up to. That beings said, from a purely practical stand point of view, having all of this press at one’s finger tips can be an incredibly useful tool when it comes to marketing one’s show. I always try to include relevant newspaper quotes in with my promotional materials because any time that I can call to an outside source that states that I’m fantastic, the more prone potential buyers will be to actually believing that you’re the best thing since sliced bread.
It’s sometimes tricky to pull just the right words out of a picture/caption shot, but it’s usually possible to come up with at least something interesting to form a promotional quote… For example, in one of these three images this was said about yours truly –
“Aiken is a juggling maestro…”
Creative placement of such statements about one’s show sprinkled liberally through-out promotional material will help craft celebrity and the perception that you’re awesome and will easily be able to solve a clients entertainment need. The direct result of this is that you will give the person in charge of doing the hiring the confidence required to go from a simple entertainment inquiry to an actual booking.
So get out and start collecting… Better yet, get out there and perform!
