Looking for more sure-fire marketing advice for your folk club?

Perhaps you shouldn’t be reading this!

Archive post 

Pete Willow reflects on his experience as a folk event organiser, newspaper columnist and PR lecturer to ask if the marketing mindset is really appropriate when promoting your folk club. 

First published in the original Folk21 blog, September 2014.

Publicity and promotion are frequently on the agenda. Whenever folk club organisers gather to discuss – well – what it’s like to be a folk club organiser, one concern often shared is the need to get bigger (and younger) audiences. One solution often considered is ‘we need better marketing’.

Jacey Bedford provided some excellent advice in this blog about the responsibilities of the artist (or his/her publicist) and the venue when promoting or selling folk events. But the perennial problem remains, at least in the minds of some, that the promotion of folk clubs is largely preaching to the converted. 

Even in these enlightened times of folk awards, folk degrees and major international folk festivals, the folk club circuit itself continues to struggle to make itself heard on our airways or seen in our national and regional press.  Most folk clubs, including those who book guests regularly, remain trapped in the twilight zone of popular culture, largely ignored or marginalised by the mainstream media.

It’s tempting to see this as a PR problem. Improve the image of folk club and you’ll increase your grass roots audiences. Perhaps even change its name by invoking the ‘cooler’ nomenclature of ‘acoustic’ or ‘indie’.

The problem is that we live in an age where the market reigns supreme. Music has become a commodity. Musicians are presented as celebrities. And we are the consumers. We have become immersed in the dominant discourse of supply and demand where we are encouraged to expect high-quality, glossy, professional performances. We fork out for the admission and we want value for money.

Now if you’re reading this blog, you’ll know that thousands of acts touring the folk club circuit do give much more than that. But, let’s be honest, how often is a splendidly entertaining guest supported by a parade of floor singers demonstrating questionable levels of musicianship or ability to connect with the audience? And as folk club cognoscenti, how often do we tolerate and indulge the well-meaning amateurs who show up every week and keep the club viable?

If you are an organiser desperate to enhance the appeal of your venue to a wider, ‘non-folk’ audience, there are ways and means. One common tactic is to plan your floor singers in advance as well as your guests to ensure that the evening is packed with competent performers with mass appeal. Of course this may upset a few of your regulars and many folk club organisers just don’t have the heart to tell their most loyal supporters that - in this hard-nosed world of market forces – they are more of a liability than an asset.

Others (and, I would suggest, the more enlightened) adopt a more determined view that folk clubs are not, and never will be, The X-Factor. The whole point of the local, back-room folk club is the opportunity it offers for people to share songs and tunes that they have discovered and learned, sometimes popular, sometimes obscure, sometimes performed with panache, sometimes with bum notes and forgotten lyrics. This is arguably more in keeping with the essence of folk as an authentic community experience, unpolluted by the market-driven priorities of the popular music biz.

But if the true spirit of the folk club means rejecting the mainstream music-as-commodity values, it raises the question – do we really need to use conventional advertising and promotional tactics? The marketing and media relations text books may well provide tips and advice on how to let the world know your folk club exists but this can be quite a lot of effort for very little return, like seeds landing on stony ground.

Take the press release for example. Here I speak as a part-time music columnist and PR lecturer who often has a lot to say on how to produce a news release that will get results. I have joined in with the mantra of many on how to – and how not to – appeal to news editors, by providing a strong angle, good photograph and well-written copy that can be processed quickly before the deadline.

This might make the journalist happy, but the truth is that the newspaper I write for isn’t interested in filling your folk club with people. It is interested in selling newspapers. It wants its entertainment stories to be – well – entertaining to the mass audience. Yes I’ve received messages from club organisers, grateful for the coverage I’ve given to their recent guest night because a couple of people told them that they saw it in the paper. 

A couple of people!?  After the club went to the trouble of producing a press release, I went to the trouble of turning it into an article and my sub-editor went to the trouble of presenting it on the page that was read by anything from 30,000 to 50,000 people? From the organisers’ perspective, press releases seem a very inefficient way of filling the room with happy punters.

If you’ve read this far in the hope of learning more tricks of the marketing trade, do not despair. This post may not be about killer tactics to put bums on seats but I am hoping that you’ll pick up one important message. 

When promoting your folk club, be true to yourself. 

Posters and press releases with images of sexy young starlets brandishing acoustic guitars, or looking mournful while standing in a river (yes I did actually receive such a photograph in a recent press release) may appeal to the Simon Cowell sentiments but they are not about folk music.

The best way to ‘market’ your club is to make it a happy experience. Make people feel welcome. Intersperse your big name events with singers’ nights to allow your regulars a bit of limelight, but invite some of the more talented acts on the local circuit to host or take part. Have fun raffle prizes. Talk to audience members and find out what they want. Yes, yes, yes, you know all this but why do we still hear so many tales of badly-run, cliquey clubs that make newcomers feel they are sitting in on a high-denominational church service?

So, for a change, I’m not offering advice. Just something to think about. It’s not the big names that will boost your audiences. It’s your reputation and your creativity. 

Marketing from text books alone will not turn your folk club into a field of dreams. You have to build it and people will come.