Saturday, May 17, 2008

C&B Laurens, SC 5/8/08 #4


IMG_2103, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 5/17/2008 05:26:00 PM

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great to see the C&B big top as always. Sounds like the Laurens date was a lot-and-license that didn't work out.

Hope this show is seeing more winners than losers!!

17 May, 2008 23:45
Buckles said...

Paul, I am told the show is heading your way on a run that goes from border to border and then from coast to coast.

17 May, 2008 23:59
Bob Cline said...

Please go to the Carson & Barnes Circus website. They are posting their routes two weeks a head of time. You can even buy tickets on the website.

The South Carolina dates were very light in attendance. They maybe had 700 to 800 people in Rock Hill on a beautiful Saturday. They had a sponsor there ( Optimists Club ) that worked extremely hard and the sponsor was disappointed in the community turnout. One of the sponsors members had booked in Big name concerts and arena shows before for several years. He said the press in general would not help them in any way at all. The TV stations, Radio stations, or newspaper had no interest in helping the Optimist Club as the sponsor, or the day of the circus, or human interest, etc.
Bob

18 May, 2008 06:06
Anonymous said...

Yup, I have the C&B site bookmarked. Understand that the show will move very quickly through the Midwest on the way to the West Coast. Late June-early July timeframe.

Media support (i.e. publicity) is getting harder and harder all in most cities of any size. Media sponsorships can be secured but it ain't free like it once was. Perhaps it's time for circuses to consider bringing back the advance brigades.

18 May, 2008 13:42
Anonymous said...

What do you expect from the press with the educational system in elementary schools and colleges indoctrinating young skulls full of mush with all this animal right s drivel . Do you think they will help any show that has animals ? But let any type show such as Circus Soleil come in their area and they will fall all over themselves promoting it .
JW

18 May, 2008 14:57
Anonymous said...

Carson & Barnes does have an Advance out ahead of the show. The advance works with sponsors, and of course the billposters come behind them with paper. Getting media attention isn't impossible, witness the Feld operation, but first you have to get past the all too norm PETA stories and then spoon feed your story. As smaller communities don't do a lot of original reporting anymore, it isn't easy. Some people would argue that with newspaper readership declining, and local news viewership sliding as well, the value of "free media" isn't what it once was. Billboards still work in some communities, radio buys in others. In dollar terms there's only so much that a show wants to spend in a small market. There's still nothing that beats sponsors where every active member agrees to sell a specific number of tickets, and where members man ticket sale operations for several weeks in advance at supermarkets etc. It's a hell of a lot of work, but it pays off. It takes a lot tickets for CB to have a good day -- but a good day is a great day for a sponsor.

FWIW several weeks ago on Culpepper & Merriweather we played a small town with 1400 people and no media. A small group of five people sponsored the show. They decorated every window in the small business district with old circus paper and paper from CM. They put up an elephant display in the park. They had signs on each end of town. They literally turned the circus into a "must see" event. They sold out of advance tickets and ultimately there were many more people at the shows than there were in the whole town. For Culpepper it was a great day. For Carson & Barnes it would still have been a good day. And it wasn't about our Advance or the media or any kind of marketing scheme -- it was all about inventive motivated creative sponsors.

Ben

18 May, 2008 19:00
Anonymous said...

I always enjoy Mr Trumble's comments,especially about putting asses in seats. After just recently coming from Universoul Circus, I must say that I saw more full houses than on any other show.And I don't believe that it is just because they are "America's Only Black Owned and Operated show" even though it seems that target marketing is the wave of the present. They do have a very active and imaginative advance,and their weekly schedule includes multiple promotions running most days,and promotions almost every day. A very hard working front end.
besides being very well lit show with solid production values

20 May, 2008 10:02
B.E.Trumble said...

Larry, I agree -- I don't think that UniverSoul is just about niche marketing a Black circus to a Black audience. It's not that simplistic. They sell an entertainment "experience," they promote the Hell out of it, and they keep it fresh enough to return to the same cities year after year. I suspect the UniverSoul advance could sell the same show pretty successfully to any audience if they wanted to. I mentioned the incredible sponsors Culpepper had in Wellsville, MO. The circus worked for them because they brought the excitement back to the idea of "Circus Day." Excitement is what a circus has to sell. Any advance that can't do that isn't working. Any sponsor who fails to understand that won't fare well. We've become a cynical lot in this business. We write off whole groups of people figuring were too old fashioned and we can no longer reach them. We reckon to survive we have to get smaller and smaller and narrowcast our sales to the people who notice that little piece of circus paper in the 7-11. Maybe we've forgotten ourselves sometimes that tigers, and daredevils, and a fast-paced wire act forty feet off the ground is still thrilling.

I'm sometimes struck by how good it all can be when it's done right. Standing around watching Luis "Nino" Posso spinning a couple boards of floss in the heat of the afternoon may seem pretty ordinary until I really think about what we're discussing. This is a young man who honest to God wants to do impossible things on the wheel. To take the biggest risks, to be the best in the world. Who wouldn't want to see that?

But they have to know it's there...in their town...not tomorrow...just for today.

Ben

20 May, 2008 11:18
Anonymous said...

C&B is booked to play Rochester (Henrietta),NY on Sat June 7 and Sun. June 8. They will be at our fairgrounds for shows at 1:30,4:30 and 7:30 each day. It will be interesting to see how they do.We have not had a tented circus here in a number of years and Henrietta is not known for going to circuses they have not heard about. I'll be going to a fair meeting (we are the sponsor) to see if there are any posters and kids tix out. It may be a little early. There has been no newspaper ads yet either. We shall see. Bill Galloway

20 May, 2008 15:44
B.E.Trumble said...

Not sure about Henrietta, but I know that Kelly Miller has played the Rochester suburbs in the last few years. Of course the Shrine show does pretty well in Rochester. Two years ago I think the closest C&B got to Rochester may have been Phelps or Batavia. Can't remember where we played immediately after Lockport.

Ben

20 May, 2008 20:06
Anonymous said...

Sorry to say that the only circus that has done any business in Rochester has been RBBB. The Shrine show went to an every other year format; this was the year and they lost their proverbial a...Name recognition is what sells - just like the label on clothes or shoes.
cc

21 May, 2008 08:02
Buckles said...

Speaking of New York cities, Bobby Gibbs told me that Herkimer was the designated name for Our Savior.
Gathered in a manger in Bethlehem, one of the Wise Men asked, "What is the Child's name?" and as Joseph arose to reply he struck his head on a rafter and said "Jesus Christ!"
And it stuck.

21 May, 2008 08:56
B.E.Trumble said...

I laughed so hard I spilled my coffee.

Ben

21 May, 2008 11:46
Anonymous said...

RE: Rochester... Sorry to hear that the Shrine show has fallen on hard times. It was still pretty successful the last time I was there six or eight years ago. Believe Hanneford did well there too around the same time. True enough RBBB has branding in its favor, but the War Memorial in Rochester isn't someplace they play every year, or even every other year is it? When a tent show plays a suburb like Irondequoit with a good sponsor and has a strong day would that mean Irondequoit is a good town or Rochester is a good town? Likewise would poor day with a weak sponsor mean Rochester is bad if perhaps a better sponsor might have been found in Pittsford? We did carnival dates in all those towns when I was a kid. Mostly I remember how badly the locals mispronounced the name of the village "Chili."

21 May, 2008 12:08
henry edgar said...

ben is right about the key to filling seats being creating excitement. making circus day special. today's press people for the most part don't understand that. you can't mail a newspaper a photo and a badly written release and expect much coverage. in the old days, at least one press agent would visit each and every media outlet personally, taking time to bond with city editors and/or assignment editors, bringing enough pictures to convince them this year's edition was bigger, better and grander than ever. the press agent knew almost every detail about almost every act on the show and could spend hours telling the editor why it was the best act of that type anyone had ever seen. (even if sometimes it was complete fiction) the press people had solid news backgrounds so they could sit at a typewriter and write a special feature if neceessary. i stopped in the city room in duluth about 6 am one morning, the editor asked "aren't circus people pretty superstitious," i said you bet and typed a 20 inch story in about 30 minutes. they sent a photographer to the lot, i set up pix to go with story, waking people up saying "don't ask questions, do what i tell you," and we had a terrific front page spread in a couple of hours, made even more valauble because we had about a week in the duluth area playing towns that considered the duluth paper their daily newspaper. it paid off big time -- but how many of today's press people would even get up in time to stop by a newsroom at 6 am to remind the editors the big show is in town and they need to get a photographer to the lot right now? that's the way it was done back when circuses got lots of press. i learned by following the examples of people like floyd king, frank braden, john cloutman and charlie boas. the approach would still work if you could find old-fashioned press people. but sending a poorly written release and a stock photo in the mail from an ofice in sarasota doesn't make editors get excited . if you can get the media excited, you can get everybody in town excited and make enough money to buy today's expensive gas.

23 May, 2008 02:07

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