Elizabeth McGovern plays Cora, Countess of Grantham, on the celebrated PBS show, Downton Abbey. It was recently announced that she will be the recipient of the 2013 William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theater given by Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theater Company. She has never performed at the Shakespeare Theatre.
“I thought it’s a nice thing to celebrate not only her successful career as an actress but the fact that she had classical roots to start with,” Michael Kahn, artistic director at STC,” told The Washington Post’s Jessica Goldstein. “And to encourage her to go back to that when Downton is over.”
Kahn also had something else in mind and was not shy to say. “Most of the time [after winning this award] they say, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be wonderful to work here?’ And then I very often invite them.”
SIPA runs live events and puts on webinars as do many of our members. We try hard to feature our members as speakers—knowing how knowledgeable they are and giving them a platform to shine and become more known in the industry. It’s good for them and good for SIPA. But Kahn’s strategy—of giving an award and then an invitation—deserves a closer look.
Let’s call it Invitation Marketing. I googled this and came up with a post by Mike Shaffer on his blog called The Buzz from a couple years ago. He gave an example of waiting for a car to move in front of him when the light turns green. Shaffer gets upset, while his father used to “calmly ask the driver blocking the way if they are waiting for a ‘personal invitation.’
“As a kid, that always made me laugh. As a marketer, I use it to guide everything I do.
“Yes, it sounds silly, but who wouldn’t want a ‘personal invitation’ to a brand? If you communicate correctly, each in your target audience should feel like the brand is reaching out to them individually, inviting them to join the family. Then, it’s not a purchase you are making, but an investment.”
It’s a bit of a leap to go from inviting Elizabeth McGovern to star in a play to inviting people to purchase one of your bundles. Yet as more and more SIPA companies go the “member” route as a business model, maybe it’s not such a big leap after all. Your “members” are going to require a more personal touch than your subscribers did.
Taking this a bit further, how much personalized, invitation marketing can we afford to do? Maybe more than we think. When we think of personally reaching out to prospective members or speakers, we might immediately dismiss it. “Oh, I don’t have time to do that.” But what can be more important than getting new members and keeping the ones you have? Maybe we should leave time every day to make these types of calls.
Kahn doesn’t have to think that way. He can think in terms of, “Will this person make our theater money?” McGovern would. And there will be times when we think that way as well, when a speaker—say a high-ranking government official or well-known author—can make us money. We will not be worried about their member or subscriber status.
The Post article joked about who else from Downton Abbey Kahn could invite. “How about the hot Turkish guy, Pamuk?” writes Goldstein. “Let’s get Pamuk! Better yet: What are the odds of [the great English actress] Maggie Smith making an appearance in [Washington, D.C.]?”
“Maggie doesn’t even want to do a play anymore,” said Kahn, who obviously had already thought of that possibility (and who knows what type of award). “She said to me, ‘Michael, I’ve done them all. There’s none that I want to do anymore.’” You can just hear her saying that in her best Downton, I-told-you-so accent.
Invitation marketing? Stay tuned.
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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline
