ON PRODUCING "CRUSHING IT": Tell Two Friends and so on ...

Detail number 542: promote the show.

We don’t have the budget for a Hollywood-style all-media blitz campaign that reaches every page, every screen, and every bus shelter. Nor is that necessarily the right approach for this project. At the other extreme, we don’t want CRUSHING IT to be in the media witness protection program. So we’re taking a number of approaches.

Our campaign has included the traditional releases to the press and industry associations. It’s a proven system. It works. It will continue to work. But now we have more choices.

Promoting via social media gives us reach, speed, and versatility beyond anything offered by many traditional venues. We’re talking the globe-reaching tentacles of the Internet and the testimonial power of news shared by your closest and most trusted friends; or at least by your favourite thought-shapers. Lucky for us, there is a lot of sharing going on in social media. For if a message is sent and no-one shares it, did it really happen?

One thing that might rattle some folks about social media as a promotional tool is how it reduces control of the message. As more people acquire and share something, it evolves. That needn’t be a bad thing. If the core message is solid, it survives its journey with meaning intact, even as the interpretations and added comments accumulate. For CRUSHING IT, the interpreting, commenting, and sharing are part of the experiment.