Stuart you will like this one. Article in the Guardian.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>They have precious feet, six-pack torsos, and a Swedish manager. The boys of the English National Ballet will be unveiled today in a giant poster - slogan "Spot the Ball" - draped only in their national flags which are also those of 11 World Cup countries. <P>It's all in the best possible taste. The text promises: "For 180 minutes of pure artistry (and no penalty shoot-outs)". <P>"We are targeting soccer widows," marketing manager Ian Butlin said, explaining why he seduced his corps de ballet into stripping for art. "Our message is you don't have to sit there on the sofa beside your old man - come and see our fantastic dancers instead." <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4421953,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Football? World Cup? Is some sporting endeavour imminent? Am I missing something here?

<BR><small>The dancers in the poster are Jesus Pastor (Spain), Jean-Luc Burke (France), Jan-Erik (Sweden), Alberto Montesso (Italy), Shi-Ning Liu (China), Alexis Oliveira (Brazil), Gary Avis (England), Nils (Belgium), Trevor Schoonraad (South Africa), Cornell Callender (USA) and Dmitri Gruzdyev(Russia).</small><P><B>English National Ballet reveals <BR>... this summer's dream team</B><BR>from the londondance.com site<P><BR>A huge More O’Ferrall billboard poster is to be erected on the corner of Warwick Road and Cromwell Road in West London today (Monday 27 May) featuring eleven male dancers from English National Ballet wrapped only in their national flags, with the headline ‘Spot the Ball’. Each of the dancers represents a country that has qualified for the World Cup. The Company’s Artistic Director, Matz Skoog, is also, coincidently, Swedish. <P><A HREF="http://www.londondance.com/Content.asp?Level=2&SubSection=463" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

I have to wonder if ENB have not actually scored an own goal with this advertising campaign. Granted this is a relatively clever and eyecatching poster of 11 handsome men, and the campaign is well timed in terms of hitting an audience who may crave seeing anything non-football related on television. Soccer-widows, in particular, may feel legitimate in spending hard earned cash on going to see the ballet in order to escape the football. <P>However, this desire to escape the World Cup is exactly why this poster is a mistake. If you turn on the television, or take a journey on the tube at the moment, every second poster is about football, from Sven Goran Eriksson selling pasta sauce to Coca Cola. It seems exploitative, out of context (what does pasta sauce have to do with football??) and lacking in imagination. Surely ballet (and pasta sauce for that matter) can and should be sold on its own merits rather than bouncing off tired football imagery? Does it not look like ballet has not got sufficient intrinsic values to advertise?<P>Another problem is lack of targeting. The poster appears to be at the corner of two roads: have ENB asked themselves how many of their target audience will be passing it? How many of them will have chance to read it? How many of them will then book? <P>A cursory look at this poster (which is perhaps all that you will have time for as you pass Warwick Road) would lead a viewer to think that it was advertising football teams: you have to actually read the poster (something which market research has consistently reported consumers never do) to understand that it has actually to do with dance. Would it not at least have been better to have them in slightly balletic poses (fifth position for instance) in order to make the image stronger? <P>In terms of simple marketing principles, I also have to comment that there is no call to action on the poster (other than a number to book, but no encouragement to do so), and whilst consumers' attention and desire may be raised, have ENB actually captured their interest in the product they are selling? It is all very well to have people lusting over the 11 (yummy) men, it is quite another thing to translate that into ticket sales. ENB seems to have singularly failed to address this problem.<P>This poster stinks of advertising agencies saying "You know what guys, we need to capture the zeitgeist". Any arts organisation who is ever told that should run a mile and go back to simple marketing principles: believe that your product can sell itself, know who your product will sell to, and then clearly sell it to them. <P>A valiant effort ENB, but I give this poster a yellow card. Must try harder.

The ballet world seems to have gone world cup crazy. In The Guardian today there is an article comparing similarities and disimilarities between matz Skoog and Sven Goran Ericsson.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>When Matz Skoog took over as the director of the English National Ballet last autumn, his appointment prompted a flurry of comparisons to that other Swedish troubleshooter, Sven-Goran Eriksson. Skoog may fit the same profile as Eriksson - calm Nordic type coming in to settle dysfunctional British institution - but the similarities end there. <P>Most glaring is the disparity between the moneyed status of the England football squad and ENB's more modest role. Ever since it was founded in 1950 (as Festival Ballet), it has played second fiddle to the Royal Ballet. Not only does it receive a fraction of the latter's funding - £5m from the Arts Council as opposed to well over £9m - it has less access to the best dance talent. And whereas Eriksson's mission is to win competitions, Skoog's challenge is to find a workable identity for his company. <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4424154,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Maria, many thanks for your professional thoughts on this. A couple of points - in order to fill the Royal Albert Hall it is necessary to reach people who wouldn't usually go to ballet, so maybe a different approach is required. In addition what do you make of the fact that the ad has received a lot of coverage beyond those who will see the actual ad. Isn't that cost effective marketing when the national press does your job for you? <P>At a basic level, this is using sex to sell ballet. It works for other products and actually does have more to do with ballet than many products. This will come as no surprise to anyone who saw Daria Pavlenko, the Siren last night at the Kirov Gala in Balanchine's 'Prodigal Son', pirouetting with one leg wrapped around the waist of her victim. <P><BR><p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited May 30, 2002).]

This is an edited version (to avoid duplication) of a post by Emma in the other UK forum:<P>****************************** <P>According to the ENB press release, there are 19 different nationalities within ENB and they identified the 11 men from countries that qualified for the the World Cup.<P>Interesting that the British football team and ENB both have Swedish managers. Another similarity between footballers and dancers is that footballers are becoming more like dancers to look at. The bulk of the 60s has given way to lithe well-toned bodies that are so highly trained that they are prone to injuries which, however, small, put them out of action. Which reminds me that I know more about Beckham's feet than I know about my own, even though I try not to get too interested in it. It was on the front page of the newspapers for those of you living in an hermetically sealed cocoon.<BR>

The penny has dropped - I have just heard on the radio that the Football World Cup starts today. What I want to know is why has there been no media coverage about this event?<p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited May 30, 2002).]

A quite tongue-in-cheek article from Judith Mackrell in The Guardian about the choreographic appeal of body language in The World Cup. Definitely one for you Stuart.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The World Cup reaches its finale on Sunday and, although two football giants will battle it out, this year's tournament will be remembered as the one in which the hierarchy of footballing nations was turned upside down. Yet an equally dramatic turnabout has occurred in the profile of people watching, as events on the pitch have been taking on the theatres and the opera houses at their own game. How could anyone with a taste for drama not be relishing the toppling of the giants by a crowd of underdogs? How could dance fans not be entranced by the physically flamboyant jubilation that has ensued? As teams such as South Korea, Senegal and Ireland celebrated their unexpected successes, the body language of triumph had never looked so colourful. <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4449232,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>