Advertising in Opera: Does Sex Sell?

After years of declining attendance, the Utah Symphony and Opera, logo seen to the left, has decided it needs a new public image. In order to move away from the stereotypical view of stuffy operas, the company administrators of the Utah Symphony and Opera have hired a new advertising firm to appeal to a younger, hipper audience. The firm they decided to employ is the one and only R&R Partners, most famous for the catchphrase, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Although R&R Partners have very little experience in cultural promotions, marketing director of the Utah Symphony and Opera, Sean Toomey, hopes that “the more playful approach [will help] break down the stereotypical image of stodginess.”

Examples of R&R Partners’ new marketing campaign can be seen all over Salt Lake City, Utah, from department stores to local bookstores to Chinese takeout restaurants. A person may be surprised to find a fortune that reads “Man who takes woman to opera finds pleasure after,” and a woman buying lingerie may find a tag with the slogan “Removes easily- after an evening in the balcony.” While these slogans may seem risqué enough, this is not as far as R&R Partners took their ideas. One particularly racy radio ad features a man and a woman talking monotonously about Verdi’s orchestration when they suddenly break into passionate moans directed at each other.

Supposedly, this type of ad campaign that Sean Toomey describes as being “playful” is meant to attract younger, more sexually driven people to the opera. However, in Salt Lake City, with almost 50% of its population being Mormon, the ads are causing some controversy. In fact, there has already been an instance in which a Mormon owned radio station refused to run an ad for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The ad was a parody of a typical morning-after conversation that might occur between the stars of the show Sex and the City after one of them woke up to discover that her one night stand was literally an ass. This ad was meant to be a take off from the scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Nick Bottom has his head transformed into that of an ass by the character Puck, as seen in the image to the right.

In order to stop some of the hullabaloo, Toomey recently asked R&R to change their marketing campaign to contain less sexual content. The slogan of the new campaign will change from “Experience the romance” to “Embrace the romance.” However, it will still be long way away from the average advertisements for classical music performances. For example, one of the newest ads for a Mozart performance reads “18th-century composer meets 21st-century pianist. Same music, better hair."

Now that the Utah Symphony and Opera has changed their tactics, they have to evaluate whether or not it is working. In the early start of the ad campaign, the company saw a rise in ticket sales. For example, the sales for the opera Jenufa went up 14 percent. However, the company now needs to figure out whether the ad campaign will have long-term benefits. Will the hot-and-heavy marketing campaign be able to make regulars out of the younger generation that they are targeting it to, or will the campaign simply create curiosity that is fleeting? So far, it is not looking promising. The attendance has already started thinning out despite the initial climb in ticket sales. Toomey, who is still hopeful, attributes much of the loss in attendance to competition from other local productions, bad weather, and construction. Others believe that the advertisements simply contain too much sexual subject matter to sell in a community with such a high population of Mormons. The Utah Symphony and Opera will now have to wait and see whether their strategy is working and whether the widely known marketing idiom is true; does sex really sell?