Wenthworth Gallery

We never really thought of ourselves as salespeople–that is, until Wentworth Gallery gave us a call. We were hired by the national fine art retailer to build excitement for a series of artists touring Wentworth’s locations across the East Coast. Our job was to create a buzz by securing press for the artists, market by market. But the fine print clearly read “sell, sell, sell!”

Insights
Essentially we were brought on to work with three particular artists – or really icons — Grace Slick, Paul Stanley and Peter Max. Their names were easy sells, but we had to remember it was our job to sell their art, not their names. The three had been making headlines their entire lives, so we needed to find that new angle to get them back in the spotlight and bring the name of Wentworth along with them.

Groundwork
Since this was a market-by-market approach that branched outside of our native Pittsburgh, we started with research. First, we developed contacts (music, A&E and celebrity reporters) with magazines and major dailies through our targeted regions (Atlanta, New York, Boston, DC, and Chicago, to name a few). Next, we moved on to radio call-in interviews. The magazines, dailies and early radio helped us promote pre-sales, before we moved on to securing in-studio radio and live morning television for the first day of the show. In other words, we spent a lot of time on the phone with the media. When the schedule was put in place (by us), we accompanied our stars on their media tours to make sure things ran smoothly.

Strategy
We did our homework. We found the publications with the most art-and-music-loving readership and got our artists on stations that played their music (or, in Peter’s case, anything from the 70’s). We focused our efforts on network TV stations to capture a higher audience and pitched away. If a simple pitch didn’t work, we encouraged publications and stations to host giveaways and contests where readers and listeners could win posters or miniature versions of our artists’ work.

Results
We promoted over 50 shows for Wentworth Gallery, and at $5K per show we’ve helped them more than make up for their expenditures with revenue. Looks like we’re pretty good salespeople after all!

Additional Insights
It turns out we owe our stars a lot of the credit. Each of them were incredibly articulate, knowledgeable and talented and — although we made the contacts that put them in the hot seat – they kept their cool and made Wentworth (and us) look good!