Are you Cecilia Bartoli's BIGGEST fan?
Decca is trying to whip up excitement about Cecilia Bartoli's new album, St Petersburg, precisely where it isn't needed. Her fans are excited anyway, aren't they? If you get an “OFFICIAL SUPERFAN STATUS” – yells the blurb – you will also get an “official Cecilia Bartoli Superfan pin badge as well as a signed copy of her forthcoming new album!” All very official then.
Of course, Bartoli's biggest fans are slightly different to Katy Perry's, and are not much interested in pin badges. In fact the real fans – those of the Cecilia Bartoli Forum (not official) were hurt by the campaign:
If there wasn't that ‘official Cecilia Bartoli Superfan pin badge', I wouldn't care that much about it. This I find quite humiliating.
and
What a stupid competition between so called fans. I can't believe that Cecilia agreed to this ignorant campaign.
Well, of course, she probably didn't. An idea was floated by her by some Decca whiz-kid about involving her fan base and she thought, why not! Or maybe they're trying to woo over Perry and Bieber's fans, though that seems a lost cause.
Whatever, Bartoli's discs certainly don't need adolescent hype, and her non-official superfans are going to buy the cd and go to her concerts anyway, whether they are sporting a badge or not.
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
I agree !
Total agreement here, too. Thank you, Graham. The campaign is ridiculous. They better should promote her new album with a bit more ideas than linking to iTunes.
Yes Klaus, I love “La Bartoli” but think that Decca do her more harm than good with these cheesy marketing tricks. Buying a track every two weeks, knowing full well that many with then go out and buy the complete cd when it’s launched seems to be taking advantage. At least the art-work on this one is better than some.
They’ve found the goose that lays golden eggs… and we all know how that finished up 😉
I loves me some CB, but I can never be a “super-fan” until she starts performing at prices a poor person can afford!
I’m managing a fan-page – not for La Bartoli – with some other fans, and I don’t like the whole idea to make it a competition who is the “best/greatest fan.” In my case, I have personal reasons for that. First of all, I don’t like the expression. I can’t count the newspaper snippets anymore that all go along the lines “the fans were cheering, but well, meh, what do they know …. ” If you out yourself as a fan, you lose all authority on the matter, apparently. It is worse if you are female. Fans are talked about as if they were just unintelligent claque without any musical background or taste. So how would someone be looked at, e. g. in an autograph queue, who stepped up and said “I’m your biggest fan!”? To be a fan in classical doesn’t have the same innocence as in pop culture or if you go fangirling/fanboying a movie star.
To cut it short, I used to sign up for Bartoli’s previous campaigns, simply because I wanted to get the news by mail, but this one just irked me. I disagree with the post in one respect, the bit suggesting that this is a PR method derived from pop culture – I haven’t seen a competition like this before, in whichever context. What pop music and classical have in common though is that the management is often quite detached from the people who actually buy the music and the concert tickets. For them, the audience aren’t individuals, but several target groups they need to access. I agree that Bartoli might have had little to do with the creation of the idea. Yet, however uninspired the campaigns – most of us will buy the album anyhow, so they will file it as a success, and we’ll be rewarded with the next campaign just like it. La Bartoli clearly deserves better.