A revolution in festival PR

Published on Sunday 9 August 2009 21:59

IT DIDN'T occur to me how potentially revolutionary the Fringe's new "meet the press" initiative is until I ran into a PR on Saturday night.

"Was it really terrible?" she asked.

"No, it was great," I said. "Amazing, actually. I met loads of really inspiring people, and I reckon I might get a few stories out of it."

Her face fell, and it suddenly dawned on me that, were this sort of thing to catch on – events where Fringe performers are granted direct access to the press – it could be very bad news for the PR industry.

Some acts spend as much as 2,000 on Fringe PR in August, in a bid to ensure maximum exposure and therefore maximum ticket sales. The theory is that PRs are able to gain access to journalists and influence what they cover, and to an extent this is the case.

But this new initiative from the Fringe alters that whole equation. Now performers have a choice: they can either blow a big chunk of their Fringe budget on a PR, or they can queue up for a couple of hours and pitch their show direct to a living, breathing hack.

Does it work? Absolutely. As soon as I finish writing this I'm going to start adding some of the more interesting shows I came across to my review schedule. Then, when I've finished doing that, I'm going to blog about the whole experience at www.scotsman.com/festivalblog.

One final thought: were Neil MacKinnon and his team to hold this event two weeks earlier, when the schedules are still being finalised, they could really level the Fringe playing field.