Manufacturing Believable Buzz

The ever-expanding menu of entertainment options in America has made it very difficult for arts organizations to market their offerings with any degree of certainty that their efforts will lead to “butts in the seats.” So some groups are trying a technique known as the “marketing task force” – think of it as word of mouth on steroids – under which volunteers “use their inner circles of e-mail lists – their social, professional and organizational contacts – to create buzz.”