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Saturday 01/20/2001 10:05:20am |
| Name: |
Diane Flogerzi |
| E-Mail: |
dflogerzi@qnet.com |
| Homepage Title: |
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| Homepage URL: |
http:// |
| Where are you from?: |
Palmdale, CA |
| Referred By: |
Michael Inspired Me |
| Comments: |
Recently there has been some concern
expressed on our message board that the campaign may not be reaching people and getting
the word out about the goal we are trying to achieve. Now of course given that this is
considered to be a controversial campaign, and that one of the companies that we have been
working so hard to convince owns a great deal of the TV shows, magazines etc. that would
not touch this subject due to industry politics.... I decided to try to figure out just
how many people may have heard about our campaign and this issue.
I will start off with the web site. Our counter recently died and I ended up removing it
from the web site. However, we still have pages in which we keep site statistics although
they are only available in the administrative screens. At the moment the count started in
the middle of our second year of existence reads at 189,491. Now of course this will go up
DRASTICALLY if they actually release the film... People wanting to search for information
on it will find us immediately. But for the time being, for some reason our statistics and
visitors have doubled in the past couple of months.
Flyers have been mentioned. And flyers in the past have been widely distributed by this
campaign. In 1998 we blanketed venues all over the United States with flyers that
contained campaign information and addresses to write to. In August of 1998 when Mr.
Banderas's agent made the first (untrue) announcement that Banderas was signed, sealed and
delivered for the role, I called up Really Useful Films and spoke to one of the assistants
personally. During the conversation in which I was told Mr. Banderas was NOT signed, I
asked if they had been receiving our mail. "Oh yes," I was told. They had and
there had apparently been a LOT of it, but it was "not going to make the slightest
difference." Interesting don't you think? Whatever happened to the customer? During
the past three years the campaign has continued it's efforts with the distribution of
flyers whenever possible. The last really big effort was made in England last spring,
after which someone attached to RUG actually posted on this message board and told us that
the receptionists at RUG could not WAIT for the campaign to come to an end as they were
beyond tired of opening all our mail.
Then there has been the letter writing efforts. Not only have the flyers generated
letters, but we have had the addresses published on our web site for the course of the
entire campaign. We have also held several big letter drives, one which actually
infuriated Warner Bros. so much that they returned hundreds of pieces of mail to us. It
ended up that the LA Times ran a bit on this... There is no telling how many letters and
petitions they have received. We mail in the guestbooks and the petitions we have taken
regularly. In New York alone there was a petition in which about 1000 people signed in the
course of just one day. On the web site over 5,000 entries altogether have been made in
our guestbooks.
But greater than all of this is the amount of press we have managed to get despite being a
campaign which has not yet succeeded, fighting against a huge company like Time Warner,
and dealing with a controversial subject that not many in the industry have been willing
touch.
Howie Mandel was an exception to this. He talked about our first full page Variety ad on
his show with Michael Crawford. The show was also rerun at a later date. I am not certain
what the numbers of viewers were, but it certainly is more than the amount that has
already visited the web site. And of course we were also on The Big Breakfast, the largest
morning show in the UK. In fact we were on it twice with Michael Crawford calling in the
second day. I am not certain what the number of viewers is for that show, but I would be
willing to bet quite large....
The number of newspaper articles about our campaign specifically that we know about
numbers about 55. A great percent of these were BIG articles in BIG newspapers. The LA
Times ran a two page story on us that took up their whole entire movie section in one
Sunday edition. Then it was syndicated and sent out over their wire to newspapers all over
the country. We still don't know the final total of where all it finally ran. But in LA
alone the circulation of the LA Times is 2.5 million we have been told. We were also in
USA Today three times with the URL for the site included. Then there are the many letters
to the editor.... We have appeared in newspapers all over the world, very impressive don't
you think?
Online stories number about 26, radio that we know of 7 times. One interview that we did
for the BBC, I was told that there would be a third of a million listeners... After the
USA Today piece, the story was sent out on the feed all over the country and when I went
to work on Monday morning, my amazed boss told me that he had been driving a rental car in
Sacramento during a trip and heard about the campaign on the radio! There is no telling
how many have heard about us on the radio, but I would bet it would be safe to say well
over a million listeners.
We have also been in several magazines, one of which was Entertainment Weekly, which
actually did a nice little piece on our campaign complete with pictures of Michael and
Banderas. There was a letter published in it too, anyone know what the circulation is for
Entertainment Weekly? Quite large I am assuming.
One of the latest pieces on our campaign was in the National UK TV Guide. THAT was a VERY
fun issue to look at, and I can only imagine how many read about the campaign in it.
So how many have we reached? Well, not as many as probably ten trade ads and the biggest
effort made by fans ever truly merits... But given the huge and powerful companies we have
been working so hard to convince, I would say this campaign has succeeded beyond anyone's
wildest dreams....
Of course we were supporting a dynamite product, but one that NO ONE should have ever
needed to take up for. And truly, I think the reason so many took a chance and ran with
our story is this....they agreed with us. Know what the editor at USA Today said to me
when I was interviewed for the initial story they ran on the campaign? She told me that
normally she doesn't believe in fans telling a movie company how to make their films, but
in this case she had to agree with me. You see, she told me, she didn't get the chance to
see Michael Crawford on Broadway, and she too wanted to see him in the movie as the
Phantom.
Just another day in the Crawford Crusades....
Diane |
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