Professional publicity is an essential part of the promotional mix in gaining profile for your event and getting 'bums on seats'.

Just as marketing (advertising, posters, flyers and direct mail etc) and social media networking are important in promoting a show, media publicity – which involves, essentially, free editorial – is essential in getting your event known in a crowded arts and media world.

In this article published last year on Sydney Arts Guide, independent arts publicist GEOFF SIRMAI explains why social media is not ‘publicity’.

How often have I seen it? A theatre producer arrives at the foyer for opening night, visits the box office, checks out the bookings, then goes pale.

In March 2020, most performing arts companies and venues shut down almost overnight. Huge upheaval, financial, social, family and creative trauma all round.

Then ingenuity and imagination brought work to life by online means: first to a select group of other artists; later , tentatively – and eventually more confidently – to a wider audience.

Sirmai Arts Marketing – long-standing Australian specialist ‘indie’ arts publicity specialists – have reaffirmed their commitment to supporting the performing arts with great value discount PR packages for short-run festival seasons, such as Sydney Fringe and Comedy festivals.

You’ve done your flyers, bombarded your friends and family, spammed your network and generally flooded all the usual suspects with material about your event. Yet interest is waning and your numbers are thinning. What are you doing to reach new audience?

From my office in the eastern suburbs of Sydney I run a boutique publicity consultancy, specialising in promoting the performing arts… independent artists and companies in particular.