Receiving a symphony’s overtures

If one of the Pacific Symphony’s new rock ‘n’ roll advertising brochures were to flutter past Beethoven’s grave, he might roll over. However, the point of the brochures isn’t to tell confirmed classical fans the news but to speak to baby boomers and Gen-Xers in their native tongue.

The biggest mail campaign in the Orange County orchestra’s history waggishly labels a tuxedo-clad violinist and tympanist as rock stars and tags applauding concert-goers as groupies. It sticks the caption “mosh pit” under a photograph of sedate patrons in the front rows contemplating the seated orchestra on stage.

The clinching pitch lines: “As dynamic as a rock concert without the flying underwear. Let us rock your world.”

Responses are rolling in at triple the usual rate, says Mark J. Elliott, the orchestra’s vice president of marketing: For every 100 brochures sent out, three recipients are returning the attached postage-paid cards or answering via e-mail. The orchestra has had to hire extra clerical help to enter the data, which will enable the marketing department to follow up with a more focused sales pitch for subscriptions to the coming season.

As an incentive, those who return the cards get a free pair of tickets to one of the Pacific Symphony’s summer concerts -- an opportunity, Elliott says, “to test-drive the symphony.” He figures the $50,000 campaign, which began early in July and will have put brochures in 500,000 mailboxes by the end of August, will yield a thousand or more new subscriptions accounting for about $250,000 in extra revenue.

Elliott admits worrying that the line about the flying underwear might raise some highbrow eyebrows, but there have been no complaints. Carl St.Clair, the Pacific Symphony’s music director, wasn’t aware of the brochure until he got one in the mail, Elliott says.

“He thought it was very clever. That’s always a litmus test: if the music director is OK with it.”

-- Mike Boehm