List, I work part-time at a music store and get to read various trade publications. It always interests me to pick up the articles about piano stores or other music stores that are thriving despite industry trends. I think after reading a lot of these articles I see one thread more common than others. That is: these businesses don't just promote their sales; they promote the instrument by supporting it's audience. Some stores have recital halls available for use for free with a good piano. Most stores have vital, active lesson programs. Some support live music by producing various events. All of this is done with the goal in mind of creating excitement about the instrument(s) and visibility for the store. What does that have to do with us? We, who go from living room to living room tuning pianos? It occurs to me that we could serve ourselves by using the same principles. Figure out how we as individuals, or as PTG Chapters, or as the PTG can promote piano playing, piano lessons, piano concerts, etc. Not simply promote our own business and wait for people to respond, you understand, but actually promote the act of piano playing. If we help others in our piano-based universe (teachers, retailers, musicians, etc) we help ourselves at the same time. How do I propose we do this? I'm not posting this to propose any particular way. I'm posting this to stimulate discussion and brainstorming about how we possibly can. But just to get the ball rolling, I noted recently that the Percussion Marketing Group (I think that's what it's called) has a program that brings assembly programs to schools at no cost to the school. Drums excite the kids and inspire them to bug their parents to buy drums and percussion equipment, join a band, take some lessons, etc. Could WE get exciting piano players into schools for assembly programs? I live in a small town. Helena, Montana. We have a newspaper here that welcomes articles from the populace. I used to write a bi-weekly column about music for them. Perhaps I should revive that. How can we actively PROMOTE the piano? Promote piano lessons? Work with dealers? Work with piano teachers? Work with our PTG Chapters? John Dorr, RPT Helena, MT -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100409/1023bae3/attachment.htm>
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