September 31, 2002, St. Petersburg Times, Section B (local section) Page 3, "Keys to Music Excellence". This is a large story taking up most of the center of the page. It is a shameless advertisement, IMHO. Three pictures - one of a person playing one of four grand pianos (big picture), one of a hand at the keyboard (hey, look at that - you can see the brand name on the fallboard!) and a third picture of the Steinway & Sons emblem cast into the piano plate that "supports the instrument's 35,000 pounds of string tension". The one paragraph "story" tells of how "When played Tuesday, the nine pianos told a story about the hands that carefully crafted their parts, giving each instrument a unique sound." It goes on to say that the local college bought 4 pianos for $240,000 for recitals, etc. "They are so precious that they will be locked up after every session and covered with tarps." It closes with "School officials want students to work on the best of the best equipment........We have the finest faculty.......The least we can do is have the finest instruments." Except for communicating the fact that someone bought a piano, I don't see what other information that was not of an advertisement nature was there. I hardly think buying a piano is newsworthy. Maybe next week they will have a feature on Fred Magillicutty buying a lawn mower at Home Depot. It's this darn Steinway thing. It always seems to be presented that there is Steinway at the 120% level, and every other piano manufacturer hovering somewhere around 10% (not that this article says anything about any other manufacturer - it is conveyed by omission of any other manufacturer). I still say that every Marketing 101 textbook should have a chapter that covers 150 years of Steinway marketing. Talk about a marketing success story. I think the above is a result of this success - everybody wants to hang with a winner - and so, the "story" - or lack thereof. Fortunately, there are much worse things in this world - so I'll go dwell on those and not bore anyone that has read this post this far any further! Terry Farrell
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