Performing Humor and Smart Comedy on Stage

According to his website, robertmac.com, “Robert Mac is a comedy creator, collaborator, connoisseur, and critic,” as well as “the thinking man’s non-thinking man.” A rare breed, he is a stand-up comedian who doesn’t resort to profanity, misogyny, or chest-beating, and still made the Entertainment Business Journal’s list of top one hundred comedians. How does he define his act? That’s “the hardest part of the job,” he says. “How can I tell you what my act is when I can only see it through me-colored glasses? Other people say it’s smart, clever, silly, cerebral.”

He readily admits that he’s chosen a difficult path in life, or, as he puts it, “stand-up is a tough racket.” Still, Mac has been able to find success in his chosen field, performing not only at comedy clubs around the country, but also private and corporate gigs, along with the much-coveted television appearance.

Daily, he battles the dichotomy of the life of an intelligent stand-up performer. “I put a lot of thought into my material,” he says. One the one hand, while “it’s easy to make people laugh…it’s much more rewarding to make them think and keep them guessing.” On the other hand, his experience is that his job involves, “mostly performing for drunks.” The club scene seems to be about “free comedy and expensive drinks, which devalues the comedy. It’s really backward in many ways. The club owners make their money on booze, so they offer cheap or free comedy to get drinkers into the clubs.”

But Mac is committed to this life, and has been for some time. He remembers, as a child, listening to a Steve Martin routine and thinking, “Do people do that as a job?” His first foray into stand-up took place around 1992. He provided some written material for a friend to perform at a local club’s open mic night. “When he did my material on stage, and got laughs, I felt betrayed in a way,” Mac remembers. “I wanted those laughs. After much cajoling, he finally pushed me onstage and my first set was a hit. I was hooked.”

Almost twenty years later, he performs regularly, an iconoclast in an industry where many performers are seeking to reach an audience that is “there to do shots and whoop it up.” By contrast, Mac plays well to a “bright and attentive” audience. Where is his base? He reports, “I do well with people with glasses,” and that he can judge how successful his set has been by how well he feels when he’s done. “If I’m having fun,” he says, “they’re having fun.” His favorite shows, naturally, are “the ones where they are in the palm of my hand the whole time and they let me run the show.”

What else could a comedian ask for? Reportedly, “a few more television appearances.” But he’d settle for the ability to “make a comfortable living as a comedian . . . and I’m making my way toward that.”

Mac uses social networks to share the news about upcoming performances, including Facebook to direct his fans to hyperlinks where they can purchase tickets or make reservations for upcoming shows. Fans can watch clips of his performances on his YouTube channel. He sells CDs and digital downloads online (and hopes to offer more merchandise in the near future), and even writes an occasional blog called Comedy DNA, discussing humor. In terms of weird publicity stunts, however, he rates this article as “probably the unusualest,” thing he has ever done.

Humor, of course, is subjective. “There’s funny in everything,” Mac says, “but it takes a lot to make me laugh. I think I need to be caught off-guard. Today I laughed out loud, literally, watching my friend Myq Kaplan perform on Letterman—funny, smart stuff.”

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QR Code Posters for Music Event Ticket Sales

Your fans love your music.

Your fans want to see you perform live.

Your fans have smart phones.

Your fans have lives.

Do you love your fans? Show them a little love by making their lives a little bit easier. How? Make it simple for them to get tickets to your upcoming show the moment they see your print publicity. You can make the experience totally hassle-free for you and your fans with QR Code Posters advertising the gig. They actually sell tickets for you, so your fans don’t need to search around for the right link, stand in line at a ticket counter, or deal with any exorbitant ticket broker fees.

It’s So Easy

We’ve streamlined the process. First, we created an online box office at TicketRiver.com. In five minutes, you can register your show and set up an event page where your fans can find all your event details and purchase tickets. You can even sell different kinds of tickets—VIP Passes, 18-over, ½ price, whatever you like—to the same event. It’s fast and easy to create your page, complete with its own unique URL.

A Little Help from Your Friends

But that’s not all we’ve done for you. We’ll get your fans to the link in no time at all with a custom QR Code Poster. Whether you’ve got a design in mind or need one of our graphic artists to create an image that suits your particular needs, all you’ve got to do it is call our customer support at 888.771.0809. They’ll help get your order going. We’ll design your posters, generate your QR code, and send out a proof for your approval. We never print until you’re satisfied you’re getting exactly the Poster or Flyer you need.

Waiting Here for You

Wherever you hang your high-resolution QR Code Posters, your fans can scan the code with their smart phones. It will take them right to your TicketRiver event page where they can buy tickets right away.

TicketRiver sends users print-at-home tickets to save you time and money, but, if you still want to use paper tickets, you can order those too (at a discount for TicketRiver users) and mail them out, or hold them at will call.

It’s that easy! QR Code Posters are there for you, selling tickets night and day, from the moment you hang them until you sell out your event.

It’s just one more way to show your love to the people who support your music.

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A Little Transparency: Creating Customer Confidence by Inviting Customers Behind the Scenes

The ticket legitimizes our event; it makes it look special with a specific date and time and the incorporation of our photos & logos on the ticket as well.

~Paul Komorowski, Seaway Window

Custom printed tickets can mean so much more than “Admit One!” Take, for example, the case of Seaway Window, a  replacement window company in Northwest Pennsylvania.  In the business for over 50 years, Seaway is always looking for new and interesting ways to expose its products to customers.

To show off its process and products to its customers, Seaway Window invites them onto the factory floor. “Our Event is an Open House. We open our factory for tours of one of our production lines showing how a double hung window is made. The purpose is to get people to come to the factory and see how our windows are made, thus making them confident in choosing our company for their replacement window project,” Paul told me.

For the factory tour, Seaway uses the General Concert Ticket. This ticket can be printed in several flashy colors. It has space for event information as well as custom images.

For the factory tour that took place on October 8^th, the Seaway team chose orange as a background color and included images of the factory and the company logo. Besides featuring a detachable stub and individual numbering, the ticket has discount information printed on its opposite side, which can be a handy reference for customers attending the event.

“We do not charge people to come to our event; it is free. We use the tickets to legitimize the event. Plus if they go through the factory tour, the tour guide will sign the back of the ticket for a discount applied to their project.”

For Seaway the ticket serves as a valuable form of advertising. It gets customers through the door and helps to incentivize customers to purchase replacement windows through them.

How does Seaway keep the public informed about its factory tours? “We use a multi-media approach. We use TV, radio, signage, print, direct mail, newspaper, and we use the ‘Open House’ ticket that I order from TicketPrinting.com to promote this event.” Seaway uses an all avenues approach. Rather than settling for one form of advertising, it utilizes a number of different outlets to build a buzz around its factory tours.

Paul urges others to, “Use a multi-media approach to drive people to your event.”

Those who attend the factory tour at Seagate have a good time, no matter how they learned about the event. “The best part of the event is the actual factory tour; people love to go though it,” Paul said.

 

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The Ultimate Secret to Small Business Success: Stickers

Running a small business can be rewarding and tough, especially in light of the current sluggish economy. As an entrepreneur you have to work hard to make sure your good or service stands out, to win loyal customers and to keep them coming through the door day after day and year after year.

You have to decide the right balance when it comes to promoting your business. How much will you rely on word of mouth, traditional and online ads, or print collateral like flyers and custom stickers? When your advertising budget is tight, this is a big decision.

New  media allows you to reach a large audience at a low cost through your own website and sites like Twitter and Facebook, and traditional print ads and billboards allow you to reach a wide audience. However, you shouldn’t underestimate the impact of real, physical promotional collateral. An excellent, low-cost, low-risk but often overlooked marketing tool is the custom printed sticker.

Make it Real with Custom Stickers

Bumper stickers and smaller economy stickers have a distinct advantage over other forms of media in that they are tangible. Your patrons can’t grab hold of a Facebook “Like” and affix it to their car or bike. They can’t take your commercial and carry it around for others to see. With promotional stickers, you can give your patrons a physical reminder of your business or service, which they can take with them out into the world generating invaluable exposure for you

Vinyl stickers are cheap to print, so they won’t break even a meager marketing budget. They are also durable, which means once they are in place, they will stay. Weather resistant and easy to print on, vinyl stickers can handle your colorful company design, so choose a message that will stick with your fans as long as the stickers do!

While bumper stickers are a natural choice, stickers of other sizes or varieties are also excellent methods of promoting your business. You can have your product labels custom printed as economy stickers and hand out complementary vinyl stickers to match when individual purchase from you.

If you run an online business, you can make your message real by including custom stickers with your invoices. Your patrons will love the convenience of a sticker printed with your contact information. Affixed somewhere near or on their computers, they will always be able to find you when it’s time to reorder.

Get Creative

In today’s small business world, you have to be creative. Custom printed stickers allow you to inject a little whimsy into your marketing campaign. Whether you choose to share a pithy slogan or promote your new and improved website, stickers are the perfect vehicle for your message.

Your patrons will love having a colorful take-a-way from their favorite business, and your promotional stickers might just be the seed of their next word of mouth recommendation opening your business or service up to a whole new group of customers!

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Custom Stickers Go the Extra Mile

I run a small business, a coffee shop close to downtown. We’ve always been open twenty-four hours for those who just can’t sleep, and we just opened a breakfast joint upstairs for those who want to get a bite after a night up. Right now, we’re popular with the local college kids and neighborhood regulars, but I’d like to see a more diverse clientele.  My advertising budget isn’t huge, but if I want people to know about us, I need to invest in something. That’s why I decided to have some promotional stickers printed up.

To be honest, I didn’t realize how popular the custom stickers would be at first. I chose to go with vinyl bumper stickers since that was what I was familiar with. One of my regulars, who happens to be a freelance graphic designer, offered to help create a logo for me—he  uses my place as his office most days, so it’s in his best interest this place stays in business—and a couple of my other regulars helped choose which sticker design was the best.

It was pretty cheap to have the stickers printed. I gave a few to my regulars who, I’m proud to say, went right out to the parking lot and put them on their cars. The bumper stickers were pretty cool, and folks started asking about them.

One of the baristas suggested that I try and sell the stickers instead of just giving them away. So, I did that. And, much to my surprise, folks bought them! I had customers paying me so that they could advertise my business. That’s not a bad deal.

With the money I made back from selling the bumper stickers, I had a few more designs drawn up. I had vinyl stickers created in a couple of other sizes and shapes. A lot of my patrons are into the whole “green” thing, so they wanted stickers for their bikes and skateboards. Since I try to keep my shop popular with the environmentally friendly crowd, I didn’t mind accommodating them at all.

Now from time to time I see a bike locked up at the grocery store or in front of the library with a custom printed sticker from my collection.

I really feel like my business is getting great exposure with these custom stickers. While I can’t tell how many new folks have come in because of them, I can tell you, I’ve started to see a lot of new faces since they went into circulation.

Because the promotional stickers were so popular, I decided to have some smaller, economy stickers printed up with a mini-version of the logo. I use those as labels now on our bags of roasted coffee beans and ground coffee. Sometimes I give one back with change to a new customer, so she’ll remember to come back to the shop the next time she’s in the area.

I’m glad I chose to invest in custom stickers for my business.

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Become a Favorite with Promotional Stickers

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head that you just can’t get out? Do you find yourself using taglines from your favorite programs to describe a situation? Maybe you keep encountering the same advertising image in different spaces and contexts. Catchiness and clever marketing stick with you. You can make your message stick with your patrons and fans, too, when you choose promotional stickers as part of your marketing strategy.

Guerrilla Marketing

According to Wikipedia, guerilla marketing is “an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget.” Though the budget may be small, an effective guerilla marketing campaign can become as unforgettable as that catchy tune or tagline or logo or image you keep seeing everywhere.

Event and promotional stickers can be an integral part of your guerilla marketing campaign. A low cost and durable solution, vinyl bumper stickers and economy stickers can find their way any place more costly traditional marketing may go, and beyond.

Keep it Cheap and Simple

Cheap and simple aren’t negative words. You want to keep your costs down, and promotional stickers are cheap when compared to traditional forms of advertising.

You also want the design process to be as simple as possible. Custom stickers can be easily created using your own design or a template to fit your needs.  In addition, you want a message or a brand that folks recognize easily, so consider choosing a simple design for your stickers when you print them.

Bumper stickers are great. You can choose whether you want to sell them or give them away to your patrons, and soon you’ll see them all over town as they adorn you patrons’ automobiles.

But, you might consider smaller, stealthier stickers. Vinyl stickers and economy stickers come in all shapes and sizes and fits for your budget. They make perfect labels, inserts for mailers and once released to you pubic, these stickers will find themselves in any number and variety of public spaces.

A stealthy sticker marketing campaign is perfect for your budget and easy to execute.

Put Promotional Stickers to Work for You

Promotional stickers are cheap and simple to create. They are also effective. You can maximize their effectiveness by carefully planning your sticker’s design to fit your purpose.

Take your audience into consideration. Are you trying to reach out to and strengthen relationships with already existing patrons? Do you have a target audience of individuals who you plan on focusing on? Perhaps you are looking for newer, more affluent clientele or you are trying to reach out to a younger set. What about groups you haven’t yet identified? How will you build curiosity about your brand?

When you design your custom printed stickers, keep these questions in mind. If your brand is well known and you just want to strengthen existing loyalties, you might choose a design with just your company name. If you plan on promoting your website, you’re stickers might include only this information.

Whatever you choose to include, put your custom sticker campaign to work for you.

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Control Your Image with Stickers

You don’t just have a band: you have a brand. You don’t just sell a product; you also sell a lifestyle. Your cause or campaign isn’t only a cause or a campaign, it speaks to something morally fundamental within your constituents.  If you’re ready to win over your audience, you’ll need to go above and beyond. You need to gain their loyalty before they open their pocket books. Promotional stickers are a great place to start.

Become a Favorite

You want your brand to be foremost in the minds of your attendees, patrons and fans, so that when they look for the same product or service in the future, they return to you again and again. Whether you run a restaurant famous among locals, and you’re looking to expand, or you have a band that has been playing shows at all the neighborhood clubs, and you’re searching for more exposure, event collateral, especially stickers, can help you on your way to being seen.

The first step is to provide a beloved product or service. Build a strong and solid reputation, so individuals want to recommend you to others. Think about your brand and how you want to be represented. What kinds of patrons do you have? What’s the best way to reach them? Are you looking for more diversity among those you serve? How might you reach out to other groups?

Once you’ve identified a promotional strategy for your brand, choose collateral that will be the most effective. For promotions that rely on patrons to “get the word out,” promotional stickers are an excellent choice.

Say it with Flair!

You need to choose a message that will connect with your audience and deliver it in a package that is attractive to them. Will you choose to brand yourself as quirky and fun, professional and hard working, artistic and classy? Will you promote a signature product or service, such as your restaurant’s world famous pancakes? Or, will you be more holistic, perhaps touting your restaurant as the best breakfast joint around?

When you design and print custom stickers, you’ll have space to include your logo and the message you want to convey.  Whether you have bumper stickers or vinyl stickers of other sizes printed,  make sure your audience will connect with your design. Remember, you’re building a brand, not just promoting a product or service.

Win-Win Situation

Because stickers are a low-cost marketing solution, with high returns, you shouldn’t be shy about sharing them with your patrons or attendees. Vinyl stickers are  easy to design, inexpensive to print, make a great give-away, and they can end up in some highly visible places.

Bumper stickers can be found all over town gracing the back sides of your patron’s automobiles, and vinyl sticker of other sizes will find a home on your patrons backpacks, laptops, bikes, and more.  Your patrons become the vehicle for your message, so make it a strong one that they’ll want to share.

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Make Promotional Stickers Work for You!

When you are planning a dynamic, low cost marketing campaign for your business or cause, consider printing custom stickers. For promotions, custom stickers meet an essential need.  At their most basic, through images and text, they convey information about your event or service to your current patrons and potential ones.

But, that’s not the only purpose they serve. While they might seem very simple, stickers can embody the creative spirit of your cause containing images and text that define your organization.  Once stuck, vinyl and economy stickers can either remain fixed or, as bumper stickers, might become part of a mobile marketing campaign, gaining exposure for your cause.

Custom stickers are a great gift, give-away or offering for your patrons. A well-designed sticker can be sought after by your loyal fans who serve as volunteer vehicles for your marketing campaign. Whether you choose to sell them to your patrons or give them away as a promotional item, stickers are a point of engagement for your patrons that allow them to feel as if they have an investment in your organization or cause.

Effective Custom Stickers

Effective stickers are well designed. Whether they are printed with your business name or band’s logo, custom stickers are promotional materials that convey information about your cause and they are also a product of your organization, which you can either give away as gifts to your patrons or sell to recoup the cost of printing.

Because they function both as a marketing material and a product, it’s important that your custom stickers are effectively designed. You want to your patrons and fans to want to sport them on their car or the back of their laptop, so you should make sure they’re cool.

Professionally printed stickers can come in a number of varieties and styles. Economy stickers are low cost solutions that allow you to create different sizes perfect for labels, product inserts and give-aways. Vinyl stickers are durable and waterproof and can be printed in different sizes or as bumper stickers.  When you design your stickers, you can choose to use logos you have created or choose from predesigned images to provide a background for your message. Pay careful attention to your copy. Make sure it stands out and conveys your cause’s brand, whether it’s quirky, funny, artistic, or straightforward.

Ready, Set, Stick

Once your custom stickers have been designed and printed, you’ll need to decide whether you’ll sell them to your patrons or give them away. In either case, your newly minted stickers will become part of a unique mobile marketing campaign. You never know just where you’ll see your logo show up.

A “voluntary” sticker campaign garners you the same kind of exposure you might pay for when you rent billboard space or take out an ad in a paper. Your logo will constantly be on the move, finding its way around town and beyond.

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The Thrill of Events, The Thrill of Event Wristbands

Lately, researchers are revisiting the science of happiness, with surprising results.  They’re learning, it’s not about the things we buy but the experiences we purchase. It turns out, happiness can be bought, if we spend our money in the right way.

Splurging on a new dress is ultimately less satisfying than putting the same cash down on a pair of theater tickets. A new MP3 player is nice for listening to your favorite band on, but can it really represent the same memories as the event wristband you received when you actually saw your favorite music group in concert?  You get the idea. It’s something to think about when you plan your next event.

Side with the Science

The economy may be in the doldrums, but if you’re in the event business, according to the research, you’re in a better position than your retail counterparts to give your audience members more satisfaction for their dollars. Take heart! With every ticket and Tyvek wristband you print and sell, you begin the process of creating something lasting. And each successful event is an investment in repeat business.

Give Them Something for Their Money

Not only are you planning and promoting an event, you’re selling experiences and memories to your attendees.

Human beings are nostalgic by nature. Your promotional materials can quickly become souvenirs, eliciting the good times had long after the show is over. Flyers and posters may grace your attendees’ wall. A ticket may find its way into a scrapbook. A custom wristband, worn for the duration of the event, may grace your guests’ arms in the days to come.

Make those Memories Last

When the show is over, and the venue is quiet, its lights dim, the band and crowd long gone, make sure the memories aren’t.

Quality, customized collateral can continue to do its job even after your super group has flown the coop.

Take Tyvek wristbands for instance. Manufactured by DuPont™, they’re flexible, durable, practical and decorative.  Somewhere between paper and plastic, event wristbands made from this material are waterproof and strong, so they’ll last the length of the show and beyond.

They’re also perfect for printing on. This is essential when you’re in the business of memories. Make sure to choose a logo or text that’s sure to stick out in your attendees’ minds. Whether you take this space to promote the entertainment, your sponsors or your organization, remember it will be attached to your guests’ bodies for the duration of the show.

These event wristbands become as much a part of their memories as that awesome drum solo halfway in or when the guitarist broke a string and kept rocking out anyway! By branding your wristbands and placing them so prominently, you’re putting yourself in position to become tied to all the great memories made during your event.

Everybody Wins

When guests purchase tickets and wristbands to get into your venue, they’re purchasing memories. When you customize event wristbands with your own branding, you’re purchasing a cherished place within those memories.

 

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You are an event organizer with a vision! From the centerpieces to the party favors, you’re holding thousands of ideas in your imagination, and when you need everything to look just so, you’ve got it planned down to the smallest details, like the exact look of your event tickets.

Even with hundreds of ticket templates to choose from, you’ve got your heart set on that special image or unique layout. Printing your own tickets online can help you make your dream a reality. You’re not limited by the whims of a printer or by someone else’s designs: just create the perfect event ticket with a do-it-yourself online ticket maker: a DYO tool.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• All the event details
• Your background image
• Logos or thumbnails
• A vision
• A DYO tool like the one at TicketPrinting.com

Have all the elements in order? You’re ready to go. The website can provide all the information you need to create and print the event tickets you want, with digital help available whenever you find yourself stuck.

DYO Event Ticket Printing allows you to choose the perfect colors and the perfect layout. Further, it lets you add special details that can make your life easier, like multiple perforations or numbering in several places on the ticket. Whatever’s in your mind, that’s what you’ll see printed on your ticket.

When you lay out your ticket, determine which details you’ll need to include. This will help you figure out how many lines of text you’ll need to add. Common bits of information would be:

• The event name
• The hosting organization’s name
• The sponsor’s name
• The location of the event
• The time of the event
• The cost of the event ticket

Additional details that may be of use:

• Activities, speakers, or music
• The name of the group that will benefit from any fundraising
• Seat number (if there is to be reserved seating)
• Dress code
• Dinner menu
• Open or cash bar
• URL of a website where more details are available
• Contact person’s phone number

Basically, if it’s information that might be useful or of interest to your guests, and you can fit it on the event ticket while maintaining your vision for the ticket’s overall look, consider adding it. Be sure to duplicate important information, such as reserved seating and ticket number, on the stub as well as the body of the ticket.

Now, put it all together. Upload your visual background, use the DYO tool to add the boxes where you will upload your logo, and the lines where you will enter your text. Position the perforation and the ticket numbers. When you’ve got it all together, preview your proof.

The proof preview is a really important part of printing event tickets. If you don’t proofread, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself! Plus, the proof will alert you if your text isn’t fitting correctly into the available space.

On the plus side, digital proofs really speed the process along. Once you approve your proof and submit billing and shipping details, your event tickets will start printing almost immediately! Within twenty-four hours, they should be created in all their full-color glory and shipped off via UPS straight to your home or office.

Simple enough, right?

Well, if this all seems overwhelming, fear not! There’s another option. You can still get the exact tickets your heart desires without mucking about with all these layout options. For just a little more money, you can order custom tickets. Yes, this is still an online service, and the rates are still quite reasonable. The only difference is that you can tell a design professional what you want and let them worry about how to make it happen.

Either way, your perfect event deserves a perfect event ticket. Whether you do it yourself or hire a dedicated artist to do it for you, online event ticket printing has never been easier!

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