Deirdre Alby left a 12-year dance career to become an arts marketer, building ABT's Facebook to 200,000 fans without paid ads and running campaigns for Broadway shows like Spamalot and Jersey Boys. She credits her artist background as a unique advantage in the field.
Deirdre, thank you for hosting us in this fantastic space.
Absolutely.
Looking around, this is your home now.
Yes, in a lot of ways it is.
What brought you home here? How did the journey begin?
I've had a whole separate career. I was a dancer for 12 years, so I got a Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance. You know, I was one of those kids that took ballet as a kid. I performed as a dancer internationally and all over. I used my dance career to travel all over the world, which is great. And then I got to a point where I wanted to get good at something else before I got too old. And as a dancer, that's always in the back of your head. I took an internship because I thought I wanted to be a casting director. That wasn't the case. I thought, you know, then I thought maybe, you know, being a manager of artists. That also wasn't the case. And I went into an interview for Broadway Promotions, and the interview was pretty much playing games of, you know, pick a show and how would you market it? Who would you go to? And I realized that because I had spent so long marketing myself and because I, you know, grew up in this kind of visual arts world as well, that it was something that I was inherently good at. So I spent a year working at HHC Marketing, which is a small promotions company for Broadway shows, and I worked on Spamalot and Jersey Boys and Chicago and Phantom of of the Opera, just putting together trade promotions and kind of out-of-the-box promotions to expand the brand. So for example, for Spamalot, we did a horseless horse show at the Hampton Classic where we actually taught children how to use coconuts as horses. And then we put together a relay race where the kids actually had to jump these horse jumps. To win a prize. So, you know, I mean, it sort of expanded the way I was thinking about, you know, Broadway shows. And then from there I moved to American Ballet Theatre, which I thought really was a place where it honed my career. At American Ballet Theatre, I was not only working with dancers, which was great, but— It was a little bit of coming home in a way. Yeah, it was absolutely coming home. The marketing department there does everything. There is no outside agency. Except for a graphic designer. So I was doing everything from, you know, helping to write copy to picking out the photographs for the brochure, laying out the brochure, buying the media, everything. And at the time, they didn't have any digital media. Social media was really starting to take off, and so I developed all of their digital media, including their Facebook page. So when I— by the time I left, their Facebook page was up to about 200,000, which was with no advertising dollars. You can't do that anymore, but with no no advertising dollars behind it. So I moved to there and I worked with Barry Weissler for a year, which was as his vice president of marketing, which was a really fantastic experience because he really, he has such heart and he understands this world so well. And to be able to work with him and hear his vision about how, you know, what shows are important and how, you know, the world needs to hear about them was fantastic. And after a year of that, then Richard Frankel was looking for a marketing director, so it kind of moved over, and that was in the beginning of 2011.
Looking at the, the industry and people that want to, want to get into this business, what's some advice that you would give somebody who sat down and said, I want to do what you do?
Right, well, one of the best things I ever did was I went to graduate school. So I got a Master's of Performing Arts Administration from NYU, and half of that degree was at the Stern Business School. And as much as that's terrified me, because, you know, I'm an artist, I like being creative, listening to how real-world businesses actually operate and function was one of the best things that I ever did. So, you know, Learning about economics and accounting and strategic planning, all of the consumer behavior, all of those kind of things, I think really took me from somebody who was good at listening what a marketing director was telling me to do and going out to do it to actually being able to analyze the situation and saying, okay, this is why we should do it this way. So yeah. I think the best advice I can give somebody is don't be afraid of the real business world. Be creative, and it's really important to really love this industry because why would you do it otherwise? So that's really important, but learning real— I mean, I hate to say real world because this is a real world, but learning what Apple is doing or learning how how the New York Times functions, all those different business skills is just going to heighten what we do in the arts.
