-Everyone kept coming up to us in the early days >
Everyone kept coming up to us in the early days and asked us who did our PR. We were thinking, are we supposed to have someone who does our PR? We must be doing it wrong. But apparently we were doing it right, yet all we were doing was applying some common sense. Someone’s going to pay much more attention to a story in a newspaper than they would an advert, plus it will cost you nothing. So we thought, let’s see how much PR we can get with stories. A lot apparently.
We were doing different things with exhibitions, with the media behind us. Then we decided to do something completely different. We went to Blackfriars restaurant and asked, when’s your quietest time? Jan/ Feb. Right ok, when’s your quietist day? Wednesday. Then we said, if we take your restaurant off you for a day, fill it in the night time, they’d all pay a set price for a meal and we’ll do something to get them in there, we’ll get great media coverage, are you up for it?
We got four life models (life models meaning no clothes), blocked out all the windows in the restaurant and put the word out to people that it was invitation only, and you come along and have a life drawing class.
We didn’t put the word out to artists; we put it out to the business world. At lot of people at first said oh yeah that’s a great idea. But a couple of weeks before not many people had signed up for it.
I quickly got on the phone and asked what’s going on, why aren’t you coming? People said they’re really scared because they didn’t know how to draw properly. I tried to explain that it wasn’t about that; it was just about having fun.
The restaurant was full by the night time. We got Radio Newcastle and the Journal to do a bit of coverage. The TV companies wouldn’t touch us though: not a human interest story I think was the words they chose.
We had a fantastic night, everybody joined in and people were putting their drawings up around the restaurant. At the end of the night we couldn’t get the models to put their clothes back on and we couldn’t get people to leave.
The next day we got slots on the radio, and the TV companies, BBC and ITV, both put the event into their news coverage in the morning shows. Someone worked out for us that it would have cost £30,000 to get that kind of coverage. It cost us £500, and people are still talking about it now. In business, everybody has to be creative.
Carol MetcalfeMusa Fine Art Ltd
