One Club’s
Art of Promotion
by Mary Lou Poremba, Chicago Jitterbug Club
Promoting a new dance club is not easy, but having a big sister club spreading the news was a help in getting us off the ground. The older and larger CWCJC (Chicago’s Windy City Jitterbug Club) had some members who were “south siders”, just like myself and co-founder Virginia Roby. They were happy to hear about a new dance place closer to home. Others were just happy to have another weekend to dance. Aside from that, I had no idea where to go from there. Now, twelve years later, I have a huge file of what’s worked and what hasn’t, and I am happy to share the mechanics of our successes.
But what if a club doesn’t have a local sister club to help attract dancers? You have to go out and find them! In the Chicago area, the better nightspots are filled with hip-hopping, shake your booty dancers, who did not take kindly to jitterbugging couples competing for floorspace. That meant getting our own place and paying the hefty rental fees common to big cities like Chicago. But one dance a month without enough bodies to cover the costs does not a club make. We had to generate some buzz to get people to come. We began by designing a fun business card and had our die-hard dancers carry the cards with them at all times. With our club shirts and our cards, we were primed for action! These cards were handed out at singles dances, oldie radio station events, 50s style shows at large theaters, and posted at 50s diners.
Our first connection was to begin visiting a 50s-themed bar on Sunday evenings when there was no action. Eventually we trained the DJ in the differences between bad 50s music and great R&B. As the music improved, so did our weekly attendance. We also took to visiting the bar en mass, wearing our club shirts, and making sure our presence and support of the bar was noted by greeting the DJ, bar tenders and managers. That, at least, got a few of our songs played. Hitting the floor, we would identify other jitterbugging grown-ups out there with us. These people were offered a card with our Hotline and invited to a dance party or told to drop by on a Sunday. And so it went. The first Sunday we danced at Jukebox Saturday Night, there were 13 of us. By the time the bar was sold and we had to leave, we were averaging about 90 dancers a week. To this day, we still pass out cards, whether at a 50s revival show, a wedding, or a place where we’re doing demos. Our first press release, accompanied by an action shot of our dancers at Jukebox Saturday Night, resulted in a feature story in a large local paper.
We began doing demos shortly after that first news story. In it, we stressed that showcase dancers were available free of charge to any charitable organization that needed a dose of 1940s or 1950s color. Out came the retro clothes, poodle skirts, pegged pants, and DA hairstyles for those who still had hair. We entertained at nursing homes, school fund-raisers, and any veteran event possible. On one very special occasion, we were the after-dinner entertainment for the Disabled American Veterans Officers Induction Ceremony, which was attended by the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. We generated a lot of publicity with that event! More publicity= more appearances=more publicity. Our favorite activity was an annual outing with the blind veterans of Hines Rehabilitation Institute for dancing and dinner. We have also danced at Summer Festivals, antique car shows, and 50s diners. The most interesting location was atop the dugouts and on home plate at a semi-pro baseball park. Passed out lots of cards there too.
I now send press releases to over thirty papers whenever we have a special event at which we need a large attendance. Over the years, the press releases have caught the interest of Entertainment or Features writers, and we have had a number of full-length articles written about our club. For our July 4th weekend parties, Chi-Town Boogie, we also notified television stations, and our dancers were videotaped for the 10 PM news by two TV channels. Our partygoers had to franticly call their families to set up recorders to catch the action, as everyone was away at our party headquarters! The stations gave our dancers nice coverage with great voiceovers. Got a lot of calls from that too.
We are at a point now where publicity is no longer necessary to increase membership, so I only send press releases for special events at our favorite venue, Glendora House Ballroom, a place that we can’t use for our regular dances. The rent is high and it’s a huge room so we must advertise to boost attendance and cover costs. For those dances, I also place paid advertisements, which run around $600 for ads in the weekend sections of our local newspapers. These special dances traditionally draw somewhere between 300 and 450 dancers from all over Chicagoland and Indiana, with well over a hundred guests entering for higher, non-member admissions. It is the guests, then, who actually pay for these dances that give our members the opportunity to dance in a glorious ballroom. And we make it a point to greet these guests warmly. Everybody wins, and we usually get a handful of new members from those who have heard of us and visited for the first time.
I hope some of these tactics are helpful to my fellow ABA Directors, and I would be happy to elaborate on anything that is not clear. Warm regards to all. — Mary Lou