Postering for an Event

oldchakra.com

Postering for an Event
by Caru dasa

One of the advantages of staying in one place is that you get to know the area and people intimately. In common parlance, you get the area and its people wired. My wife and I know 500 places, bulletin boards, grocery stores, coffee shops, bagelries, etc., where you can put up posters for an event. For the Llama Fest we put up 1500 11X17 posters.

We save money by buying the paper at Xpedex. I choose a brand by the name of Fuller Brights which have a semi day-flow effect, jump out at you even from a distance. They cost about 3.3 cents per 11 X 17 sheet.

I lay out the posters myself on a MacIntosh using Quark Express, and the local copy shop lets us run them off for .05 each. Except for gas and time it’s a very effective and inexpensive way to let people know of an event.

For glass windows, convenience stores, etc. it’s best to put up posters double sided whenever possible. That way people can see them from both the inside and outside of the store, so they’re doubly effective. I use only 3/4-inch-wide tape. The standard 1/2-inch-wide tape is too narrow to allow quick movement.

Often it doesn’t get enough purchase on the paper and window equally, and you may find it peeling off after a couple of days. If you get some strapping tape for postal parcels, a certain number of posters can go onto light poles in parking lots and roadsides, but this should be done in moderation.

Bulletin boards are a very good place for posters. Some are well maintained by the stores and specify that the notices should be cultural or community oriented, threatening that commercial announcements will be removed. Most, however, are not monitored by the store, and they get out of hand and crammed with announcements for selling homes, cars, baby sitting services, etc. When this happens, you have to first take down any dated notice that has expired. Then you have to go high, higher than others can reach, so your notice will be safer. Then you need to use your own staple gun, because if you use the tacks provided, someone else may need them and take them off your notice. If necessary, you have to be forceful, remembering that the purpose of the bulletin board is for just such cultural, uplifting events as yours. You should try not to directly remove any notice unless there is no alternative. It is possible to make an enemy who will go all around town taking your posters down, and your time will have been wasted. You can rearrange notices in such a way to make a good high spot for your poster, and try to give the others a good spot as well, but if not possible, put them on top of each other, and if there is no alternative, just take down the ones that are most blatantly commercial.

Another effective way of advertising is to screen print Foam Core signs, which I think are 18’ X 24’ in dimension. The most noticeable configuration is red on a white background, like stop signs. It costs $6-7 per sign including the setup fee. You can get step stakes of metal for planting these in the ground at roadsides by high traffic areas. Look for places where the landscapers have recently mown the grass and will not be back for a week or more, at which time they will remove the signs. Even better than using step stakes is to place the signs on chain link fences on private property. You can ask for permission or not according to your discretion. Both with posters and signs, I prefer to work quickly and go by the adage, "It’s easier (and quicker) to ask forgiveness than permission." Signs on chain-link fences have a longer life span. They are attached by drilling holes in the corners, and tying them (we use bailing twine because the red does not clash with the red of the sign). More often than not, you can go around the day after the festival and retrieve them. Then the next year, I pay the sign company 70 cents per label to cover up the old date and change it to the new. After our Himalayan Festival this year, I went around and retrieved 28 out of 36 such signs. Some signs I have been using for five or six years already. Some of these signs were located in places where 15,000 cars will pass each day.

Tomorrow is the Llama Fest and so I need to be getting ready for that. When I sent out an e-mail about the Llama Fest, one devotee wrote back with the two word criticism, "Llama Consciousness?" Another devotee wrote back praising us unlimitedly for innovation and creativity in Krishna Consciousness, "taxing our brains for ways and means sort of thing."¹

I can say a couple of things. The Llama Fest is a very good money maker. We need another $200,000 for finishing the temple here, and there is a loan of $110,000 to be repaid. An interesting story: The first year we had the Llama Fest was in 1995. The day after the festival, which was a Sunday, three young ladies in their teens came to the gift shop and were buying neck beads. As is my custom, I asked whether they had been to the temple before. They replied, "This is the first time. We have wanted to come for some time, but our parents wouldn’t let us. Yesterday, our parents attended the Llama Fest, and now they figure you guys are all right."