FILM FANATICS may be looking forward to picking popcorn and gumdrops out of their hiking boots next month, but the directors of the 25th Telluride Film Festival are planning a reunion.
A 3,000-piece mailing was sent to past festival pass-holders in February to “woo back the people,” sell tickets faster and generate excitement for the silver anniversary.
The result? Ticket sales up 428% in mid-March, and a sellout of 1,200 passes by the end of June.
Typically Telluride sells out each year, but often tickets are still on sale when the festival-held Labor Day weekend in the Colorado Rockies-begins.
“This was more than just casting a net to see who wants to come,” says festival director Bill Pence. “We wanted to welcome back those who have been here before, to make them feel like a returning family member.”
Some festival veterans were even asked to help fill the family album. An audition took place among several dozen longtime attendees who submitted their old passes, photos intact, to be used in the creative.
The winner, Ted Buttrick, showed how his image has changed over the years. He appears in the piece in a series of photos, including a 1987 shot with full beard and mustache and again in 1996 clean-shaven, sporting sunglasses and a broad smile.
Festival directors chose not to use a postage-paid return envelope with the mailing, which sent jitters through Lowe Fox Pavlika, the New York ad agency that donated its services in creating the campaign. “We were bracing ourselves for the negative effect of that, but it worked better than anyone could have predicted,” says account supervisor Jeff Rothstein.
Pence adds that people paying $500 for a standard pass and $1,875 for a patron pass “don’t need to worry about the price of a stamp.”
A section on the response device asked attendees to submit their “most memorable moment” from past festivals to be printed in a special silver anniversary commemorative journal. Authors of the entries printed in the journal received free passes.
One of those winners just might be the individual who remembered attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on actress Julie Christie’s horse during a riding outing. While the encounter certainly was memorable, it wasn’t successful. The horse “died on the spot,” Pence says.
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