[TANGO-L] Marketing and the age demographic

[Robinne Gray <rlg2 @CORNELL.EDU>]

Thanks everybody.  Good discussion, very interesting and helpful.  I liked
Trini's summary of marketing, which helps me to remember that not all
marketing/advertising is about manipulation and unmitigated
gall.  ;-)    Still, one has to decide how much one is willing to modify
the "product" of tango in order to attract "customers."

Trini also asks:
>Who do you want to attract (young, old, others like you)?

   Jai brings up the possibility of attracting younger students, guys in
particular.  I have a mixed reaction to this.  As a woman, of course I want
to attract scads of talented male dancers to our community--young, old,
short, tall, fat, thin etc.  But I'd be ambivalent about a youthquake in
the tango community.  Our local swing community went through that a few
years ago.  The puppy-like energy of the high school aged dancers filled
the room with exuberance and talent...but it alienated many of the older,
more experienced dancers.  Now the high schoolers are going off to college,
the college dancers are graduating and leaving town, many of the old core
dancers have moved on for good, and the swing community is bending over
backward (marketing surveys!) to get people to come to the weekly dances,
which were formerly thriving.

    But Jai's point about age and learning is well taken. Teachers want to
attract students old enough to have some worldly experience, but youthful
enough to physically integrate and mentally retain the material. People in
their 30s and 40s would be great, but the bulk of people in that age
bracket have young children, and tend to orient themselves around the home,
or at least around activities that include children.  (Please don't suggest
that people start bringing their kids to milongas; let them go to
Chuck-E-Cheese).

   Ultimately it's not the dancers' ages that matter.  We all, I expect,
want to draw people who would enjoy tango for its particular musical,
physical, & cultural qualities--thus we DO want to reach "others like
us".  So again, the question is:  How do we reach more people like
us...especially if they haven't been exposed to tango before and may not
yet KNOW they are like us?  :-)

~Robinne
Ithaca, NY