Crowdsourcing. Is it totally old news? Well, what about a crowdsourced opera in a medieval castle? Nothing old in that (except the castle)! I had a pleasure to talk with an exciting person about this subject a while ago.
Meet the lady in question
This experienced lady was Päivi Salmi, who works in CRM, eBusiness and marketing for Savonlinna Opera Festival. She has been in online business since 1996, which is really unique. You rarely meet such a professional and I feel extremely privileged to write to you all about our meeting. I first had an idea of interviewing her about the Free Will opera, which was composed by an open online community called Opera by You. It soon turned out that I had a lot to learn from Mrs Salmi. I could have listened to her for hours and discuss different subjects with her about online marketing and crm. So, definitely more goodies from this interview for you all later!
The Free Will Opera
But first things first. The Opera. Free Will’s premiere was on 21st July 2012 at Savonlinna Opera Festival in Finland. It is a first opera made by an online community and this aspect excited me to no end. Mrs Salmi pointed out that Covent Garden has done similar online projects but in a miniscule scale, such as ‘design a dress for this character’ etc. Not something as big as ‘compose, design and direct an opera’! Very brave, if you think business risks…
The Savonlinna Opera Festival is a small and innovative company but also the opera world’s rebel. (Love the word ‘rebel’!) They strive to get new opera audience and this was one of those innovative ideas. It came up in discussions between their CEO, Jan Hultin, and advertising agency, Hasan & Partners. They were thinking of new ways to produce an opera and crowdsourcing caught fire in their minds.
I had followed the makings of this opera since the beginning of 2010. I am a huge opera fan and passionate about online marketing. So, it first seemed liked they were doing an opera just for me! Woohoo! The first plot suggestions even had a scifi approach. Unfortunately for me, those ones did not get enough thumbs ups on the Wreckamovie, the platform, which allowed the entire project. (And trust me, I tried to give those plot ideas all my support!)
The community behind everything – Reaching for a new audience
This opera’s main goal was not to produce a business hit but introduce opera as an art form to a new audience. Mrs Salmi told me that they had succeeded to reach this goal very well.
The community consisted of over 400 amateurs (me included) from all over the world. Talk about reaching for an international audience! They were from Latin America, Japan, New Zealand, to name but a few. Hence, it must have caught the interest of the international media. Mrs Salmi pointed out that the media coverage was immense, ranging from BBC to India’s and Japan’s local media. A company might pay huge piles of money to receive such a coverage but now Savonlinna Opera Festival had it basically for free.
Activating the crowd
This project stayed surprisingly on its schedule. This must be because it needed to be well divided into systematic smaller sections, such as plot, costumes and composing, with strict deadlines. The biggest challenge, Mrs Salmi told me, was motivating the crowd because it took loads of time and occasionally its interest diminished. Even some important people dropped out in the middle of the project for a long while and came back again on a later date.
Social media did not actually bring anything extra into this production, which is quite surprising. People spread links on Twitter and some polls were conducted on Facebook but the actual work and communication was done on Wreckamovie.
Opera – an item for sale
Many might not think that an opera is actually an exportable commodity. The money does not always come just from the paying audience but also for example from other opera houses. Mrs Salmi told me that there has been interest of buying the production by several different parties. It would be wonderful to see it for example in Sydney.
All in all, this project showed us that opera is definitely not a dying art form.
Watch the opera (approx. 1,5 hours)
Opera by You Community on July 21th 2012 <– You can even find my name there. Woot woot!
Geeky Twist 