a 12-page marketing piece I designed for my client, Live Talks Los Angeles, was included in the Sunday New York Times print edition for subscribers throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties — about 50,000 households.
Live Talks LA hosts authors on tour promoting their books. Ted Habte-Gabr, Live Talks’ founder and producer, enlists interviewers, arranges for venues, and sells tickets to the events, and copies of the books featured.
Live Talks Los Angeles was founded ten years ago, and I’ve helped Ted promote his organization for the past six or seven. The business has grown steadily; each year, Ted has hosted more events than in the previous year. This Fall alone, there are nearly 30 scheduled. We featured each of those that had been confirmed by press time in the publication. (One event has been added since, and several others are pending.) Visit the web site, livetalksla.org, to learn about upcoming events.
In addition to hosting the events, Live Talks LA records virtually all of them, and makes videos and podcasts available online. On the inside back page of the NY Times piece, we listed a number of the authors and interviewers of whom videos and/or podcasts are available. The first dozen suggest the range and stature of people who’ve appeared:
Tina Fey with Steve Martin
John Cleese with Eric Idle
Harry Belafonte with Tim Robbins
Shepard Fairey with Henry Rollins
Sean Penn with Jane Smiley
David Frum with Larry Wilmore
Jenifer Lewis with D.J. “Shangela” Pierce
Dan Rather with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Walter Isaacson with Michael Lewis
Russell Brand with Dr. Drew Pinsky
Alice Waters with Jonathan Gold
Former Vice President Al Gore with Mayor Eric Garcetti
Ted tells me this piece has performed extraordinarily well, as measured by the spike in ticket sales and new subscribers to his email newsletter over the first few days after the insert was published, and the feedback he’s gotten from subscribers, publishers and agents. This was gratifying to learn, particularly as it’s not always possible to gauge the effect of a particular ad.
But just as gratifying is the ongoing relationship with Live Talks, and the trust Ted has put in me to produce advertising and marketing pieces, event materials, the redesign of his web site, and so much more.