PR

I had a meeting recently with two people working on PR for a show I am production managing, and I have to say I learned a ton. I have only been peripherally involved in PR up to this point and I had no idea what was involved in promoting even a small storefront show. Our PR coordinator had a book called the Chicago Media Guide which listed every paper, magazine, radio and tv station in the Chicago area. He went through the thousands of listings in the book to weed out the ones that would have any interest in our show, and then sent them a preliminary press release, three months before the show.
We spent time talking about facebook event pages (we can't make it too soon or people will forget, we should definitely include videos of rehearsal or interviews with production team members, it would be nice to have an intermediate event so people have something to look forward to sooner), press releases (we need another one two months before the show and a third one one month before the show, we need to approach different angles on the show), and other promotional questions (do any of our cast or production team have an interesting life story, we need to make sure that the author has a facebook page).
You need a certain number of performances of a certain type in order to qualify for "Jeff Award" consideration (that's the Chicago theatre awards), and you need to contact the "Jeff" committee in a certain way by a certain day.
I am excited to learn even more as I work through this show, and I'll be sure to share my newfound knowledge here so everyone can learn along with me.