Though John Kastner, the general manager of the Stratford Perth Museum, says he probably should have expected it, the media attention garnered by news of the museum's upcoming Justin Bieber exhibit, Steps to Stardom, far exceeded his wildest expectations.
Less than two weeks from the exhibit's opening on Feb. 18, Kastner is preparing for a slew of interviews with national media outlets, while simultaneously preparing the museum for an onslaught of potentially as many as 500 Beliebers who have purchased tickets for the exhibit's opening weekend.
"It was really the Beacon Herald story that started this going … I think it was on the Thursday morning, and about 4 o'clock in the afternoon the Stratford Tourism Alliance sent me an email that said, 'This story's been on the web for about an hour -- I hope you're ready. We're already fielding calls globally about the exhibit and the museum,' " Kastner recalled.
"That was on the Thursday, and then from Thursday night to Sunday morning, I had about 1,000 emails about the exhibit."
Settling down at home with his laptop that first weekend after the news broke, Kastner said he began responding to as many emails as he could – most of which were from Bieber fans and required only a short reply. On Sunday, Kastner received an email from a friend who told him the museum's Bieber exhibit had been featured on the news in New York City.
"And then about half an hour after I received that email, my cellphone rang, and it was somebody who called and said, 'Sorry for calling you on your cellphone on a Sunday morning, but we'd really like to use this picture that's part of the media package that was sent out, and we'd like a release to use this picture,'" Kastner said. "It was somebody from People Magazine."
And it wasn't just news outlets in the U.S. and Canada that had picked up the story. According to Peter Downs and Courtney De Caire, media relations consultants with RTO4 Tourism Innovation who had been tasked with promoting the Bieber exhibit, the story went global.
"We knew that there would be a lot of interest around this exhibit, but it's definitely gone global," De Caire said. "We've had coverage from Asia, India, all over the States – pretty much across the globe we've had lots of media hits and lots of media coverage. So it's really blown up."
Some of the international media outlets that picked up the story included the Miami Herald, MTV Asia, Voice of America, Grammy.com, and even an online Iranian newspaper.
Since that first weekend of media coverage, fans from around the world have been eagerly gobbling up any news about the exhibit they can find. In January alone, more than 440 million people consumed one form of news or another about the exhibit.
"Basically the story about the exhibit appeared in at least 4,000 outlets -- either online, broadcast or in print," Downs said.
Closer to home, Canadian media coverage of the exhibit is ramping up even more as the date of its opening looms. On Tuesday, Kastner was interviewed by CBC Radio's Q; on Feb. 13 he will be interviewed by CTV; interviews with Your Morning and eTalk have been scheduled for Feb. 14; Fairchild TV – a nationwide Chinese language broadcaster – will visit on Feb. 15; and on Feb. 16 Kastner will be live on Breakfast Television and Brittlestar.
On Feb. 17, the museum will be closed for a private viewing of the exhibit for media and museum members.
"When I started here, the museum had been in the (local) paper a lot, for all the wrong reasons … Here we are now, when you can read a story on the Grammys website about how the Grammy that Justin Bieber won is going to go in the museum in his home town . . . ," Kastner said.
"As we've been building this exhibit, that's been a motivator for us – we can't disappoint. We're selling tickets online to people from Italy and Spain and South America, and different parts of Europe. What we want to make sure is nobody comes in here and says, 'Wow, I expected a lot more.' "
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