(Clearwisdom.net) This is a personal summary and reflection.
Good Part First:
1. The number of tickets we sold in three weeks would normally require several months to sell in Toronto in the past. Through this event, over several hundred thousand "Divine Performing Arts New Year Troupe" and "Falun Dafa Association Hosting" flyers were distributed throughout Toronto. An Epoch Times Special Edition and media promotion covered nearly the entire Toronto area. After the show, the sky was especially blue and even the dark clouds which usually cover the Taigu Quitting CCP station had disappeared. From the Fa point of view, we are to assist Master's Fa-rectification. If we do well in the human world as Dafa practitioners where everyone takes action, catches up with sharing the Fa, and the whole group has confidence and strong enough righteous thoughts, I personally think that within three weeks that several hundred, several thousand, or even over ten thousand tickets would be sold. I personally feel that the results in fact will be all the same when Dafa practitioners reach these standards. When Gods want to accomplish something, it is very simple. Of course my personal understanding might not be absolutely right.
2. I experienced that in a short of period of time and without hesitation, we walked through a most effective path of selling tickets. In the past we were concerned about selling tickets, so we tried a variety of methods, in fact, we walked many very tortuous paths.
The following is a Shortcoming:
1. Before the second show started, the subway system in Toronto stopped running. Many people needed to leave the trains, causing transportation to be interrupted for several hours, so many people were late for the show and some did not show up. When I was looking down at the empty seats from a high seating level, I really felt ashamed. During the first day when I noticed the bad weather, I diligently kept sending forth righteous thoughts. On the second day when getting up in the morning, the weather looked very comfortable and the sky was deep blue, so I thought that the evil elements were mostly cleaned out. At that moment, I was relaxed - even when the subway stopped, I was still at the backstage having some food. In my past experience, whenever there were a couple of practitioners that could realize that they should send forth strong righteous thoughts before any activity, the interference would be avoided. My feelings might not be right but I simply felt that our individual ability was already powerful, therefore this situation happened under the assumption that the majority of evil forces were cleaned out, therefore, I felt ashamed. At the same time, I realized that this type of relaxation could not only happen to me. Therefore, I am thinking that in the next event, we should learn this lesson and not relax for any amount of time. When evil forces could not interfere broadly, they then take advantage of everyday people with low resistance to their power, and not only it did interfere with us, but also made everyday people commit a sin. This was our fault.
2. We had disagreements and conflicts with the media reports, and it revealed some of our shortcomings. Spending more time for discussion at that moment might have trapped us in the arguments, and weakened the group's morale. Afterwards however, we should summarize and reflect upon our activities. I think that the principles of the media profession should still be followed. Even under the situation of pushing for quantity, we have to pay attention to quality. News reporting has certain golden principles, and gradually practitioners working on media have published and shared already, which I think is very good. The crystallization of practitioners' media work is due to their painstaking efforts. The most important point is to consider the audience's mentality. If we carefully study the reasons why we should write this way, then we can sense the audience mentality from all aspects in fine detail. Therefore, it is very important for practitioners to continue to learn with a humble attitude, and to handle relationships between cultivators and non-cultivators well.
Ideas for Future Consideration
Our next activity will be ticket sales for the New Year Spectacular. Personally I would like to make some suggestions and welcome everyone to contribute ideas and input:
1. Summarize this Mid Autumn Spectacular and review the ticket selling points and high traffic places for finding the most people. Target the places having more ticket selling potential and concentrate on continuous promotion.
2. The flyer supply should be abundant even though the sales results may not high at the beginning, since it certainly has better impact than newspaper advertising. When thinking about color commercial flyers with pictures, and the price on it from business, isn't it better than a small newspaper ad for getting your attention, and easier for you to keep? Newspaper ads require a large coverage area. We distribute a large volume of flyers and keep long term efforts going when in fact, it is solving this problem (large area coverage). During our sales efforts, some fellow practitioners wondered how 50 thousand newly printed flyers had gone so fast. I thought that this was a great thing, and meant that all practitioners in Toronto had been involved. Flyers are less expensive than newspaper ads, so if an activity is short of money, everyone can try these methods and put their efforts together.
3. For the flyers to have maximum effect, good testimonials are very important. From a psychological point of view, public comments are the first choice for people to obtain information. People who recommend the Spectacular are live advertising for us. We must select the highest-impact testimonials, which have a much better effect than our own claims.
4. Promoting DVD's for one dollar per DVD last year was very effective, and I recommend that we continue this approach, but suggest that we do not add text and audience feedback, because people on the street have no patience to finish watching. The program advertising and introduction are good enough.
5. Everyone should distribute materials to his or her own work place early, keep providing a supply of materials, and spread news among friends (especially mainland Chinese). We should not, however, be concerned about the results. We are building a great field and everyone should have the opportunity to hear and see the news. I realized that if I did not do well on this and was too attached to the results, I could improve the next time.
6. Some practitioners suggested that we should have one or two very good sales points and list them on the ad. This time there were still some people complaining about having flyers, but they didn't know where to buy tickets. Additionally, the hotline was at times too busy, and people could not get through. We may consider adding one more line.
7. Every practitioner should pay attention to this last point. Our Spectacular received very good feedback and some people even said "You distributed so many materials and told so much truth for what?" Doing more Spectaculars like this will address this issue. If practitioners' friends and non-practitioner family members give good feedback after watching the show, please consider having them give testimonials.
Lastly, I think that when we have large scale activities underway, we still need to keep doing our other projects well, even with limited manpower available.
We will begin promotional activities for the New Year Spectacular soon, but we should not slow down on "Nine Ping", quitting CCP and should perform these activities continuously. In the past after a big project, we were very ready to take a rest and relax. Now we are more mature, and know that we should not slow down. If there were a Divine Performing Arts Spectacular in Toronto every day, it would save so many sentient beings.
All are examples of some of my experience and suggestions. If there is something wrong, please point it out.
