P.S., Will They Love You? : Marketing: ‘Philharmonic Style’ is the tag the L.A. Philharmonic management is giving its ‘value added’ concert series, hoping to pull in the under-50 crowd.

This is the ‘90s, baby. --from a Cook’s Champagne radio commercial

The focus is soft on the mailer’s cover. Young faces radiate light. Smiles and stylish clothes are on almost every page. The mood is compellingly yup.

The mailer is an invitation to a party. It is also an invitation to hear some indoor Mozart, Beethoven and Berlioz.

It also represents a direction that some institutions in Los Angeles and Orange counties feel they have to take in the increasingly brutal box-office competitions of the ‘90s.

The invitation comes from the folks at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and it’s about something they call P.S., Philharmonic Style. A few weeks ago several thousand of these mailers went out in an ambitious marketing enterprise to sell tickets to a new series of Music Center events.

The Philharmonic is producing what in the ‘60s was called a “happening” but in the ‘90s is called a “value added” package. Three Saturday nights in February, March and April have been chosen for what will be six-hour-plus nights downtown. Each of the three P.S. nights will start at the Museum of Contemporary Art galleries down the road from the Music Center where the first of the evening’s receptions and events will be, followed by a private gallery showing. Then on to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for a pre-concert talk and the Philharmonic Orchestra concert followed by a dance party until 12:30 a.m. in the center’s Grand Hall.

The tab: $88.50 to $118.50 for the three nights, conceivably the greatest music bargain since Sunday afternoon band shell concerts at Exposition Park.

The idea of “value added” is beginning to drive many of our decisions in how we spend money and time. We can see how it works in the linking of some downtown theaters and concert halls with certain restaurants that provide validated parking and free round trips to the venues.

We also can see it in the receptions and social evenings for members of art museums and other institutions.

Driving the Philharmonic’s new venture are a couple of realizations: concert audiences at the Pavilion are getting older; the younger audiences that flock to the summer concerts at the Hollywood Bowl aren’t crossing over and finding their way downtown.

Four years ago, seeing a slippage in indoor concert attendance, the Philharmonic’s thinkers and planners began to examine their problems through surveys, market studies and focus groups. Out of those findings they began to target a specific audience, the audience they weren’t getting, the 20-, 30- and 40-year-olds. They knew they had a base of support in their 40,000 subscribers, who are largely over 50. They knew they touched the lives of toddlers 3 and older in occasional Open House concerts. And they knew their high school and college programs also made some important contacts.

But there was a deep hole in their demographics. Somehow they had to reach the post-grads and the young professionals and the singles.

They think P.S. might do it.

The Philharmonic isn’t the first to try to reach out for younger audiences. Five years ago the Pittsburgh Symphony introduced its “Smart Set” concept, a series of pre- and post-concert social events for singles as part of the regular symphony season, yielding at least one marriage and 1,300 subscribers one year. When Louis G. Spisto left Pittsburgh for Orange County’s Pacific Symphony three years ago the marketing executive transported the Smart Set idea west. The Irvine-based orchestra now has its series of “Classic Encounters,” pre-concert Wednesday light suppers and concert discussions as part of a season package. In its first Classic Encounter the Pacific Symphony sold 450 tickets. For the current season it has 562 subscribers.

“The key to these kinds of programs,” Spisto said, “has been the music. You can bring the people in with the hook (singles concerts) but the music has to keep them coming back. If they don’t like the music they won’t come back.”

Since the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s mailing last month, more than 1,000 subscriptions--most of them multiple orders--already have been sold. The marketing people say that 1,500 would be the project’s break-even point, 2,000 would be ecstasy while a sellout of the Pavilion’s 3,200 seats would win them a place in marketing’s hall of fame.

They’ll get their first inkling of success Feb. 9 with the first P.S. event. MOCA has an exhibit of Ed Ruscha available and Andre Previn will be conducting an all-Mozart program. The post-concert party music will be Latin and European. The March 30 event will offer MOCA’s Arata Isozaki exhibit, a pre-concert talk, and Roger Norrington conducting the Philharmonic. A rock dance party would follow. The last event, on April 20, will feature the Philharmonic’s new conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen prior to an evening of big band music.

What picnic baskets figuratively did in providing added value to Hollywood Bowl concerts, P.S. may do for the indoor concerts: help get new, younger audiences. Some Philharmonic planners see a successful P.S. as possibly a start for future event programming, for new audiences and for new ways to get seats filled and subscribers renewing.

The Philharmonic’s Ernest Fleischmann sees another aspect to the P.S. program, one way for the symphony to “put our money where our mouths are. We are trying to provide for the future, to assure that there will be audiences to play to in the future. Many programs have been killed off in the schools. It’s up to the institutions to help teach the next generations. One generation has grown up already without art and music education. Now we have to do it ourselves.”

Then there is another consideration.

It will be right across the street from the Pavilion by the end of this decade, the future Disney Hall.

Capacity: 2,400 new seats.