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As anyone who’s perused the bulletin board of a Manhattan deli, laundromat or diner since 1995 can attest, Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar. We know this because Dan Smith has spent the past 15 years or so posting ads saying as much all over town.
As of this month, there’s a new campaign. It reads, “Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar, Everybody Knows That” followed by small print that, among other things, promises, “Dan will show you how to get in tune with yourself.” It’s a Zen departure from previous ads.
Smith estimates the latest add is roughly the 15th edition of a DIY marketing campaign that’s been parodied by Mike Myers in his film “The Love Guru” and borrowed by guitar wiz John Mayer, who hung “John Mayer Will Teach You Guitar” posters around downtown Manhattan in 2006 to promote his album “Continuum.” In addition to celebrity parodies, Smith says he’s seen trick-or-treaters dressing as him at Halloween, and downtown residents walking the streets of SoHo sporting unauthorized T-shirts bearing his logo. People sometimes stop Smith on the street for photographs, and deli owners greet him by playing air guitar and mouthing riffs.
Prior to teaching guitar full-time, the former NYU theater student worked in the restaurant industry and taught on the side. The teaching biz started to pick up for Smith when he started a modest flier campaign in 1995. However, giving lessons really took off for Smith shortly after he started putting his earnest mug on his advertisements in 2002.
Despite a willingness to put his face all over town, Smith is reluctant to do interviews because they tend to be “about the promotion of the promotion” more than the guitar lessons themselves.
“I’m certainly not ashamed of it — I’m very proud of it,” Smith says of the guerilla marketing campaign.
“The cultural impact of the campaign has taken on a life of its own, but I want people to know about the experience.” The Dan Smith experience, as it were, is about the music. Because some students take one lesson and others study with him for years, Smith won’t even venture an estimate of how many people he’s taught. He says it’s well into the hundreds. While there’s no regular schedule, Smith’s $80-per-hour lessons are offered seven days a week, and he says teaching guitar allows him to maintain his one-bedroom Midtown West-area apartment, where he also instructs without having a second job.
Smith, as low-key and unruffled as his ads imply, won’t say his age (“It depends on the lighting”), but public records have him at a couple months shy of 41. “I don’t think of myself as a guitar teacher. I think of myself as me. This is my thing,” says Smith.
“What I want to have in my life, and what I want to create for myself, is this human contact.”
All that said, he doesn’t deny enjoying the viral popularity of his one-man marketing campaign, which requires only a 10-megapixel camera, a tripod and shoe leather. The reason for the new ad: “I wanted to do something fresh that would match who I am at this moment,” Smith says.
That means that rather than sitting on a stool, wearing jeans and a long-sleeve green T- shirt and holding a guitar, as he had in the previous ad he’s been using for about two years, Smith can now be seen sitting in front of a sofa wearing jeans and a long-sleeve maroon T-shirt, with that same Fender guitar resting on a sofa behind him.
Watching a “Daily Show” episode on a computer in his living room, Smith marvels, “That’s Jon Stewart’s head on my body. Am I dreaming? No. That’s really happening.”
“It’s awesome!” Smith says of such imitators, including another guitar instructor in town who started posting advertisements promising to teach you guitar “better than Dan Smith.”
“Go for it,” says Smith. “When people see that, they think of me.”