Well I have a friend who's promoting Friday nights at Heat and another friend who used to promote for underage Metro (two pretty big Melbourne clubs) and I've gotta say that they didn't do a thing. The guy who promotes for Heat hardly makes an effort apart from putting his own mates on the guest list, and the guy who promoted for Metro just used to hand out pamphlets on the day of the event to people who were already queueing up to go inside (cos he got commission on everybody who came in with one).

So anyway, if you're asking the question as a promoter, I guess all you can really do is either leave pamphlets in music stores or cafes of whatever and hope people pick them up, or go around handing them out at uni's or on the street on Friday/Saturday afternoons etc.

If you're asking the question as someone who's going to be running a club (or a particular night etc.) and want ideas about what you can do, perhaps a good idea would be to have some sort of special deal (cheap drinks, entry etc.) to attract people initially, and just hope you can get them to stick around, or maybe the usual posters/fliers in unis/record stores etc. Other than that it's kinda difficult: I'm not sure what it's like up there in Sydney, but a lot of what gets people into clubs down here is word of mouth - the reputation in other words. Without even having to think about it, I can tell you the best places to be on most given nights, just because of the reputations these places have built up for themselves.

From that perspective then, I think all you can do is just make sure that your place is good enough to get people back in once the night is over. A good venue is a good venue, and a crap one is a crap one, regardless of the amount of promotion they do.

So, I dunno. I'm not being very helpful, I know, but I don't know what else to say really......

Er, oh yeah. Good luck.