Sean Nero

"The cos­tumes that peo­ple didn't like, our de­sign­ers did not like them ei­ther," ad­mits Wy­att Gallery, act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er and co-founder of Is­land Peo­ple Mas. He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing a Sun­day Vibe in­ter­view, fo­cus­ing on the band's de­ci­sion to scrap the orig­i­nal pro­to­types for the 2012 por­tray­al of He­roes, which was un­veiled pub­licly in Au­gust and man­age­ment's ag­gres­sive re­design and mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to cor­rect its con­sumer fail­ings. Of the 11-plus de­signs, half were con­demned. The re­main­der was re-worked. "The launch did not go so well. I took it up­on my­self to step up and do what­ev­er I can to get the team re-in­spired. I saw my­self as just some­one to mo­ti­vate and in­spire every­one, to see how we could turn this neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion in­to a pos­i­tive: Lis­ten to the peo­ple...Do what they want," he said. Gallery added: "It was not too dif­fi­cult from the num­ber of com­ments they put on Face­book. So it wasn't nec­es­sar­i­ly that we dis­agreed with the peo­ple. It's just that we were try­ing to push it and try some­thing new, you know. It didn't work. We sur­ren­der to the peo­ple."

A month lat­er, how­ev­er, and with the in­clu­sion of new de­sign­ers, Car­ni­val mas afi­ciona­dos now loved the re-imag­ined lines that con­sti­tute Is­land Peo­ple Mas 2012 por­tray­al He­roes. Con­se­quent­ly, the band was win­ning back the hearts of die-hard mas­quer­aders who open­ly con­demned its de­sign team and their of­fer­ings. Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the var­i­ous so­cial net­works, Car­ni­val en­thu­si­asts blast­ed Is­land Peo­ple Mas for de­liv­er­ing a col­lec­tion that they con­sid­ered to be both faulty and unin­spir­ing. But when the band opened its Wood­brook mas camp ear­li­er this month, Gallery was all smiles as po­ten­tial mas­quer­aders ex­cit­ed­ly flocked to the band­house to wit­ness the re­vived pieces. There, Gallery field­ed com­pli­ments and was heart­ened that new works of mas post­ed in the so­cial net­work­ing realm, too, were in re­ceipt of rave re­views. Ac­cept­ing that the band fell out of favour with mass­es, Gallery said, the team went through an in­tro­spec­tive phase and be­gan a process of analysing sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by the pub­lic re­gard­less of how bit­ter they were.

He de­nied that the band's on-line cam­paign which al­lowed peo­ple to vote for their favourite cos­tumes im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the launch was two steps short of ad­mit­ting fail­ure. "No! It was the eas­i­est way to fig­ure out what the peo­ple want. It's just so cut and dry. And, that's the beau­ty of so­cial net­work­ing now. All the com­pa­nies now in the world utilise so­cial net­work­ing sites to know what peo­ple like, to know what peo­ple want and Face­book is the num­ber one place for that be­cause every­one puts up on their page what they are in­ter­est­ed in. I en­joyed it, per­son­al­ly, putting it out to the peo­ple. I think peo­ple en­joyed it, too," said Gallery.

Rev­ellers with Is­land Peo­ple Mas may like­ly play a piv­otal role in de­ter­min­ing what de­sign con­cepts ac­tu­al­ly make it to the stage on pre­miere night dur­ing the pre-Car­ni­val 2013, said Gallery. He said hav­ing sur­vived the wrath of the mas con­sumers, the plan be­ing con­sid­ered was to ex­plore re­al­is­tic ways that the pub­lic could weigh in on the de­sign process. "We have haters say­ing, hey, we got to give it to you all. You all did it and came back strong. You did some­thing that kind of blends the lines be­tween what we (Is­land Peo­ple Mas) were do­ing and what they want­ed," Gallery said.

Turn­ing to the eco­nom­ic prospect of the band, he said reg­is­tra­tion was up, whether peo­ple used the pre-reg­is­tra­tion fa­cil­i­ty and the walk-in sign up. Gallery de­scribed as "su­per en­thu­si­as­tic" the will­ing­ness of fun lovers to make their de­but with Is­land Peo­ple Mas dur­ing the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion Pa­rade of Bands 2012. He said the re­turn­ing mas­quer­ad­er rate was al­so up. "We got a call from a group of 40 peo­ple that signed up in an­oth­er band af­ter they saw our first set of cos­tumes, and now they want to leave their de­posits and come back and play with us," said Gallery, smil­ing.