Becareful Where You Snip

All of us have gone through budget cutting.  Nobody like budget cuts but in this world it has become a necessary (and unnecessary) evil.  There are three areas that should never be cut: 

1. Anything that affects the product
2. Anything that affects the customer
3. Marketing

I am sure all the bean counters out there are reading this and saying “but we don’t have a choice, every department needs to cut”.  Cutting budget to any of the above three things will hurt incoming revenue.  The live event & entertainment world has already seen huge deeps in ticket revenue.  When you cut budget to any of the above you are just increasing the collateral damage.

Our customers and fans are used to our product.  If anything, they expect us to offer even better product.  If they notice you are decreasing the product in any way, you are ruining the business.  If you don’t have the money to increase the product, then it is better to maintain status quo until you have the budget.

Anything that affects the customer experience in a negative way is detrimental to your business.  Just like the product, the customer expects a certain type of service. Take away the good experience and you take away the customer. 

For some reason bean counters always look to marketing first to make budget cuts.  Why do they do this?  One reason is the attitude that some business people have of marketing.  How many of you have heard “sales brings in the money and marketing spends it”? If you cut money to marketing, you are letting less people know about your product.  If less people know, fewer tickets will be sold.  The alternative is to leave the marketing budget alone and figure out how to obtain even more exposure with the same budget.

If you trim too close or in the wrong places it can really hurt!

Wow, It’s Been 30 Years!

30 years ago today I was witness to the greatest sporting event in history.  This was the day the USA Hockey Team beat Russia at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid. A few days later they went on to beat Finland for the Gold.  I was 16 years old, living in Lake Placid, and living a two week period that I remember today like it was today. Being around those Olympic Games was most likely a big reason I went into event and entertainment marketing.

Last night as I watched team USA beat Canada in hockey, all the memories came back.  Of course today’s hockey can never be same.  Today’s international teams are made up of NHL professionals.  But the excitement of the game was really fun to watch on TV.  Personally, I think NBC screwed up last night putting the hockey game on MSNBC.  Here is a network that is trying hard to get its ratings up and they put the game on cable?  Local NBC affiliates should be pissed.   Don’t get me wrong, it was good for ice dancing to get primetime coverage but… 

The Customer Experience Gets Olympic Press

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that I preach about creating a good experience at all events.  If you market a sports team then you know you can’t control what happens on the ice, court, or field.  You want the fan to have a great experience win or lose.  The Olympic organizers know this and they have taken a page out of major & minor league sports teams.  This morning on the Today Show, there was a video piece on Cameron Hughes.  He was hired to create fan excitement at all of the Olympic hockey games.  He pretends to be a fan in the stands and gets the crowd fired up during time outs.  Cameron is no stranger to this.  He now makes a living doing this for sports teams in both the US and Canada.  I can’t say it enough, you are selling the experience!

Brain Or No Brain

My wife is trying to start her own business.  After almost 20 years of working for other people she wants to make all the money for herself.  I don’t blame her.  The big debate this week in our house has been the “brain or no brain” logo.

Besides being a speech therapist, she also likes to draw.  So she is trying to create her own logo.  The logo she created has the silhouette of two heads with speech being communicated between the two.  Her original idea had both heads showing their brains.  The marketing guy (me) did not like it. I thought it was too busy and creepy.

Creating a logo and name might be the two most important things you can do when starting a business or promoting a new product.   It does not matter how much money you have or how great of a product it might be, if you don’t communicate clearly to the customer you’re screwed.

I see this problem all the time with shows and events.  I have seen great ideas with lots of dough poured in it and it fails at the box office. 

Some marketers think you should make the customer do all the work.  They “tease” the customer and then tell them to go research it.  If you make your campaign a research project you will fail.  The goal is to use your entire marketing campaign to get your customer excited and ready to buy. 

All of your marketing/advertising material needs to be something that will close the sale.  With the right logo and brand name, it could be as simple as that.

Add A Little Culinary To Any Event

I always thought it was just me.   I have always believed that no matter what kind of event you do, food should be involved.  This is why I have entered the world of culinary entertainment.

Since I started culinary school I have paid even more attention to what is happening in the culinary world.  Thanks to the Food Network and other high visible culinary opportunities, chefs are the new rock stars.  Want to draw people to your event, hire a chef.

I saw two items this morning that show the power of culinary.  The Boston Globe Travel Show is this weekend here in Boston.  They have a full page tab ad on the back of the entertainment section for the show.  The whole ad is promoting the culinary demos at the travel show.  All the restaurants and chefs participating are local even though this is a travel show.  The producers of this event know that culinary will sell tickets.

There was also an article this morning in the same newspaper about how some restaurants host “industry nights” for people in the culinary business.  These are usually on Monday nights when many in the business have the day off.  Besides bringing industry peeps out to eat, it is also attracting others.  These nights are attracting customers who want to meet culinary stars. Today’s chefs have a fan following that rivals movie stars.  Did you ever think that people would show up because their favorite chef might be eating there? Now we just need the paparazzi.

Why not add some culinary to your show, event, or sports team.  I think sports would be a perfect place to show off culinary.  I have lots of ideas for this but I am not giving everything away for free.

Brand Yourself

Today’s career and business climate is brutal.  The days of working for one company your whole career are very rare.  The days of the company protecting their employees are over.  This is why it is so important to brand yourself. You have a talent and you should make sure everyone knows this. 

As a marketer, you know how to market and brand the products you sell for a living.  It is shocking that so many of these same marketers don’t brand themselves.  What are you doing to get your name out there? 

How many of you have “Googled” yourself?  I bet all of you have.  How many times did you pop up?  Today, when anyone wants to find out about someone, they usually Google them first.  The more you show up on a Google search the better.  Of course you hope only good things are popping up.

There are lots of ways to brand you.  If you are on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter you can start today.  In fact, you are already branding yourself.  What you put on these sites can be passed around to thousands of people.  I get Google alerts everyday from stuff I post on Twitter. Are you on Linkedin?  If you are, do you belong to groups?  Do you contribute comments and feedback on these group sites?

Do you attend conferences for your industry?  If you do, what are you doing at these conferences to get your name out there?  If all you do is sit and listen, you are not branding yourself.  Get other people to listen to you.

How about writing a blog?  Start a topic you are familiar with.  Write your thoughts and opinions.  You will be surprised how quickly people will start reading it. If you know what you are talking about (and you better), you will soon build yourself a reputation as an expert in your field. 

Even though we don’t currently live in a “me, me, me” society it is still very important to market and promote yourself.  If you don’t do it, who will?

World’s Biggest Live Event

Tonight starts another year of the world’s biggest live event.  If you think your event takes a lot of work, try working at the Olympics.

I have had the privilege of working at two Olympic games.  One winter and one summer.  While the world sees spectacular  sports competition, what goes on behind the scenes is also truly amazing.  Not only do you have the local organizing committee managing but you also have: the international committee, each national committee, each sports committee, city, state, federal, every sponsor, vendor, sub-vendor, and everyone else that jumps on the Olympic bandwagon. It’s like hundreds of events all happening at the same time and place.

The planning for an event of this size doesn’t start when the city is awarded the games.  It starts even years before that.  If you want to host an Olympic games you have to show that you can handle the ultimate event stress.  Most of  your plans and logistics need to be ready to implement when you bid for the games. 

If you are in live events & entertainment, I highly suggest you find an opportunity to work at an Olympics.   There are always opportunities out there.  The behind the scenes experience will give you a new perspective that will carry over for the rest of your career and life.

Just like you, I plan to watch many hours of the games.  The winter games are even more unique because you get to see winter sports we are not exposed to here in the U.S.A.  As you watch the games this year, think about what types of logistics and planning went into it.  Even if you write down everything you can think of, I guarantee you still have pages to write.

“Oh No, They Cancelled My Show”

With all this crazy weather hitting the country, the title of today’s blog post is being said all over the Midwest and Northeast.  Of course they are really starting the sentence with “Shit, they cancelled my show”.  What do you do when this situation happens?  What goes into the decision of canceling?  What do you do afterwards?  If you have never experienced canceling a show due to weather, it is not fun. 

I remember years ago having to cancel a couple of performances of Disney On Ice in Niagara Falls NY.  Of course the blizzard hit on a three performance Saturday.  We were able to get through the morning performance before the city  announced they were closing the roads.  For those of you who don’t know it, Niagara Falls is part of the Buffalo market.  They are very used to winter weather.  So I had a hard time explaining to my bosses in Washington DC why we had to cancel two performances due to snow. 

The best part of the story is how we got the Sunday performances going.  The venue told us that the mayor’s office was being noncommittal about opening the roads for Sunday morning.   I found out that the mayor had small kids.  I invited the mayor to the Sunday morning performance (front row tickets) and offered a meet-n-greet for his kids.  Guess what, the roads opened and we were able to do two performances on Sunday. 

Dealing with refunding or moving tickets is always a nightmare.  We were able to move many into the Sunday performances and we added an unscheduled Monday performance.  Of course we had to refund some money, but it could have been worse.  My suggestion to anyone in live entertainment is to always have a plan ready to go.  In the plan be sure to address canceling, informing customers, re-scheduling, refunds, and PR procedures.

For all of you dealing with this issue this week, I feel your pain!

What We Learn From Super Bowl Ads

On behalf of all marketers, I would like to thank the brands and ad agencies that spent the money to produce and run this year’s Super Bowl ads.  Your money was well spent for the study of our craft. 

Most of us  (who am I kidding)  all of us that buy media or market for live shows and events cannot afford to buy an ad during the Super Bowl.  I wish we could because the attention these ads get is like no other.  If you were at a party last night, did you notice how quiet it got when the commercials came on?  As soon as it was over everyone became a Simon, Randy, Paula, Kara, etc…  Some of the spots were good and some were not.  The big question if you spent the money is: “will it sell product”? Today, everyone is talking about the commercials.  But are they talking about the product? 

One of my favorites was the eTrade spot with the babies.  The babies in their ads have been around for a few years.  The brand awareness is already there.  All they have to do is come up with a new story line for the babies, which they did.  This is one of the few brands that are still top of mind this morning.

The goal of any campaign is to create awareness and sell product. Our creative can accomplish both, but so often does not.  In our industry we seem to have this boring, straight forward approach.  We show footage of the event.  We have the same type voiceovers.  This formula is as old as dirt.  Don’t you think it is time to shake things up?  TV is very expensive.  Our marketing budget gets sucked dry when we spend money on TV.  If we are going to spend budget on TV why not do it right?  Our shows and events are designed to entertain our customers.  Don’t you think the marketing creative should also?

Super Weekend: Do You Have A Show?

This Sunday is the official “un-official” national holiday in the United States.  The Super Bowl is like no other sporting event.  Yes, the Olympics is the biggest sporting event in the world, but here in the U.S. we treat this football game like a national holiday.  The grocery stores will be packed.  Beer and wine consumption is huge!  In fact, I heard this morning that this Sunday is one of the top 10 biggest wine drinking days of the year. This game is so big that some people watch the game just to see the commercials. What happens if you have an event or show on Super Bowl Sunday? 

This problem happened to me once.  I remember being in Toledo one year with an ice show on Super Bowl weekend.  As soon as I saw the dates of the show, I immediately worked on the Sunday show schedule.  This was a family show, so it is normal to have multiple performances on the weekend.  Timing of the performances on that Sunday was crucial.  A Sunday performance too early and you bump into church.  Too late and the game is on.  We decided to only do one performance on the Sunday that year.  We even marketed that performance to let the public know they could see our show and be home in plenty of time for the big game.  Even with one less performance that year, our one Sunday performance did enough business to make it up.

Of course not everyone thinks when they book events on this day.  Both my kids have youth sports games this Sunday right at the beginning of the game.  What’s up with that?

Nothing like “old fashion” PR stunts

My friend Bob Collins let me know about a PR stunt he marketed the other day in Sarasota, FL.  He had Nik Wallenda walk the high-wire across the two largest buildings in Sarasota.  This was done to promote the opening of  Circus Sarasota which is touring the West Coast of Florida.  Even though this area is known as the home of circus’ he was still able to create a big buzz and had tons of media attention.  With all the new ways we have to market our events, it is refreshing to see that some of the “old tricks” still work today.

It’s All About Passion!

I found a book that pairs perfectly with this blog.  The book is called Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion. The book is written by Gary Vaynerchuk. 

Like you, I don’t have time to read a ton of books so I am selective in my reading.  With this book, I actually downloaded the audio book to my iPod.  The book is about living your passion.  It talks about social media and how it has leveled the playing field.  It talks about how Facebook and Twitter are marketing tools not a media strategy. It discusses how we should use this recession to cash in on our passion.  Does all this sound familiar?  We have discussed all of this in the past on this blog.  I have met Gary a few times and I can tell you he lives this book. 

I made a decision last summer to take my passion for culinary and my 25 year career in entertainment marketing and meld the two together.  With this, I have a number of new business ideas and opportunities.  While many of these projects and opportunities are still in concept form, it has given me a new energy and excitement. My brain has not pumped out this many ideas in 10 years.

Even if you have no plans to leave what you are currently doing, you can use your passions to create new opportunities for your business.  If you enjoy what you do, then come up with new ways to make it even more fun.  If you don’t have fun at your career, then you need a new career.  Don’t think of it as a job, think of it as “This is what I do”.

All of us in event & entertainment marketing have passions beyond what we do at our daily business.  What if you could take that passion and apply it to the events, shows, and venues you promote?