EAMC – First Full Day

How ironic that the event & arena marketing conference is sharing the hotel with the Colorado coroner’s conference.  Rich Oriolo from Stafford Sports peeked in and said one of their posted topics was “fun stuff”. Don’t you want to know what “fun stuff” is at a coroner’s conference?

Yesterday, EAMC conference began with breakfast and awards.  The conference gives the GiGi award to one outstanding, long time, live event marketer who has made a difference.  This year the award went to Sunny Rubenstein.   They also added two long term marketers Donna Dowless, XOXO Media Group (Ticketmaster alum also) and Roberta Wright, Cumberland County Civic Center to the hall of fame.

The keynote address was given by Darryl Seibel who just recently left the United States Olympic Committee as their Chief Communications Officer He gave a great behind scenes point of view of last summers Olympic Games in China.  Here are a few very cool stats: 

• 4.7 Billion people watched the Olympics on TV
• 1/3 of the world’s population saw opening ceremonies
• 90% of all Chinese residents watched some portion of the games 

The general session came next and was on “How to Sell in a Down Economy.  The panel consisted of Michael Kenny – Harlem Globetrotters, Tami Allen – Stars on Ice, Amy Dubinsky – Feld Entertainment, and Kim Burgan – Ticketmaster. 

The panel all agreed that ticket selling patterns have changed.  Pre-sales are ok, but they are not seeing huge advance sales.  The circus has always been a late sell, but it is selling even later these days.  Disney on Ice has traditionally done well with VIP and P1 ticket sales.  They have seen a dramatic drop in these two price categories.  To counter this, they have scaled back higher priced seats and have added more P2 and P3 seats. 

I brought up the point that shows and venues need to get off our butts, throw out the old handbook, and start thinking.  

Shows need to start listening to the customers instead of cramming tickets deals down the customer’s throat.  To date, we have not been very good at listening to our customers.

Off To The Conference

Happy “Live Nation No Service Fee” Wednesday.  Yes, the one day only sale of lawn seats last week is repeated again today. 

 Today, I am on my way to the Event & Arena Marketing Conference in Colorado Springs.  I look forward to this conference. At last year’s conference I not only learned a lot but it gave me weeks of content for this blog.

I understand the attendance will be lower this year.  This makes sense.  With the economy down, venues are cutting back.  I wonder if the IAAM meeting in Boston will be down too?  If venue managers don’t let their marketing directors attend a conference, should they go to theirs? 

Looking over the conference agenda.  There are lots of sessions and roundtables on digital and non-traditional marketing.  This is what marketers want.  The keynote speaker on Thursday is Darryl Seibel.  He is the Chief Communications Officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

I am speaking on a panel along with Jim Delaney and Bernie Punt.  The topic is: Applying Obama’s marketing lessons to your next event campaign.  This should be a really interesting and informative hour. If his new brand of marketing won him the White House, imagine what it could do for our events.

I will be blogging each day from the conference.  If you can’t make it this year don’t worry, I will try to give you the highlights.