It’s The End Of The Year As We Know It

As the end of 2010 comes to a close and 2011 is about to begin, I see some good news.  First off, the retail experts are claiming this current holiday shopping season will go down as one of the best in years.  This is good news for all of us that make a living with the discretionary dollar.  If people are willing to splurge a little then maybe this will rub off on the live event & entertainment business.

According to a newspaper article in The Boston Globe, concert promoters/producers are going to lower some concert ticket prices for 2011.  I would love to take credit for this since I have bitching about this all year.  In truth, I believe that reality kicked in.  They realized they can’t continue to charge prices so high that you need to take out a bank loan.  This doesn’t work well when banks are not giving out loans that easily. The article also mentioned that promoters were going to try and make more money off tee shirt and other merch sales.  Isn’t that how it used to be?  When I was a teen and went to concerts, the tickets were $10 bucks and the tee shirt was $15. We built big ass arenas for the volume.  Let’s get back to filling the arena and making the money on volume.

Speaking of going to concerts when I was young, did you see the list of the top five grossing concerts for 2010? Besides Lady Gaga, the geezers ruled! Don’t you find that interesting?  There could be several reasons including that only people in their 40′s can afford the ticket prices.  We better get young people back to buying concert tickets or soon live concerts will be fossils in a museum.

As I mentioned at the top, I really am looking forward to 2011.  The New Year shows a lot of promise and I hope all of you will prosper in it.

Have a very happy and healthy New Year!

Don’t Forget The Teens

Yesterday I spent the day helping a photographer friend at our kids high school.  He has the contract to take the I.D. / yearbook photos for all 1,300 students.  This was a big job.  While I was there for the day, I had the opportunity to think about the buying power of today’s teens.  Retail is really good at marketing to this group but what about all of us in the live event & entertainment business?

High school teens are the biggest spender of discretionary dollars. Our business is all about the discretionary dollar.  Are we doing a good job marketing to this group?  Based on the marketing I see in our industry I would say not very well.

Today’s teens are the trendsetters.  They not only tell us what is hot now, they are also great predictors of the future.  They love to spend money and will do so in a heartbeat.  Yesterday, the video game NHL 2011 came out.  My son and his friend went right after school to buy it.  Did they really need it that day?  To them, the answer was yes! “They have to have it”!  How do we tap into that way of thinking with our marketing efforts? This week would have been a good week to market NHL tickets to teens and young adults.  Nice cross promotion, don’t you think?

As event marketers, we are good at doing surveys and focus groups.  The problem is we tend to focus these efforts to adults.  Teens are not good subjects for this traditional marketing research.  We need to get into their world and ask them directly.  Maybe this is through the web and social networking?  Maybe we need to work with the schools?  How about dealing with the retailers they buy from?  Live entertainment and fashion always go well together. Forget about just getting retail sponsorship.  How about a good retail promotion?

If we are really trying to put more butts in seats and make money doing it, then we need events that the largest discretionary dollar market will spend their money on. What are you doing to reach them?

A Customer Always Has A Choice

The customer always has a choice.  They have the choice to spend their money with you, somewhere else, or not at all. 

When you first plan your event you should be thinking this.  The date, show time, and price will go into your customer’s decision.  What is your competition for this event?  This will also give your customer a choice.  What can you do to swing the customer your way?

When you are buying media for your event, remember you are the customer.  You always have a choice too.  In fact you have even more choices today then even before.  If you don’t like the deal the potential media partner is offering, you have the choice to walk.  One of the first things I learned when I went into this business was you can buy around anyone and anything.  Don’t ever think you have to buy certain media!

We all want repeat business from our customers.  The overall experience you give them at the event will ultimately decide if they choose to come back. We are in the discretionary dollar business.  The customer gets to choose where to spend these dollars.  If you are going to ask them to spend big dollars for a ticket, then make it worth it.  There is nothing worse then a customer leaving your event feeling like they didn’t get their money’s worth. 

The choices you make will help decide your customer’s choice to buy the ticket.

Are You Tweeting?

You know that I believe in Twitter as a marketing and business tool.  In case you don’t believe me, check out the article in today’s Boston Globe how companies are using Twitter to market and talk back to their customers.

Is Your Venue A Destination?

Here is an interesting question:  What is more important, marketing the show or marketing the venue?  Of course you are answering: the show.

If you are a venue marketing person, then the answer is both.  Yes, the shows are your clients.  They bring in the revenue.  If you have no events, then your venue sits empty.  As a venue you need to market all the shows and events coming to your building. As a venue marketer it is also important to market the venue brand.

Some may say that venues are only as good as the events inside them.  This may be true but good events and shows like to play good venues.  I am always reminding you that we are in the discretionary dollar business.  We need to win our customers money over other discretionary spending.  How you brand the venue can help you sell tickets for the events. 

When we market a venue, we seem to spend money to those in the business.  Look through any venue or live event trade publication.  They are filled with ads for venues.  How about running a venue marketing campaign to the public? Create excitement for the venue no matter what event is playing in it.  Market the venue like a tourist attraction. Your venue is a destination. I remember when SkyDome in Toronto first opened.  It was a tourist attraction.  They gave tours every day showing off the bells and whistles.  They tried to create excitement for the venue 7 days a week. 

The key word here is “destination”.  Market your venue as a destination.

Do I See A Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

Call me an optimist but I think there may be a light at the end of the tunnel for us in the event and entertainment business.  I have written several times that entertainment is the first to feel a recession but we are the first to come out of it.

In yesterday’s Los Angeles Times there was an article on the movie box office numbers for January.  Guess what?  They had their first Billion dollar January.  That’s right, in the middle of a recession Hollywood did great!  Yes, they had some big movies out there but they broke the revenue record for January.  One recession related reason for this success is what I am always referring to as the “escape”.  All of us in the event, sports, and entertainment industry are the escape.  People are sick of doing nothing.  They are sick of staying home.  Here in the Northeast it has already been a very long, cold, snowy, unemployment winter.  People are looking for something to enjoy.  Movies are still affordable compared to other out of home entertainment so they get the break first.  But all of us in the “live” business can start reaping the rewards too. 

If you are a family show, parents need to do “something” with the kids.  Give them a good product at a family friendly price and they will come. Allen Bloom (who must of us consider the “godfather” of event marketing) had a quote at Ringling Bros.  The line was:  “We are for the masses not the classes”.

If you are a sports team, the same goes for you.  Take a hard, close look at your ticket prices.  Can your fans afford to go?  Do they have a choice?  Of course they have a choice. Do you want them to sit at home and watch it on TV?  Those empty seats won’t look to good on TV.

If you are in the concert business do you really have to charge $100 plus for a ticket?  I already can hear the promoters saying it’s the agents & managers fault.  If this is true, then agents and managers out there, do you want your client’s fans to see them now or do you want to sit and wait?

Right now we have a great opportunity to step up our game.  Please always remember that the ticket business is the consumer’s discretionary dollar.  Put out a product that the event & entertainment consumer wants to see and can afford.  We can and should be the recession “escape”.

A Lesson From The Mall

Like many of you I went to the mall over the weekend to try and shop for holiday gifts.  This time of year, a trip to the mall is like going to an event.  Lots of traffic, lots of people, lots of high priced junk food, and hopefully you are entertained.

Our customers in the event and entertainment business expect a good customer experience.  We should have the same good customer experience anywhere we go.  You would think with the economy bad and retail ready to crash & burn, an effort would be made toward making the customer happy.  Let’s compare my recent trip to the mall with your customers experience at a venue or event.

The mall in my town has grown over the past few years.  Along with the size of the mall came more parking.  More parking is only as good as the people directing the cars to it.  The mall had lots of police directing cars to a parking garage that was full.  This in turn created grid lock.  No one could get in or out of the garage.  The mall security whose job it is to watch over the parking just drove round and round doing nothing.  When one parking lot is full, doesn’t it make sense to close it and wait until you open some spaces and clear the gridlock?  How about directing cars to an open parking lot?

Like buying tickets for an event, you go to the mall to spend money. Making a purchase should be treated as an experience that will make the customer want to do it again.  Shouldn’t the people taking your money put on a smile?  You don’t go to a show to have stress, so should you go to the mall to have stress?  Why not have opportunities throughout the mall to de-stress?  Maybe a free “time-out” area?  Last year American Express had one of these for card holders.  I loved it.  A place where you could relax for a few minutes, have a free cup of coffee or hot chocolate.  I think this is a great marketing opportunity.  It made me happy to be an Amex customer. Your sponsors could do something like this at your venue.  Maybe even offer something free for stopping by.

The mall food court is like the arena concession area.  Try to keep your stands open and well staffed during key times.  You know when these times are.  The food court I went to had long lines at most places.  Not because everyone in the mall was eating at once but because they didn’t have not enough staff. 

I write this not to bitch about my day at a mall, but to have you think about what your customer goes through coming to your event.  Please remember that our events are discretionary dollars.  We have to fight for the dollar more then the necessities of life.  When they do come to our events, they are coming for an escape from all the stress of life.  They want a good, stress free experience.  Maybe we can have a New Year’s resolution to give our customers the best experience ever.

 

Are You A Good Deal?

Wal-Mart announced that they had a very good October and they forecast a good holiday shopping season.  With the economy going to hell and everyone forecasting doom & gloom Wal-Mart is optimistic.  Why, because as I have mentioned in previous posts, people are still going to shop for the holiday season.  They just are not going to spend as much.  They are going where the deals are.  We should look at this model and work it into our plans.

Event and entertainment ticket prices have gone through the roof over the past few years.  The argument could be made that the price of everything associated with the event has gone up.  This is true, but don’t you think that greed factors in also? Also, let’s face it, customers were willing to drop that kind of cash but I bet “times, they are a changing”.

This might be the time that we should put together events that people can afford.  Does a concert ticket really need to be $100 plus?  Hey, if you can still get it then you should go for it.  But I believe these shows are few and with the current state of the economy it will become even fewer. We need to remember that our events come from discretionary dollars.  Food, housing and utilities are going to paid first out of the budget.

All of us in marketing need to market to changes.  If the economy is going south, which they have been talking about now for a year, then we should be planning for this. 

Tweeter is a high end TV & home entertainment store.  They are known for having good stuff and quality installation.  The problem is that customers have a lot more choices today.  They can buy most of the same TV’s and other product at the other chains that are charging less.  Best Buy offers installation.  The end result is that Tweeter did not tweak its plan to fit the economy or competition and now they are going out of business.  I am not asking to cheapen the product.  Customers and fans don’t want crap.  They want quality and a good deal. 

 The company I used to work for did not plan.  They kept thinking that they could cut the product quality, cut the customer experience, cut the marketing budget so deep that the message did not get out, and expand into new markets at the same time.  The result, they are out of business too. 

What about a promotion around the economy.  The Lake Placid Hotel is offering its guests a deal based on the stock market.  What ever the market is at the end of the week, then that is what the room rate is.  For example, if the market is 8600.  Then the rate for the following week is $86.00 per night.

It is not too late to do something now.  Take a look at your market.  What can we offer our customers that will drive them to the product? Ask yourself, “is my product a good deal?  Is it affordable?  Will my customers buy it”?  Don’t let ego or greed get in the way.  I think it is better to have seats filled then to have empty seats, don’t you?

 

Attack Of The Bean Counters

Marketing departments always seem to have an on going battle with CFO’s and accounting.  With the current economic status, this can even be a bigger battle.  I understand that everyone has to do belt tightening however, we must never lose sight that we still have to do business.  The bean counters always want to look at what is being spent on advertising.  They see money going out but not always the “instant” ROI.  If there is any time when marketing is highly important it is during these tougher times. 

We are in the discretionary dollar business.  Even in the best of times these dollars are pulled in many directions.   This is why it is so important to get your show or event the most exposure possible.  You may not have a lot of competition but you do for the $$. 

Here in Boston, we have a Dunkin Donuts on every corner.  Everyone is “addicted” to the coffee.  So why do they continue the spend tons of money in the market place? 

Six Flags has a campaign this year that reflects the current state of our economy.  Their parks are geographically located to draw from many markets.  With the current price of fuel, they have a problem.  Their current promotion is that everyone pays the kid price.  Basically, they lowered the price.  Still, they haven’t slowed down on the advertising.  They are running a lot of TV to promote this.   This could be a make or break year for them.

Don’t get me wrong.  You may not have a choice but to cut back on $$ but that is where the marketer in you comes in.  Add “low budget” items to your plan (the bean counters like this).  Non-traditional marketing is one area to include.  The goal is to create maximum exposure. 

Remind the bean counters of three things: 1) You still need to tell the customers about the event.  2) You may have to try even harder to get the business.  3) Don’t hurt the customers experience so they will return.