What Does Traditional Media Have To Do?

Yesterday I received a comment for my post on Online Coupons.  She asked “how do we still make the argument for traditional advertising”? My answer; it’s all up to traditional advertising.

Working with traditional advertising today is not what it once was.  Today they are more like car salesmen.  When I first got into the live entertainment business the traditional media were our partners.  The deals we cut with TV and radio was a partnership.  It was not just a cash buy.  The deals we put together included promotional spots, trade spots, and a cash schedule. We could put together a couple of good deals with a few TV and radio stations and own the market. 

The media promotional deal needed to have teeth.  Promotions were vital to the success of the marketing campaign.  It was not unusual to get six TV promotional spots a day over four weeks. Add the trade and the cash buy and you really made a statement in the market.  Ticket buyers actually thought the media outlet brought our shows into town.

Why did this all change?  My theory is that the media decided to change from partner to just sales person. They went with the attitude that “we had to buy them”.  The big family show marketers (who had the best deals) didn’t fight back. They gave in! Concert promoters never took the time to put really good promotional deals together.  They were satisfied with a week-long 5-4-3-2-1 promotion during morning drive and spending way too much money to get it.  Bottom line is we let the traditional advertising control our marketing!

As traditional media sat back and collected our cash, our ticket sales fell, our marketing budgets stalled, and the cost of media went up.  Marketers needed to look at new ways to market.  We found that we had this new source for getting our message out called the internet and its social media outlets.  It does work.  As marketers, all we need to do is create the energy to power it. 

Can traditional advertising get us back?  They can if they want to step up into 21st century thinking.  If they just hold out their hand and ask for money in exchange for advertising, then the answer is No.  If they want to become true partners to achieve success for our events, then Yes!

Sometimes We Have To Create The Excitement

As my regular readers know, I love hype.  I think it’s the best form of marketing in this “got to have it” world we live in.  The movie studios are very good at this.  Yes, they sometimes need the right story to start the hype wheel turning.  But a head start with a good product is a good thing.

Look at the movie Twilight that is releasing this week.  This is a based on the popular tween book.  The studio took the prior excitement the book produced and built it up.  The hype for this movie is even in the middle schools.  I sat in my daughter’s language and literacy (English class for us old folks) class the other day.  The teacher had a count down written on the chalk board for the release of the movie.  Now the movie studio did not ask the teacher to do this, but they could have planted the seed.  What if they sent out “teacher kits” to teachers and librarians prior to the release on how they could include it in the curriculum?  I bet it would work.  Look at the hype of the Harry Potter movies.  These types of movies sell tickets.  This is what it is all about.  With the economy in the toilet, we should look at some of these examples and ideas and think about building excitement.

Yesterday, I wrote about doing promotions.  You can create excitement by creating the right promotions.  Thinking about today’s post reminded me of concerts I promoted several years ago.  The concert industry has a (bad) tradition of just putting a show on sale and seeing how it breaks.  Or their idea of a pre-sale promotion is a “win before they go on sale” radio promotion.  Does this really create excitement?  Maybe it did in the 60′s & 70′s when the fan could never see the artist except when they came to town.  With today’s technology you can see the artist on TV, videos, internet, etc… you get my point.  The mystery of the artist is gone.  Unless you are lucky enough to have an act that sells out right out of the box, you need to have a promotional plan that will create excitement. 

My background is in the live event family show business.  My old company Ringling Bros. (Feld Entertainment) has been the leader in promotions and hype for 150 years.  I was promoting a concert several years ago with a top ticket selling artist.  As usual we put the show on sale and sat back to watch.  For some reason (still not sure why) the show did not sellout right away.  The ex-circus promoter in me said lets create some excitement.  Between the demo radio station and myself, we came up with a promo/stunt that would create hype.  We ran the idea by the bands manager and his quote was “were not an f***in circus”.  I agree, the band is not a circus, but why is doing a promotion that creates hype and excitement acting like a circus? We are in the business of selling tickets right?

Today we have so many better ways of creating excitement.  Besides the traditional media, we have the internet (social networks, email, IM, blogs, etc…), mobile (text messages, vcasts, downloadable music, apps, etc…), and cable (target demo channels, onscreen messages, VOD).  All you have to do is use them.  The question is: are you going to sit and wait for excitement to come or are you going to create excitement?