What Is A Promoter To Do?

As soon as I saw the lowlights from Charlie Sheen’s opening night in Detroit, my thoughts went to the promoter and the venue.  I’m sure their thoughts were not “Winning”!

Now at the same time, you have to think that anyone and everyone involved with promoting Charlie’s show had to have disastrous thoughts in their head. They must know they are taking a real chance on this show.  Be that said, what does the promoter and the venue do when tickets sell well but the show bombs?  Who takes the hit when customers demand their money back?  If the artist does poorly on stage, leaves early, or doesn’t even show up, who should get stuck with the bill? In many cases, the promoter and the venue take the biggest hit.

Advance Man Update

Ringling alum Jamie MacVicar’s book The Advance Man has been nominated for the National Award for Arts Writing.  If you have not read Jamie’s book, you should. It’s a story about a promoter’s journey behind the scenes of The Greatest Show On Earth. When I read it, it brought back many of my own memories of being a promoter with Ringling. If you want to know how modern live entertainment marketing was born, read the book.  The winner will be announced on April 16th.  I’ll let you know if he wins.

Mad Good Food!

I started a new blog!  This one is called Mad Good Food!  Now that I am in the culinary world I thought I should start a food blog.  It will be very different from the E&E Marketing Blog.  Besides adding photos, I plan to add video.  The goal is to turn it into an internet TV show.  Please check it out and add it to your favorites at http://madgoodfood.wordpress.com.

Back To The Basics

This week I will be attending the 30th annual Event & Arena Marketing Conference in Chicago.  While at the conference I will be part of a panel on marketing and advertising basics.  This discussion should be great for people new to the industry and even better for industry veterans.

The panel is made up of entertainment marketers currently from different worlds but they all started in live event marketing.  The panel also includes: Hank Salemi – Six Flags, Jamie Macvicar – Author of Advance Man, Amy Dubinsky – Feld Entertainment, and Bob Collins – long time Live Event Marketing Guru and all around great guy!

It’s fantastic that the conference is offering this panel discussion.  Anyone who reads this blog knows that I truly believe we can never forget the basics while we invent new and exciting marketing and advertising programs. I am not a golfer but I understand why golfers always need to practice the basics.  You have to keep your basic skills sharp if you want to advance in the game.

Many of us get caught up in new technology or techniques. None of these are any good if you don’t keep up with the basics.  When you buy media do you make your decisions based just on what the computer tells you?  I know many media buyers that do.  A computer just works with stats.  These stats don’t tell the whole story.  Do you pass on print media these days?  Do you do this because everyone tells you newspapers don’t work?  Are you sure this is true? Have you tested this theory?  Do you still write a marketing plan with some thought in it?  Do you follow the plan?

Go back to the marketing driving range and get rid of the basic bad habits.  See you at the conference!

Open Mic Friday

Happy Birthday Elvis!

Today is Elvis’s birthday.  He would have been 75.  Wow, I can’t believe he would be almost the same age as my dad.  Besides being the King of rock-n-roll, he was a real mover and shaker in live events.  Before Elvis, many acts could not even think about filling up an arena or stadium. His live tours were instrumental in the develop of marketing live events.

Who Doesn’t Love Chocolate?

As I have mentioned in the past, I believe the world of culinary live events is going to increase.  We have already seen the momentum with celebrity chefs on tour and food festivals.  This is one of the reasons I am getting into the culinary world (I also love food).  Fellow Boston marketer, Aspen Dinner Club member, and team building guru David Goldstein has launched Taste of Chocolate.  David knows that culinary is hot and anything chocolate is always popular, so he is getting into the chocolate event business.  His new venture includes chocolate tours, workshops, team building, and private events.  Will there be a chocolate festival in the future??

“The Advance Man” Update

I am still reading the book “The Advance Man” by Jamie MacVicar and I must admit it’s a very addictive read.  When is the last time you read a book and know most of the people mentioned?  I have been letting other people in our industry know about the book.  My very good friend Rob called me to say he is addicted to it too.  It brings back tons of Feld Entertainment memories.  If you ever worked for Ringling/Feld you will enjoy it.  If you didn’t work for Feld but work in the live event industry, I suggest you read it.  The people and stories mentioned in this book shaped how we market family shows and live events.  Some of the marketing ideas have been lost in time but we should re-visit them.

Have a great weekend!

In With The Old And The New

I just started reading a new book by Jamie MacVicar called “The Advance Man”.  This is the story of Jamie’s life as a Regional Marketing Director (promoter) with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus back in the 1970′s.  It is a very long book (660 pages) so it will take a while to finish it.  I will give you my review of it when I do. 

I didn’t join Ringling until a decade later but I know or worked with most of the people mentioned in the book.  So far, my initial thought is that nothing changed for 20 years (1970′s - 1990′s) in that company.  This is not a bad thing.  Those 20 years were considered the “most powerful” years of live event marketing fueled by Allen Bloom and his team.

There is an old Bob Dylan line “I forgot more then you will ever know” and this book is bringing back many great promotions and advertising ideas that I had forgotten about.  It got me thinking, maybe we should bring some of that old thinking back.  Many of the promotions that were done in the 70′s and 80′s would still work today.  As I mentioned last week, the message has not changed just the way we communicate it.  Maybe there is a place for both the old and new to work together?

Just as I was writing this, I read an article in Ad Age Online about how Fox is marketing the movie Avatar.  Guess what, they are marketing the movie with both the old and the new. As we all know it’s paying off.  Sometimes we get so caught up with staying ahead of the curve that we forget about what still works.