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Marketing’s Fault

October 18, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

So I once again lived a situation I described in an earlier entry about how if a show sells out, it is due to the artistic decisions, but if it goes poorly, it is marketing’s fault for not pushing it hard enough.

I thought perhaps I had escaped that situation given that I am the one making the artistic decisions and overseeing the marketing. Ah, but I discovered you don’t need to officially answer to someone for them to expect to answer for yourself.

For our 30th Anniversary, we had put together a really good slate of famous Hawaiian performers that I could never have gotten on my own, but thanks to the connections of an alum, was able to pull together very cheaply.

In the last week or so, I had come to the conclusion that people just simply weren’t interested in seeing the show. We had promoted it every which way including a powerful concentration of radio spots. However, ticket sales for a show at the end of November by a middlingly famous group which we hadn’t promoted at all outside of in our brochure was easily outstripping those for the 30th.

Though it wasn’t originally planned as such, the university foundation decided to make it in to a donor cultivation event. When the event planner from the university called to ask how it was selling, I told her not well and she began to grill me on my techniques. (Did you do…, how about….) Then I got a call from the college fundraising officer with the same questions. Then came someone from the university department of external relations who absolved me of blame by confirming that they couldn’t help me because I had done everything they would have suggested and more.

However, then word got to the vice-chancellor who emailed the marketing director for the college from the middle of a meeting (the vice chancellor later got me in his office during another meeting, though to his credit took my word for it that I did everything I could. This was good because it was getting hard to contain my resentment).

The marketing director of the college actually held my job at one time so if anyone had the ability to tell me “ya shoulda done this…” it was her. However, having done the job, she knew what it was like and said exactly what I said in the entry I refer to above–“when it sells out, it is the choice, when it don’t, it is marketing’s fault.”

I really appreciate her role in getting me acclimated which to this point has meant answering my questions and then butting out. Now granted, this is probably due to the fact she is just too dang busy to pay attention to how much I am screwing up her baby, but is also due to the fact she can empathize.

Now I will admit, some of the grilling I got was a result of people wanting to help. But the problem is that their concept and understanding of publicizing an event is as a numbers game rather than as a process of identifying who you serve and want to serve and making your plans from there.

They mailed out stuff on my behalf willy-nilly to every name on their email list. There were people I was sure never heard of my theatre and people who were affliated with groups I didn’t even know existed.

Although I couldn’t track where people who bought tickets at the door that night heard about the show, I feel I can say based on the phone and internet orders I got through out the week, it wasn’t from any of the lists they emailed to.

Marketing and press relations are something that has to be planned and worked at. I will readily admit that my efforts in these areas have suffered from lack of available time. I can say that I am making an honest effort to adhere to and pursue the values I have espoused in this weblog.

Marketing/PR

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Time to Pick Shows

October 13, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

So I haven’t even had the first performance of this season occur and I have already started on the process of picking performers for the next. The Performing Arts Presenters of Hawaii (of which I am now a board member!) had a meeting on Monday to discuss what we saw when we were in Spokane, WA at the Western Arts Alliance conference. I was expecting it would take 12 hours from the way people spoke, but it really ended up taking about 6. (Which I think was actually due to the president limiting presentations and moving things along.)

About 10 of us sat in a theatre watching DVDs and tapes projected on a screen and listening to CDs. We went through the list of potential artists people were considering by category (and there was strangely a bit of debate about grouping Latin and Jazz into the same category–mainly because many of the artists up for consideration seemed to be Latin influenced Jazz or vice versa. After listening and watching said offerings, there was considerable discussion about artists mislabeling their genre in an attempt to repackage themselves.)

In any case, people in the consortium were only interested in about 20% of the artists I suggested alone (as opposed to ones I was asked to pick up information for prior to the meeting and thus knew there was interest in). I would have felt a little slighted that they weren’t taking the suggestions of the new guy seriously if it weren’t for the fact that about an equal number of proposals by one of the more senior members also met with a lack of interest.

In the end though it might be a good thing since I will only have to take the lead on two or three artists if a number of members of the consortium are ultimately interested in presenting them next season. I will probably approach many of the performers I alone was interested in because I chose them in part for for their small company size and lower fees and so can likely afford them on my own.

Those that many people are interested in I will have to take the lead and negotiate on behalf of the others, collect feedback and information, plan the routing from one island to another on a series of dates (and since the dates for at least one theatre will inevitably fall on a week night rather than a weekend, see how things can be shifted beneficially.) It is probably better for me being new to the scene to avoid too many instances where I have to be answerable to people outside of my own organization and patron base.

One last observation, I don’t know if it was coincidental timing or a shift in the Force, but the day after I returned from this meeting, I suddenly had 4 calls from agents asking me if I had considered their material. I hadn’t told any of them about the meeting, yet something inspired them to call.

And of course, as luck would have it, none of them represented people we wanted to present so I ended up talking to people I really had no interest in speaking with.

Management Philosophy

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Secure those Tickets

October 12, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

Well I have been really busy the last couple days and have met with some limited success in my objectives. One of my projects for the last few months has been to get secure online for patrons that didn’t require paying a large service fee for the luxury like Ticketmaster charges. Despite being a part of a university, the many IT offices I contacted all said they couldn’t support my modest needs.

I have been exploring many options from outside vendors. Many of them were dead ends and those that weren’t, were rather expensive solutions. Finally I found a local provider that had a store front as part of their offerings and the monthly fee was really quite reasonable.

Of course, it was too good to be true. The storefront they had was not really customizable at all. I would have had to list all my shows with no way to differentiate between them or link directly to specific listings. And what was worse, I couldn’t have 2 prices for the same product, in this case a show.

So, I upgraded to the next package which was essentially double the price, but did allow a bit more control. The solution was equally disappointing though. I still couldn’t have two prices for the same product, even if I had separate sizes or colors (two aspects I could customize with my own terms)

I worked around this by having separate catalogs, each with 2 “products” for each event–in this case, adult and student tickets. This works a little better, but is still unwieldly since people have to add adult tickets and then click the back button to add student tickets.

Another good thing is that I can link directly to the event in my online store from my website so patrons only have to deal with navigating the show they are interested in.

But as I said, the utility is limited. I can’t redirect people back to my webpage or to my thank you page. I can’t change font sizes so the titles of the shows are really tiny and in the left hand corner. If anyone has a suggestion for a provider with good storefront packages or good software I might get my provider to load on my account for me, I would love to hear about it.

The interface was unwieldy and frustrating to use properly so the whole process was extremely time consuming.

However, I definitely think this is something people want. Even without really promoting the fact we offer this service to our audience base, we have already started doing a fair bit of business averaging about 20-30 ticket sales a day the last three business days.

If you are interested in seeing how I set it up, you can go to here

Believe me, it is incredibly rough and basic. If I wasn’t desperate to offer the service, I was really tempted to keep looking. Obviously, I am not satisfied and will continue to seek alternatives, even given the fact I may only need the service for less than a year while I wait for the university to integrate me in their centralized ticketing.

Audience Relations

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Planning for Next Season

October 4, 2004

by:

Joe Patti

So I haven’t started my current season yet and I am already deeply involved in planning the next one. Given that I am new to the position and don’t even know how people will react to the upcoming shows, I am going to be making a lot of assumptions about what people like.

Having looked over the materials from my visit to Spokane, I have to submit a list of names of people I would like to present to the president of the booking consortium tomorrow.

Tonight I went over the house of one of my co-workers and I showed them the DVDs and publicity materials for the performers I am thinking of booking. The reason for this was two-fold- One, they have a better sense of what sells than I do. Even though they may be unfamiliar with some of the genres I am looking at introducing to the theatre, they do provide educated viewpoints in a number of areas.

Another reasons is an attempt at the open book management that I mentioned way back in February. I hope to involve/inform the staff about the elements that go into the decisionmaking and budgeting processes in the hopes that they will become invested in improving matters and controlling costs.

It occurs to me though that open book management may not work too well in organizations where people don’t have anything to gain or lose. Being part of a state institution, there is no opportunity for profit sharing, bonuses, extra vacation, etc. Turning a profit could result in the ability to buy new equipment or perhaps hiring more people to help out. Or those things could occur if we don’t.

Because of collective bargaining agreements, I am reminded that it would take one of them killing someone in broad daylight in front of 10 unimpugniable witnesses and a guy with a camera and yelling “At last my 6 months of meticiously planning has come to fruition” to actually cause them to be fired. So there is nothing much too lose either.

On still another hand, the folks I work with do have pride in their work and are glad I am here with a vision so there is plenty of opportunity to rally their support to cut costs and work more effectively and effect improvements. So I am optimistic.

Management Philosophy

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