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When Audiences Take “Best Party In Town” Marketing At Their Word

February 16, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

The last few months I have been seeing a number of stories about audiences in UK theaters being abusive toward staff and other patrons. A week or so ago, The Stage reported that Edinburgh Playhouse staff had been punched and spat upon, moving the director to call out the bad behavior on Twitter, saying the abuse was affecting the mental health of staff.

“Where in the past we had very isolated incidents, we now have a greater number of incidents. But when people are asked to modify their behaviour, the most common answers are: ‘I don’t care.’ And when we tell them they are disturbing people behind them, they say: ‘I don’t care, I have paid for my ticket, I will do what I want.’ That seems to be the most common thing.”

[…]

“It is really horrible for them and staff can be scared to come to work. And what I hear from other theatre directors is that we are dealing with a mental-health crisis in our staff as well, and this is part of it, a part of what fuels it,” he said.

The bad behavior has become such a problem, theater management are reportedly changing their marketing messaging, asking that phrases like “best party in town” and “dancing in the aisles” not be used.

On Tuesday, Colin Marr, director of the Edinburgh Playhouse theatre, told the Stage that audience behaviour was the worst he had known in his five years in charge. “One of the main things we are trying to do is around messaging and working closely with producers,” he said. “We are talking to them about marketing. So, when we market shows let’s not have phrases such as ‘best party in town’ or ‘dancing in the aisles’ – the show has something much stronger than that to sell.”

[…]

An ATG spokesperson confirmed the company was working with producers on marketing. “We’re taking a multidisciplinary approach to tackling challenging audience behaviour, covering all points of the customer journey, including how we market shows. We want everyone to fully enjoy the experience of a show and we work closely with producers to create appropriate marketing material,” they said.

These stories raise an interesting point. There has been a lot of conversation about how many performing arts experiences used to be bawdy, raucous affairs and the current sedate, staid attendance experience has been artificially imposed relatively recently. But given that there is physical and emotional violence being directed at staff and other audience members, is a return to a less restricted environment the best course? Should theater staff step back and not try to impose a specific type of behavior on attendees who want to sing and dance along the show, thereby removing the point of tension and potentially leaving them in a safer place?

Audience Relations, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Creating Conversations Around Arts Reality Shows

February 14, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

You may have recently seen that MTV and the Hirshhorn Museum are teaming up to create a TV series to find the next great visual artist. As soon as I saw this, I recalled that there had been similar reality TV visual arts contests before. The bottom of the article references Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist which ran for two seasons around 2010-2011.

But I had actually written about the show ArtStar back in 2006. Most of the links in that post don’t work, but the Slate article and Wikipedia entry both still exist. There was a fair bit of criticism about both shows. The Arts world hated both, while Work of Art was generally popular with audiences. ArtStar was widely accused of being an extended self-promotional video for the gallery owner/host.

Art critic Jerry Staltz, who was a judge on Work of Art wrote a piece for Art News reflecting on the experience. He notes that the show was never really about finding the best artist, despite the title.

I agree with the many viewers who said it didn’t reflect the “real art world” — although it was never meant to. It was intended as a game-show version of undergraduate art school where assignments are given, studios supplied, and people kicked out (without, of course, owing $100,000 in school loans). A lot of the challenges were inane …. People on my Facebook page invented far better challenges,…

[…]

If I could change anything about Work of Art, it would be how the contestants are selected. Clearly Bravo’s criteria were more numerous than mere talent, because the contestants simply weren’t good enough. I wish the judges had picked the competing artists, the way they do on American Idol.

Staltz seemed to feel like the biggest benefit of the show was the conversations it generated.

Over the ten weeks it aired, hundreds of strangers stopped me on the street to talk about it. In the middle of nowhere, I’d be having passionate discussions about art with laypeople. It happened in the hundreds, then thousands of comments that appeared below the recaps I wrote for nymag.com. Many of these came from people who said they’d never written about art before. Most were as articulate as any critic. I responded frequently, admitted when I was wrong, and asked others to expand on ideas.

It made me think that his approach to reality TV arts competitions is a constructive one. Essentially use a conversation about the process being employed not being a realistic method for identifying a great artistic talent as a jumping off point that helps arts professional connect with audiences, validating their instincts and capacity to judge while gaining a better understanding of what about artistic practice engages people.

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Boy, This Seems To Be The Month For Ticket Pricing Conversations

February 13, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

You may have seen that the AMC movie chain decided to implement tiered pricing for their theaters with higher prices for preferred seating and lower pricing for less desirable front row seating and wheelchair spaces.

“The mega-exhibitor, which has already introduced sightline seating in select markets, is betting movie-goers will pay more for a better view of their favorite Hollywood titles, as do patrons of music and sporting events.”

They are testing this pricing out in select markets so I popped over to the site Lincoln Square 13 in NYC to see what the chart looked like. Below are the recliner and regular seating arrangements for the new Magic Mike movies. The tan seats are the premium priced seats, the blue are the discounted seats and the white are regular price.

I should note that the recliner seating chart is for the 7:45 showing and the regular seating chart is for the 9:15 showing. I looked at the 6:15 screening chart for the regular seating and there are only a handful of seats sold. It may be that time is not really convenient, but it seems like a lot of folks in NYC are willing to pay extra for recliner seating plus a premium on a Monday night. And I assume AMC realizes 7:45 is probably more convenient and makes sure the screening with the recliners is available so they can make a little extra money.

That said, another Hollywood Reporter article on the same subject noted that Paramount worked with theaters, including AMC to lower the ticket price for the movie 80 for Brady, just days before AMC unveiled this new premium seating plan.

” For years, some distribution executives have argued in favor of variable pricing, whereby tickets are lowered depending upon a movie’s target audience. In this case, Paramount presented evidence showing that older demos are more sensitive about ticket prices.

But no sooner had 80 for Brady opened over the Feb. 4-6 weekend to a pleasing $12.7 million then did AMC reveal Feb. 7 that it is implementing a hefty $1 and $2 price increase for many seats…The news quickly put the 80 for Brady initiative on the back burner since AMC’s plan goes in the opposite direction by introducing higher costs.

This has created a bit of a philosophical tension between the two approaches-varying price based on target audience vs. vary prices based on seating location. Paramount says it won’t have final numbers for another week or so, but preliminary data shows that admissions were higher for 80 For Brady than its other release, Knock at the Cabin. The latter ended up making more revenue than the former the first weekend of February, but by Monday Brady exceeded it in revenue.

There has been some criticism from some like actor Elijah Wood who says that these pricing schemes will exclude lower income families from an activity that has been relatively democratic. Others are concerned that complicated pricing will provide an incentive to stay home and stream.

Hollywood studio executives, however, are concerned about the moviegoers who aren’t as eager to pay more, or who already have doubts about resuming their moviegoing habits. Notes one distribution source, “my biggest worry is that all of this pricing becomes too complicated.”

Audience Relations, Pricing

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What Profits A Man To Gain Riches, But Lose His Ardent Fans

February 8, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

I was not keeping close tabs on the topics President Biden was expected to cover in the State of the Union so it was a coincidence that yesterday’s post was about exorbitant add on fees on the same day he was addressing that issue.

It is probably less of a coincidence that another article from TicketNews came across my feed today reporting what I alluded to in the last lines of yesterday’s post. A Bruce Springsteen fanzine decided to call it quits after 43 years due to Springsteen’s decision to engage in dynamic pricing and slow release of inventory practices.

But for Springsteen, who built much of his reputation on the appearance of being a man of the people rather than interested in exploiting his fans for as high a value as he can capture, the reputational damage has been significant. The Backstreets closure is merely the latest, and highest profile, chapter of it.

“There’s no denying that the new ticket price range has in and of itself been a determining factor in our outlook as the 2023 tour approached — certainly in terms of the experience that hardcore fans have been accustomed to for, as Springsteen noted, 49 years,” reads one part of Phillips’ message to readers. “Six months after the onsales, we still faced this three-part predicament: These are concerts that we can hardly afford; that many of our readers cannot afford; and that a good portion of our readership has lost interest in as a result.”

Part of the issue is that some of Springsteen’s public statements seem to dismiss the concerns of his fans. The fact that ticket prices have dropped from $4000 in the initial roll out to $450-$1000+ with $61 seats available for some shows, does seem to indicate demand pricing theoretically works.

However, the article suggests that the damage is done and younger artists need to be cognizant of the current environment.

What will be interesting is whether or not younger artists – many of whom don’t have decades of good will from their fans to squander – will see what dynamic ticket pricing and openly fleecing your biggest fans can do to their future interest in your work and think twice about embracing the Ticketmaster/Live Nation model of “slow ticketing” going forward.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Pricing

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