48% of Folks are Taking Up Refund Protection! What?!
#173: 3 February 2023 That and more numbers and notes from Seattle
Yo!
I’m back from Seattle.
It took me 3 or 4 days to recover. But my heart is full after seeing two guys that mean the world to me: Gil Bon and Marc 5.
It was also great to spend so much time with Joe, Juliette, Hayley, and Chris from Cover Genius. I also had some excellent fun with Eric Fuller, Troy Lund, Garrett Nolan, and a lot of other folks that will remain unnamed, hopping around downtown Seattle for lunch, dinner, or drinks.
To the Tickets!
PS: Laying out my in-person events for the rest of 2023.
I’ll follow up with more stuff in the coming weeks, but mark your calendars:
March 14 in DC: The Non-Profit Marketing Bootcamp
April 11 in NYC: The Customer-Centered Strategy
9-10 May in London: Pricing for Profit/Marketing the Live Experience
24 October in Sydney: Marketing in Any Market
December 5-6 in NYC: The 2024 Strategy Bootcamp
Also, I’m doing a 3 part market research webinar on April 6/13/20 about doing market research right. 3 90-minute sessions with homework in between.
I. At INTIX, we talked the customer journey as part of a COVID recovery:
Ticket buyers are still weighing their risk tolerance.
The Big Idea: Friction doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue for ticket buyers as it is in other purchases.
How do we know?
Playhouse Theatre is seeing about half of their guests take up refund protection. (48%)
This Shows Us: A few interesting things really:
Customers want the peace of mind that they are talking about in research and are willing to pay for it.
This is a new revenue stream. Joe Calnan from Cover Genius did some math for me and estimated that a venue of the size of the Playhouse Theatre might see $250,000 a quarter in new revenues if their guests bought refund protection at a similar rate.
The behavior from before COVID and now has shifted even more. Before, refund protection was taken at around 10% in Europe and 15% in the States. After lockdowns ended, we were seeing these numbers hit 30-33%. Now, we have an example of almost 50%.
Research is key. Gut assumptions about what customers want or don’t want are overrun by behavior.
Use This: Here are some action steps you all can take ASAP:
Look at your customer journey. Have you made assumptions that are based on outdated thinking?
Rethink the value that your customers get from certain options or opportunities. 48% uptake on refund protection shows that when guests say “peace of mind” matters, they are willing to spend to achieve that outcome.
Revisit your revenue strategy. Joe mentioned how AXS went from 1 revenue stream to 6 revenue streams during his time. I remember saying that your revenue streams are likely only limited by your creativity. So look at where the money enters your business.
II. The University of Illinois changes their orange in their logo. Does that matter?
Branding is about standing out, not blending in.
The Big Idea: I’ve been hinting at some teaching I’ll do this year around brand management in entertainment. So this Twitter thread is helpful in illustrating a few points.
First, everyone needs a definition of brand to work with.
Mine: Your brand is the accumulation of all of the interactions you have with your market, good or bad, over time. Knowing that the good stuff adds up slowly and the bad stuff will tear you down quickly.
Second, to this logo and the lessons:
The heart of your brand is distinctiveness. You want to stand out in your market’s mind.
You do this with your brand codes and brand associations.
Brand Codes are the logos, colors, sounds, images, etc. that you want associated with your brand. The lesson is that you “codify” everything. You can’t overdo this.
Brand Associations are those 2-3 words or phrases that you are hoping to imprint on your market’s mind. Think about your favorite brand and jot down what you think of when you think of them. Those are brand associations.
By changing its primary color to match the colors of others, the University of Illinois is undermining one of its key visual assets.
There is no legitimate justification for it.
One comment in the thread to me is “supply chain issues”.
Do you think Tiffany would change their blue color to a more common blue because it was hard to get enough of it right now?
Takeaways: I asked this question to a friend at INTIX: Why don’t organizations in the arts and theatre pay as much attention to their brands as other world-class brands?
Pay attention to your brand.
Start with two things:
Your brand codes: 4-6 images, colors, logos, etc. that you want to have people see and think of you. The Red Sox do a great job of this with the B. The Sydney Opera House does it with the logo that shows the wings of the building.
Your brand associations: Think about the 2 or 3 things you want people to associate with your organization. Mine are focused, effective, and profitable. Figure out yours and make sure they come through in everything.
III. “Shoot First, Aim Later” says Eric Fuller:
The Senate’s hearing on tickets was interesting.
The Big Idea: Focusing on Taylor Swift as a key to showing whether or not there is a monopoly problem in tickets is the wrong angle:
Taylor Swift’s tour is limited in scope. Demand was high, meaning that her tickets were likely to sell through.
My thing is always the need for competition to:
Spur innovation
Bring more ideas and minds to a challenge
Create incentives for marketing and selling more effectively
From a content producer, venue, and fan perspective, my mind comes back to:
How do the fans view this experience?
Do the venues/teams/etc. have the right tools to be successful?
IV. Tim Chambers talks about ‘The Bad News Business:
Woe to Tim’s inbox after this one.
Mainly: “It is what it is” is totally the common mindset.
I’ll pivot to give you a few bullets about my own thoughts on this topic:
“Tickets” and “ticketing” have become an all-encompassing label for the entire industry. This has meant that it feels like it is tougher to nail down where improvements can be made or where challenging situations originate.
Are the T&Cs, technologies, and service in the industry a problem? If customers say they are, they are. Since lockdowns have ended, that message has been mixed like almost everything: some good, some bad.
“Drip Pricing” and “pricing” in general is an interesting topics that I’ve been working on and studying for a long time. AudienceView shared some research with me that said 61% of people make their choice based on content, not price. At the same time, people have limited budgets and there are more shows and events on sale than ever. There’s some sort of breaking point coming.
“Supply and Demand” thinking or “commodity thinking” around tickets miss the point. They are comforting to many in the industry, but it is wrong because tickets are the exact opposite of a commodity. These are “once in a lifetime” events, even if a show goes 8 times a week. You’ll never have the exact same conditions ever again. So you should be acting like that with your messaging. If not, you are pissing away your pricing power.
As an industry, people need to be able to make it a sustainable career. It can be a bit of the Hunger Games for everyone involved. When I stopped working for teams and went to the EMP and then to the secondary market, it was the realization that I had no intention of working for barely above minimum wage into my 30s so I could say I worked in “sports” or the “arts”. I enjoy the stuff, but I also like my Tesla and my Jordans more.
With that, there does need to be room made for new folks, new ideas, and new approaches. I met some really great younger ticket folks in Seattle and they often mentioned to me that the conferences and the industry can feel inhospitable to younger professionals. I know tons of people, but I have to say I can definitely see where they are coming from.
The Key: Share your thoughts with me. I’ll anonymously print some of the stuff next week and/or on the blog. Or, I won’t share them at all if you just want to vent.
V. Links:
Drew McManus is as nice as this profile makes him seem:
I talked with Drew for about 15 minutes.
We traded fashion tips, talked about tickets and technology, and more.
Check out Upstage CRM. And, Drew’s old blog that he wrote for 18 years.
Scott Galloway talks about birth and ideas:
One good thing about having the newsletter lists that I have, doing the podcast, teaching, and writing is that I get exposed to ideas from all kinds of people and all kinds of places.
In my time, I’ve found that the magic happens at the collision of ideas.
It is one of the reasons that this newsletter ends up how it does each week: I’m looking to mash ideas together to figure out what I think.
I found this interesting slide show about mashing ideas together called “The SpongeBob Technique”.
I sit on a board where one former board member liked to run meetings like a social club to chat, gossip, and hang out for 45 minutes of the scheduled hour. Then, would scramble for the last 15 minutes to get the work done and go over.
Every time but once.
When the person said, “I’ll give you some of your time back.”
What a jerk!
That made this piece stick out to me.
Linktree: Find everything I’m up to.
Join the ‘Talking Tickets’ Slack Group. Almost 300 people from around the world.
Cover Genius will be at the TPC in Birmingham in March.
You’ll be able to find out how refund protection can:
Generate a new revenue stream that can equal over $100,000 a year in new revenue.
Why refund protection helps guests by tickets and gives them peace of mind. 48% uptake should tell you a little bit.
How offering these options improves customer service including a boost to the all-important NPS score. Cover Genius has a 65…better than the 43 of the newsletter!
Don’t forget to mark your calendars. I’m coming to:
London
NYC
DC
Sydney
And, more this year.
Want me to come to your town?
Let me know and let’s figure it out!
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