Talking Tickets 12 March 2021: Broadway Will Be Back! Brokers! The Grand Final During the Day! Me! And, More!
Year 2 Number 23 (75)
Hey!
Well, let’s not bury the lede here: I got my first dose of the Moderna vaccine on Tuesday and maybe that means we are nearing the end of this mess!
Again, I’m doing theTalking Tickets quarterly satisfaction survey! It is three questions, takes thirty seconds, and makes sure I can deliver even more value each Friday and in other ways as we hit the other side of the pandemic.
If you are curious about the survey and NPS, I’ve teamed up with Eventellect to put together a worksheet on doing your own NPS survey. You can get the worksheet by emailing me.
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Happy Hour tonight at 5 PM EST.
Also, this is the 75th issue! Not a huge milestone number, typically. But a good enough reason to say thank you for reading! Due to this newsletter and the podcast, I’ve created so many great relationships and opportunities over the last 3-4 years! So I just wanted to say thank you because I can.
As I was finishing this week’s newsletter, there was a piece that came out on ESPN.com by their investigative journalist, Tisha Thompson. I’m quoted along with a bunch of folks that are readers of this newsletter and some of the folks from the primary and secondary side…it is a very in-depth article and I’ll cover more on it next week.
To the tickets!
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1. Broadway will be back, slowly, steadily:
I remember seeing my first Broadway show, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, at the Music Box. Jason Patric was god-awful as Brick, but I met Jonathan Radler at the show and we struck up a relationship that put me on the path that helped me be in your inbox this morning.
When I first had the chance to give a talk about selling tickets in a foreign country, I emailed Jonathan and told him that if I’d never met him I might have never had the chance to do some of this stuff.
Needless to say without NYC and without Broadway, I’d have taken a much different path in life.
Let’s just say doing really low-level grunt work for the Seahawks, Sonics, and Dolphins for minimum wage wasn’t going to open the doors that I have had opened for me due to Broadway.
All of that nostalgia out of the way, I’m excited to see Broadway come back because of two things:
I love NYC. I still self-identify as a NY-er and I’m going back.
I love Broadway. I mean, I was so excited to see some of the worst shows ever because Broadway on any night is magical.
But the article on Fox Business’s website highlights some of the challenges that we are going to deal with to get back to business.
And, the larger story is not just the initial push but rebuilding the business of Broadway so that we can get everyone back to business over the long-term.
To my mind, I think this highlights the need to focus on three ideas:
First, market research.
As I’ve mentioned a few times, when I went to Australia to speak in 2019, one of the ideas that kept coming up to me was the need to diversify the audiences.
That same thing came up in conversations in London and New York.
It may not have been as pressing, but it was always something folks had in mind.
And, one of the ways that you can diversify your audience is by knowing them better, research.
You are going to want to focus on ethnography, but you won’t be able to until you get folks back into venues. You’ll want to do some small, qualitative research like conversations, focus groups, and those small group things. And, you’ll want to hit some big, quantitative stuff like surveys and polling.
Why?
You’re going to want to know about people’s behaviors, their needs, and the things they value.
Most important here, focus on what people do. Behavioral segmentation is the key.
Second, now is a good time to focus on the product.
Again, to rehash a previous lesson, your product consists of three things:
The core benefit
The actual product
The augmented product
As we head through the pandemic and come out on the other side, it pays to pay attention to these three pieces of the product so that you can create an experience that will cut through against the competition.
When I worked at the Seattle Theatre Group back in the days, one of the ideas that was drilled into me was the idea that for a lot of folks coming to the Paramount, this was their one big trip to the city each year.
While it is easy to take Broadway, the West End, or any professional production for granted when you see it 16 times as I did with The Sound of Music starring Richard Chamberlain, my first year at the Paramount. For someone, this might be their first time seeing a show, a musical, or a play.
Create the product that is going to make them talk about it for the rest of their lives, recognizing that it isn’t just a ticket to a show, but an experience that can transform them, move them, and give them a memory that will last.
You can do that with the ticket, the merchandise, the service, the way you partner with different venues, whatever.
Do something that you know is great for the customer.
Finally, promotion.
As my friends in the UK would say, I catch a lot of stick from time to time because I talk about the basics…a lot.
But I’ve recognized over the years that what I think is basic isn’t what everyone is doing. If it was, there wouldn’t be so much space for me to talk about it.
So I bring up promotion in the vein of research and the need to be media neutral in your promotional activities.
What does that mean?
It means not having a predetermined idea about how you are going to promote a show, a game, or an event because that is the way it is done or has always been done.
I like to bring up this idea of media neutrality again this morning because we have to recognize that our marketing mix is contextual.
As an example, the Roundabout Theatre sells its shows entirely differently than Wicked sells its show.
Why?
Different audiences. Different value. Different needs.
Another example, Frozen is going to be sold much differently in Australia than it was in New York City.
I could go on and this lesson applies to any area you are focusing on sports, theatre, concerts, performing arts, or museums.
Your promotional activities need to reflect the audience you are trying to reach which starts with research and segmentation built on behavior. Through this you are likely to know how to build a better product. And, when that’s all tight, you can promote with a better mix of activities because you aren’t shooting for generic “Broadway fan”, you are targeting based on specific behaviors.
I’m drilling this a lot lately, but don’t miss the opportunity to rebuild your business with a more solid foundation, especially when it comes to the way you market and sell your experiences.
I’m excited to see Broadway come back and I’ll be excited to get back to the West End as well.
I’m a fast reader.
But this one was a lot to get through.
It is like the entire history of the past 20 years of tickets in one post.
This isn’t a good article for the secondary market. But I’m not sure that it is a good article for the entire industry.
A lot of times when I’m traveling, folks will ask me about the secondary market in the States and why the market for tickets is so much different in the US versus the rest of the world.
Let me see if I can encapsulate where the biggest differences between the States and the rest of the world comes into play into a few bullet points:
Technology drives a lot of this. In that there is greater technological innovation on the primary side in the rest of the world than there is in the US. In the States, we’ve had a massive consolidation of businesses in many industries, not just tickets. But all of the consolidation means that there is less competition within industries, leading to less innovation. Want a good primer on it, pick up Matt Stoller’s book, Goliath. But due to the nature of consolidation, a lot of the innovation on the technology side comes from the secondary market.
Legal obligations. In the US, a lot of the contracts between ticket providers, promoters, and content producers are different than they are in other parts of the world. This makes the nature of fulfilling the partnership different and can create an environment where there is a bit more rigidness in the relationship.
Money. The money involved in some of the contracts and partnerships has created an environment where the primary market usually relies on one avenue to control distribution on the primary side and this gives shape to the ability for the secondary market to operate in the manner that it does in the States.
Obviously, this is way, way simplified.
To the article, one of the things I’ve been thinking about before the pandemic was the way that the ticket market would work when we hit the next down cycle.
As I’ve mentioned before, the signs that an industry is open to disruption include:
Your prices are out of touch with the market.
You aren’t adjusting to consumer technologies.
You don’t know your customers.
The last revolution in the industry was a long time ago.
All of these were evident and more in the last few years before the pandemic.
In doing some research on pricing, pricing is often the top concern that teams and organizations share with me. Meaning, how do we price more effectively.
Technology, look at how much of sports teams sales in the States still revolves around smiling and dialing.
Customer knowledge?! This is a concern because it is part of what drives the near hysterical call for “DATA!”
Revolutions in the industry, really the strong entrance of technology and the secondary market around 2003-2004 was the last huge revolution in the industry.
In an environment like this, you are going to see people enter the market that focus on “arbitrage”. How many times do I hear brokers talk about “arbitrage”? Enough that I feel like I’m at some daytrading conference.
It might exist. But playing with the tickets like day-trading stocks is going to have some of the same consequences that happen in other commodity driven markets. Again, just look at my cryptocurrency wallet. (Up about 15% this week, BTW.)
I want to steer this back to a few big ideas that I think are at the heart of the challenge that everyone is going to deal with selling tickets once things open up and the pandemic starts to hit our rearviewmirror.
First, demand generation.
This is the most basic thing, but the conversation around it is often muddled or non-existent.
Okay, let me not pull my punches.
In too many cases, we see that the conversation about demand happens like no one has any control over driving demand at all.
A game needs to be “hot”.
“Drum up interest.”
"Mid-week games in the spring are a tough sell.”
All of these are excuses made when you are too product-focused, sales-driven, or advertising-oriented.
Demand generation has been a problem for a while now and it is likely to get worse coming out of the pandemic.
Looking at the ratings of the NBA All-Star game this weekend, it seems that the likelihood that the viewership challenge isn’t just a blip but something that is going to need real attention.
Also, another reminder, demographics is an awful way to segment your market.
18-year-olds and 34-year-olds have the same interests? Do they act the same way? By the same thing? All due to their age?
I digress.
Demand generation begins with a focus on the customer, Market Orientation. Do some research, segment, target, position.
Second, the marketing mix is going to need to some serious consideration.
In this story on the secondary market, you actually see a lot of the challenges that folks are dealing with in regards to the marketing mix on full display:
Place: do you want to be direct or indirect. Where do you want your tickets to show up?
Price: what’s your price? Do you want to sell your tickets in different places at different prices? (Don’t discount!)
Product: is it just the ticket? What’s the value of a night at the game? Show? How can we move up the value ladder with our product?
Promotion: why are brokers beating us to our customers? Why don’t we turn up in search terms? Why are folks going to the internet to find our tickets and not coming directly to us? How do we change that?
You are going to have to consider all of these things.
They work together.
In the example from the article of the Broadway show in North Carolina, the customer in question went to the internet when she saw a show that she wanted to see. From the venue’s standpoint, as much as how the secondary market was using white label sites…the second level thinking should go, how do we address our marketing mix so that it becomes easier for people to know where to find us when they want to go to a show?
Finally, strategy before tactics.
You have to know where you are going to compete and how you are going to win to get ahead.
Throwing open the doors isn’t recovery like we talked about last week. A full recovery is going to take some time.
How do you get to a solid strategy?
Research first. That research will help you develop a solid segment map. Your map should help you see some real juicy targets of opportunity. And, after that you are going to need to position your business, probably against the competition since it seems likely from the data that a lot of folks are going to push in to capture as much of the spending as possible on the other side of the pandemic.
This article is about the secondary market, but nothing happens in isolation…and so we have to get back to looking at the entire picture.
3. Sports leagues lost lots of money in 2020-2021:
My problem with a lot of the analysis in these stories or these projections is that folks are often just guessing and that can be dangerous.
As we’ve seen throughout this pandemic, every time someone has had a chance to take the best-case scenario and place a bet they have…and in almost every case, that bet has been a loser.
I don’t say that to be a downer, but just to highlight the danger of being too optimistic and not making plans for other potential outcomes.
When I’m coaching salespeople, I tell them in every meeting or sales call make sure you have at least two goals for your call: the next logical step and the maximum step.
In regards to recovery from the pandemic, I’d suggest that people think about their plans through the lens of three potential scenarios:
The best-case scenario.
The worst-case scenario.
The likely scenario.
This allows you to be optimistic while still living with both feet in reality.
I’m going to tell you that recovery is a marketing problem and if you are new here, I got into marketing because it is where all the money is. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of people feel like driving demand for tickets and events is just some magical thing that happens and that there is no link between effective marketing and driving revenue.
I highlighted the decline in ratings for the NBA All-Star Game above. We don’t have to look too far to see that ratings for everything have taken big hits during the pandemic. It could be a minor thing and pass once the pandemic is behind us, but are you willing to bet your business on it?
This is the question to pose as everyone as we head to the other side of this thing: am I willing to bet my business and my career on a magic bullet or a guess?
There were two articles I read this week that frustrated me to no end. I’ll do you a favor because I won’t link to them.
What I will say is that in too many cases, people are just winging their decision-making processes now. They are betting everything that nothing will be different, that everything will just be like none of this ever happened.
I may be wrong and things may go back to the way they were and guesses and wishful thinking totally work…but like I say when I talk to marketers, “I’m a trained marketer, I don’t guess.”
And, coming through this pandemic, the work looks a lot like getting back to the basics of marketing:
Research
Segmentation of the market
Targeting
Positioning
Funnels
Goals
Strategy
Your customized marketing mix
I say this because people lost a lot of money and a lot of opportunity due to something that was outside of our control, but we can control what re-opening and recovery look like.
In my opinion, taking control of the process looks a lot like getting back to the basics because recovery will be a process and how difficult it is really comes down to the decisions that folks make over the next few months.
4. The Citz in Glasgow still stays relevant throughout the pandemic:
The pandemic has meant we have all had to learn a lot and change some of our assumptions.
What I love about the case study here is the closing where Elly Goodman talks about the need to listen.
I love the Doorstop Disco. It reminds me of Amy Kline’s singing earlier in the pandemic and the money she raised for folks out of work.
But back to the big idea here which is that Elly went to people and she recognized that no matter what they were going to talk with their customers because some of them were going to be isolated or zoomed out.
As we move through the pandemic to a point where things are opening and we can have crowds again, it is important to pay attention to this idea of being customer-focused again and again.
I can’t reiterate this point enough, the data we had before the pandemic is useless in almost every case. So we have to get close to customers to understand what is going on.
My prediction for the Citz is that they will find recovery a lot easier to achieve because they’ve been close to their customers the whole time and they already have the muscle in place to do the work.
For everyone else, I’ll challenge you to find a way to get in touch with your customers this week.
5. The AFL’s Grand Final will be played at its traditional time this year:
I’m a big fan of storytelling and the power of storytelling in sports is limitless.
As we close out the week, I bring this story up because it highlights one of the most important ideas in marketing and one that I feel can never get enough attention in sports, the power of the brand.
A few weeks back, I shared the view I have of branding that it is the accumulation of all the good and bad encounters people have with your business over time. The powerful thing about sports is that in many cases, these connections and this brand weight are carried over from generation to generation.
For example, I’m a Spurs fan. That was passed on to me by David Lynam and Simon Mabb. They talked to me about the club with such reverence, but where this whole concept came together was when I was chatting with Simon the other day and he talked about being excited to take his dad on the stadium tour once things opened up again.
This is awesome because when we were at INTIX in Dallas, Simon’s dad was texting us updates of a Spurs’ match while we were on the tradeshow floor.
Through Simon and his father, the traditions and associations have been passed on to me and down to my son.
This matters because that’s 3 generations across two continents.
Brands in other industries don’t get this kind of traction around their brand. I mean, Tesla but I don’t know that I’ll hear my boy say, “I drive a Tesla because my dad drove a Tesla.”
Could happen. Never say never, but we know for sure that he is going to be a Tottenham fan and an Alabama fan because those are the teams I follow and so does he.
(Since we are talking about the AFL, I’m also a Melbourne FC fan and wear my beanie everywhere for the past two winters!)
This idea of tradition matters.
The power of stories matters.
This is why I have loved watching what Steve Cohen has been doing around the Mets, he runs towards his fandom and the stories that are attached to the team.
This is why I harp on the brand so much, these brand associations can take decades to build and be torn down in moments.
So to close out this week, I’ve been doing some branding work the last few months, and the way I view branding has gained some clarity.
In that vein, I want to give you my 5 key ideas about brands and branding:
There are no generic brands. Know that and embrace. Be distinct!
The brand is everything.
Meaning makes the brand. And, if it adds meaning to the brand, it is brand building.
Your brand needs to leave a mark on the mental space in your target market’s head. You need people to think of 2 or 3 keywords or terms when they think of you.
The fastest way to tear down your brand is with discounts.
It always comes back to discounting, doesn’t it?!
But the Grand Final is going back to its traditional spot…that’s a great thing. Now, if I can only get tickets and into Australia.
P.S. Check out the Amazon Prime show on the AFL, Making Their Mark! So great!
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Got my first dose of the vaccine! Let me be free, but I’m still in DC! For now!
Some great new podcasts lined up. If you have any topics or ideas you want me to hit on, let me know. I’m going to continue to post mini-episodes.
Visit my website to find my blog and me!
Keep an eye on my blog this week, I’m going to launch a new training on sales writing and using business language to advance the sale. I’m still figuring out the platform to host the session on, but I’m doing two sessions on April 5th one that will work for folks in the States and Europe and one for the folks in Australia and time zones on the other side of the world. The cost will be $39 per person and I’m putting together some bonuses and added values to throw in. If you want me to reserve your spot before I open up registration next week, send me a note.
Check out Booking Protect. Refund protection should be a vital part of your re-opening and recovery plan!
See what the Activity Stream team is up to. They’ve been rolling out a series of blogs about tools and tips to recover.