Talking Tickets 18 June 2021: Man City's Brand! Opera Australia's Marketing! The Boss vs. Brokers! And, More!
Number 89
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1. Man City has its eyes on winning over America:
Big Ideas:
Engagement is a BS measurement.
SMART objectives rule.
Brand is the accumulation of all the touchpoints, good and bad, over time.
Last week, I said that the Everton story was a companion to this story so as promised let’s talk about branding and strategy.
Manchester City has done a great job of setting up a global network, buying teams in markets around the globe like Melbourne, New York, Mumbai, and more. From the article, you see a very conscious focus on New York City that has included them building a soccer pitch in Spanish Harlem.
What I like about Man City’s approach is that they talk about very specific behaviors, target audiences, and positions.
The Everton example, on the surface, seems a bit more tactically driven than Man City’s because there seems to be a heavy focus on “engagement”, the makeup of the current squad, and a belief that there is just a lot of opportunity in America.
In the past months I’ve spent a lot of time talking about branding because any competent marketer should know enough to point out three things to you:
Your brand is the accumulation of all of the good and bad impressions that your audience has had with you.
A strong brand is key to create price integrity and attracting folks to you.
Brands build over time and you have to invest in them.
Let’s look at these two brands and see how they can be successful in the United States market.
There is no doubt that Manchester City is more popular than Everton. But the key measure of where Everton is starting is brand awareness, likely unaided awareness.
The opportunity for Everton lies in behavioral segmentation of the market. The Everton story highlights a really cool question that could drive some key behavioral insights: “Why do people choose to follow Everton?”
Answer that question and you can lay out the meaningful/actionable grid to build a segmentation that helps you identify people that act in a similar way.
From there it is a matter of targeting the right audience.
This is something that Man City seems to have done pretty well with their discussion and focus on New York City, the way that they break out colleges, and a focus on kids under 13. (This part mirrors the NFL’s research that pointed out that 18 was the point where it became really tough to get someone to become a football fan.)
Lay out a good position.
In Man City’s case the position seems pretty clear: you position about who you are and what you do. They should talk about their success and giving back. These things highlight what matters about supporting them.
In Everton’s case, the opposite approach makes sense. They should position against their competition.
They could choose to build their brand around being not Liverpool or not the Big Six. If you want to see what this looks like, check out this ad by Avis:
From there they can lay out their strategies to create measurable signs that they are hitting their goals.
“Engagement” ain’t it.
You need these objectives to be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Ambitious
Realistic
Time-Bound
Engagement is none of those things, but it gets thrown around a lot. So be careful, if it isn’t SMART, it is likely BS.
The big key after all of this is executing in the proper way using the marketing mix.
Man City’s Cityzens program is a great jumping off point for Man City fans. While Everton’s membership program requires someone to get back to you, creating friction. And, their digital offering isn’t nearly as slick and attractive as Man City’s. (Also, I had to look for it among the membership offerings. As opposed to Man City’s that sits right at the top of the home page in a banner ad.)
The thing with awareness is that it may not be the most important step.
The Premier League is as popular in the United States as MLS. And, the popularity of EPL broadcasts grew 74% between 2009-2019.
If awareness isn’t the key, what is the next step?
Just doing cool TikTok’s isn’t likely to drive people to watch your matches, buy your merchandise, or visit the club when they come to America, or get them to come to England to see a match.
Just driving awareness is meaningless without action. It is a wasted effort.
So come to America, but think about what you want people to do when they know you exist and push people towards that.
Action can help them conquer America’s sports market, but engagement most definitely won’t.
2. Opera Australia has shown us some important marketing lessons that apply to everyone, even now:
Big Ideas:
Market Orientation has been something I’ve been hammering and it pops up once again.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy.
Doing the basics right is likely to always pay dividends.
I’ll be honest with you, I don’t agree with everything here because I think there is too much emphasis on tactics. But the core idea of putting the customer at the center of your efforts is a definite winner.
I did a podcast with HBSE’s CEO, Scott O’Neil, and we were discussing some changes that we hoped would happen due to the pandemic and putting the fan back at the center of everything was one of the ideas that came up.
Many of the readers of this newsletter will have seen my talk “Fans For Life” or participated in the workshop of the same name. In both of these, I talk about the idea of creating fans for life and the importance of the relationship with the fan. We hit on things like:
You aren’t your customer so your ideas about what your customer wants are often wrong and dangerous.
The power of connection and community.
Focusing on providing value throughout the experience.
Lo and behold, I find this article that highlights Opera Australia and their efforts to grow their audience a very good read to help you think through some different ideas as we move through the pandemic.
In the way that I try to learn something from everything I read, I like to get perspectives and try and apply them in different contexts. That’s what this article has spurred in me. A willingness to look at Opera Australia’s success and find ways that all of us can be more successful heading forward.
First, you need to understand your fans and customers.
Georgia Rivers, who was involved in a lot of this work growing the fan base and customer base for Opera Australia has mentioned how you can’t have the same offer for everyone.
Seems simple enough, but we often see campaigns that are very one-size-fits-all in their approach.
So you have to begin your efforts now by taking a step back, diagnosing the situation, and doing some research to get to know what your customers want, need, and value.
Second, positioning of your offering matters.
The top article talks about “anxiety” and I don’t know if I like that word or not, but I do think you want to position your offering as a solution to some desire that folks want.
But the key idea remains that you need to create some sort of desire to take action in your target market. Positioning is where your research pays off and you are able to shine a light on what you do or how you are better than your competition.
The reality of competition is that we are often unsure about who or what we are really competing with. In the case of Opera Australia, they may not be competing against other culture options. Instead they may be competing against something like dinner at The Butler, my favorite restaurant to go to when I’m in Sydney, or a sporting event, a ride on the ferry, a walk in the park, drinks in the CBD, or something else.
So you have to position in a way that shows your value and makes it obvious that your option is the best option.
Finally, don’t get too caught up on just one way of reaching your audience.
This article puts a lot of emphasis on the advertising campaign and I want to comfort you by saying that there is a huge list of things that you can do to promote and drive business that aren’t big TV ads.
If you’ve done the job of marketing well through a logical pattern of research, strategy, and into the marketing mix, you’ll realize that depending on your target market there are a number of outlets and ways of reaching these folks.
When I did some work on a presidential campaign in 2012, one of the ideas that came out was the use of ads on the sides of buses in certain neighborhoods because the targeting was that good that they knew how to target specific bus lines.
The bigger thing than how precise the targeting was is that bus ads was on the list of potential options.
Your potential route to reach your market is likely only limited by your creativity. When I was working on a project in 2019, on one project we talked about doing direct mail in combination with QR codes. On another, we talked about the effectiveness of online video and public television.
I mean, there’s no limits.
That’s the key here. You absolutely put the customer at the heart of what you are doing. But you don’t stop there. You build a strong strategy with a good position and follow up with the right kinds of promotion.
That worked before the pandemic and has been working for over 100 years. I’m pretty sure it is likely to continue to work. You just have to be prepared to do that work.
Big Ideas:
Strategy is about power and whether or not you are gaining power in the market.
Brokers are in a tough spot because the landscape is changing rapidly.
SeatGeek comes out of this situation having improved their position.
I could almost write my entire newsletter this week on the different angles on this story.
Eric Fuller writes about the idea that SeatGeek is hammering one of their key constituencies by kicking brokers orders back to them at the request of the theatre and the Boss.
Tony Knopp looks at the issue through the lens of money.
Guess what?
They are both right in a lot of ways.
I’ve been thinking about this all week and how to really think through what all of this means to the ticket sales ecosystem in the States, to the brand of Bruce, and SeatGeek.
Again, I could write a whole newsletter on all the different aspects of this situation and once the new and improved DaveWakeman.com is finished, I’ll go back to the blog there with some more ideas…I’m sure.
I’ll take a few minutes this morning to look at this situation through the lens of “The Power Framework”, a framework created by Dr. Kamal Munir at Cambridge.
The idea behind Dr. Munir’s work is that all modern strategy comes down to power. And, you should view any strategy through the lens of how it increases or decreases your power over your customers, competition, and suppliers.
In thinking about this situation, SeatGeek wins against their competition because they’ve managed to add some pretty powerful names to their portfolio like sports teams, Broadway, international partners, and more. So doing exactly what Bruce Springsteen and Jujamcyn want is operating to strengthen their position against their competition.
In taking action on brokers’ purchases, they are also winning against their customers. Because the marketing story they can tell is that we stand up for the customer and we do what is right for the customer when they purchase from SeatGeek, even if it is the primary or secondary market purchase. No matter what, we have the customer in mind.
Now, I know that this isn’t something most fans think of when they are buying tickets, but a good marketer can make it matter to customers.
Finally, when you look at the deal through power over suppliers, it gets a little dicey because SeatGeek is sitting in the middle of a platform that operates on both sides of the market.
Again, from the standpoint of their primary market business…this is great. Primary market suppliers are going to be looking at this and thinking to themselves that SeatGeek can fulfill their promises when they say they will shut down secondary purchases on hot shows or games and won’t just mouth platitudes.
On the flipside, this does lessen the relationship with the secondary market.
But the thing I’m about to say that will likely fill my inbox with hate mail is that I’m not sure that this matters because the truth is that about 80% of the secondary market business is going through Vivid Seats right now if I’m to believe what brokers tell me. So the costs of pissing off brokers is small compared to the potential benefit of improving their position with customers and the primary market where if you look at the global nature of SeatGeek’s business is where they are playing most of the time.
And, the alternative reality is that if a broker thinks SeatGeek is going to be the best place to move some tickets…that’s where they are going to go because SeatGeek has all the power because they own the customer.
If I’m a broker coming into this new environment, I look around at where the power is and recognize that what was working before is likely shifting, maybe not quickly, but if I don’t have customers, strong relationships with my suppliers, and the competition is increasing…my business model can get very uncomfortable and unstable very quickly. Because the power dynamics are playing against everyone, either improving or slipping.
Again, as I’ve thought about this…my thoughts on this have changed.
But right now, I think SeatGeek actually pulled off a pretty strong move under the circumstances.
Bruce, on the other hand, call me!
4. Bobbleheads are a means to drive attendance!
Big Ideas:
Relationships matter, duh!
You need a strategy to make sure you are going in the right direction.
The most valuable asset you have is your brand.
This is a good one and Corey Leff is a long time friend of The Business of Fun and Talking Tickets. So if you don’t get the morning newsletter, sign up.
Here is an example of a few things when it comes to fan development:
Investing in the relationship pays off over time.
Strategy before tactics.
Long-term brand building beats short-term activation, over time.
The idea called Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) is something I’ve been trying to teach y’all for a long time. I must be breaking through since I see Gary V talking about it constantly now.
Jokes aside, LCV is super important for a number reasons like easier sales, higher NPS scores, more word of mouth marketing, on and on.
But it doesn’t happen by accident.
You have to plan for it.
That’s what makes investing in relationships so valuable.
The upside here is fairly clear.
The opposite side and the challenge is that in too many instances the incentives at a macro and micro level are to commoditize everything.
Which means that you look at your fans as numbers on a spreadsheet and you don’t invest in the relationship with them.
The importance of the relationship highlights the need to put strategy first.
An example I’ve shared in the past is about the Atlanta Hawks and their work to build a brand that reflects their city.
This is an impressive bit of work they did and it all began by taking a step backwards to diagnose the situation, not just throw stuff at the wall, say we want to attract millennials or something and hope for the best.
Melissa Proctor and her team built a strategy:
Research into the community, the brand, everything.
Segmentation of the market around behavior. You see this in the targeting of the “Next Gen Atlantans” segmentation. Which is also where you see the beauty of their positioning. They made choice.
That’s the heart of strategy. Decisions. You have to make a choice.
So if you are going to build long-term relationships, that is a choice and one you have to make.
Finally, doing the first two things requires an understanding of the investments necessary to build a strong brand.
There is a book, more of a study, called The Long and Short of It by some researchers in the UK, Les Binet and Peter Field. I have a copy that I refer to when I need it for a project.
The gist of the research points to the importance of long-term investment in brand building.
Short-term activation works great in the first year without the support of long-term brand building activities. But by the end of year three, you’ve lost almost a lot of your sales because people don’t know who you are.
Meaning, you need to invest in the long-term stuff at the same time you are doing short-term activations.
Don’t be fooled by the final sales and think that this is the only thing that matters. That’s called last click attribution and it has hurt more marketers than I can count at this point.
Unless you plan on only being in business for one year.
Then, YOLO!
This matters because as a team or any organization, you need to invest in both, short-term activation and long-term brand building. You can’t just assume that your brand is stamped on people’s minds…you have to make sure it is.
Because over time, people’s impression of your brand fades if you aren’t there reminding them of how awesome you are.
That’s why I talk a lot about brand values, brand DNA, and brand mission in my talks. You need to know what 2-3 words or phrases you want folks to think of when they think of you. Then you have to hammer them until they are reflected in your brand surveys.
Your brand is your most valuable asset. For publicly traded companies, somewhere between 30-50% of their market cap is in the value of their brand.
Your brand is nothing to mess with. The same can be said for your customers, fans.
Invest in relationships.
Build a solid strategy that emphasizes that.
And, focus on long-term brand building and you are likely to have a healthier, more profitable business.
5. Systems Thinking and the arts got me to thinking about systems:
Big Ideas:
Our businesses don’t exist in isolation.
Focus on how you offer value to your business community.
Value can be tangible or intangible.
A friend of mine, Bruce, sent this to me and said, “this might be up your alley.” And, as I was talking to my friend, Chris, he said that a character on The Office would talk about how he went to Cornell, regularly.
So when I saw this, I thought about whether or not a man that studied at Cambridge during the pandemic would read a piece like this and include it in his newsletter.
Yes!
Duh!
A simple definition of Systems Thinking is the belief that the components of a system will act differently together than separately. And, that everything exists as part of the whole.
It goes hand-in-hand with the Peter Drucker idea I used last summer of “a healthy business can’t exist in a sick society.”
The above piece is a bit of a think piece and that was the pieces intent.
But I was thinking about this all week. When I talked with HBSE CEO, Scott O’Neil this week and I asked him where he thought sports business was right now. We talked about how he hopes we are at a point where sports business remembers the importance of its place as a gathering spot and how that had been missing for the last few years.
In looking out across the landscape of live entertainment right now, it is easy to get trapped into thinking about the one component or components that you control.
Honestly, who can blame anyone?
The big challenge all of us are going to need to deal with is to recognize that we do exist in a larger system and that our jobs right now are to find ways to integrate and add value to the larger system that we exist in.
First, how do we elevate our community and the areas we are a part of?
In 2019 when I spoke at the Australian Football League’s annual meeting, I made the case for the power of live sports to create communities, connection, and to draw people together.
As a marketer, I realize that most brands have almost no impact on their customers. In sports and entertainment, the ratio is flipped. In a lot of cases, if you are a fan of a team or an event, you are a fan and that fandom is an essential aspect of your identity.
Don’t believe me?
What’s the first thing you think of when you think about my fandom? Hit reply and let me know. But I’m guessing you are going to give me one of three answers.
The big key is that you want to be a positive in your environment.
How will you achieve this?
Second, what can you do to improve the value you deliver to your system?
This can take the form of tangible and intangible value.
The key is really to think about adding value at each and every turn.
I did a podcast this week that should be posted in a week or two and one of the questions was about adding value at each turn of the sales process.
My answer was have to add value because we are overwhelmed with noise and stuff. So if you don’t add value at each turn, you are just noise, ease to ignore or worse.
So focus on adding value in the systems you are in.
Finally, recognize that change is constant.
Again, back to my talk with Scott and my trip to Australia.
Scott talked about change and used the analogy of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. I lauged because that’s a similar analogy that I used when I talked in Paramatta at Angela and Jo’s Ticketing Professionals Conference AU.
And what I said on that day was this: “Change is constant. We have a choice to embrace it or to allow it to overrun us and hope for the best.”
What really hit me about this article was that when you think about the issues that have been exposed in live entertainment and tickets, they were already there and now we just have to be willing to look at them and decide if we are going to embrace change or try and hide from it.
It really isn’t much of a choice. At least to me!
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