Talking Tickets 3 December 2021: Data Needs Direction! Big Events Are Hot! Speculation on the Secondary! And, More!
113 Issues In Still Going Strong
Hey!
We’ve hit December. I can’t make it to the homes of Christmas that I usually hit this time of year like London, Sydney, or Paris…so I’ll just visit Atlanta and the holidays with Coca-Cola exhibit.
I’m continuing to register interest in the pricing course I’m putting together. You need to fill in the answers to four questions and you can share the form with anyone that might benefit from the course.
Some of the stuff we are sharing:
What the Wu-Tang Clan can teach us about pricing power.
How to do proper pricing research.
Why pricing is both an art and a science.
Register your interest and I will let you know when the BETA course gets to rockin’.
BTW, give me the gift of sharing the newsletter with folks that you think will find it useful.
To the Tickets!
One more thing, I’m going to do two “Strategy Day” events over Zoom/Teams for folks looking to set up their sales, marketing, and strategies for 2022. This is a group exercise and we can do it your team, or as individuals…up to you.
Each “Strategy Day” will be two 90 minute sessions with homework, action items, and follow-up from me. I’m planning on doing these the week of 13-17 December. And, potentially, December 29-30.
I’ll limit each group to 8 people and the cost per person is $350. For teams, we can work on expanding the online sessions to fit more people.
I’m going to do one that works for the time zones in Europe and the US. And, one that focuses on Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of the world.
During “Strategy Day”, we will work on things like:
Where do you have power in the market?
Can you adjust your product?
Are you setting the right price?
What is your position in the market?
And, more. Including action items, goals, and one-to-one follow up with me.
If you want to claim one of the spots for the week of the 13th, send me an email and I will send you a link to get signed up. This will be fast-paced, interactive, and get you focused on 2022.
1. The Big Story: Big events are hot! Speculators and Bad Faith Brokers Harm the Whole Business!
Big Ideas:
Speculation in the secondary market can easily get out of control. Protecting consumers from things like this has been a core idea driving the NATB and Gary Adler’s idea of “Resale Done Right.”
There is a growing divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” in event sales.
Re-opening isn’t recovery. Recovery + Volatility = Opportunity.
I’ll start the week off with this story of the Big Ten Championship Game and the fact that Michigan beat Ohio State for the first time in the Jim Harbaugh era because that was bound to drive ticket prices high on the secondary market.
Also, my buddy, Paul, and his son are big Michigan fans and I wanted Michigan to win so that they could celebrate.
There is a lot to unpack with any story right now, but in looking at this situation, you see a lot of challenges that folks are going to be dealing with and have to come to terms with over the next months as re-opening moves to recovery, hopefully.
Let’s look at three things this morning.
The jumping-off point here is that we see that folks are willing to go to events as long as they seem hot or exclusive.
We have seen that with the rise in sales of premium seats and we are seeing that where big events are selling well like the return of long-running shows on Broadway that have demand that is comparable to previous holiday seasons.
The challenge to deal with here is to recognize that you need to lay the groundwork for sustained success while this peak is happening.
For a lot of organizations, this means:
Capturing the relationship with the customer.
Rethinking the sales funnel and the customer journey. Reflecting the need to build a deeper relationship with your customers.
Focusing on ways to continue to add value to your customers at every touchpoint.
How does this play out?
On capturing the relationship, give people some incentive to engage with you. I’ve seen people put incentives into books and other places where they can capture people’s information in a way that you can begin to develop a relationship.
Using ticket resale and the desire of the primary content provider to collect data as an example, what would happen if you bought your tickets to Wicked on StubHub and as you entered the show there was a QR code that you could scan to get a copy of “I’m Not That Girl” emailed to you as a gift.
Would there be knock-on effects?
Even if you capture folks that bought tickets directly from you, you’d gain a relevant data point.
Duh!
This gets even more powerful if you start thinking through the possibilities that musicians, sports teams, and other shows have to deliver something of value easily to their audience in trade for laying the groundwork for a new, deeper relationship.
This matters because there is a growing divide showing up between the people that have “hot” shows or have big names that continue to draw attention for now and everyone else.
First, “hot” is often just luck at this point.
You need to undertake a consistent and focused marketing and sales effort to remove luck from the equation.
Second, brand equity can erode quickly. Just because you are hot today doesn’t mean that you will always be the new, shiny thing.
Even Hamilton was starting to have tickets on sale in many markets before the pandemic. And, they’d be working to inform folks that there were tickets for sale.
Third, “Customers for Life” was the tagline I heard a lot over the years when I was in the secondary market. You need to inject that thinking into your organization so that you don’t look at each sale as a transaction but as an opportunity to build a stronger relationship.
Next, we have the idea of what role the secondary market will play in the recovery of the industry and the challenges that things like speculation can cause folks.
In my view, the secondary market has always been bleeding edge when it comes to finding ways to deliver on the promise of digital advertising to acquire customers.
I’m sure that with Apple’s changes to privacy policies and tracking, there have been huge changes to the way that advertising on mobile devices and through the Apple ecosystem occurs.
That isn’t my area of expertise, so I’ll leave that to the experts in mobile advertising and Apple’s security measures to explain.
What I do know is that the responsiveness of the secondary market is unparalleled.
Say what you will about whether or not there is a place for the secondary market, the folks in the secondary market are obsessive about discovering new ways to reach and capture customers.
There are lessons there.
The challenge isn’t that people in the ecosystem are working to create value, but where there are actions taken that harm the overall industry like speculation can easily do.
I grew up in a resale environment where your word was your bond and you’d never kill an order, no matter what.
You filled those orders.
Over the years, we’ve seen a few situations arise where that fill the order no matter what mentality hasn’t been on display.
There was the Super Bowl in Arizona, Adele and Ed Sheeran orders going bust, and now we have challenges popping up around the Big Ten Championship Game.
As the live entertainment industry begins to recover, now is a good time to reflect on what the industry of the future needs to look like and consider ways to ensure that fans know that when they buy a ticket, they will get the ticket they purchased.
We’ve seen things like the “200% guarantee” and other things, but I think two places to think through the future of tickets lie in ideas that are already available to you.
First, there is the idea of “Resale Done Right” that has been something Gary Adler has talked about through his work with NATB for years.
In Gary’s view, fans have rights. To go further, to be a member of the NATB there is a need to follow a code of ethics to protect the fans and the industry. This played out in the real world during the ScoreBig situation a few years ago when NATB brokers covered orders that other companies didn’t and that would have harmed customers and the industry.
That deals with the secondary market, but on an industry-wide level, we can all look to the work being done by Jonathan Brown and the team at STAR in the UK.
This situation with canceled orders highlights an issue of ethical responsibility on behalf of ticket sellers, but the bigger issue is that research conducted by organizations around the world shows that customers don’t think about primary and secondary, especially in the US, they just think about buying the ticket.
What does this mean?
That just because you aren’t doing the wrong thing, you aren’t getting dinged. So we have to continue to mind the store of the customer experience and work to eliminate business practices that harm the customer and the industry’s ability to recover.
Final point, re-opening isn’t recovery.
Remember my formula for the future:
Recovery + Volatility = Opportunity
All of these things that are happening now are opportunities to reconnect with your customers and rebuild relationships.
This is the topic of my panel at INTIX with Hayley from Booking Protect, Derek from Project Admission, and Einar from Activity Stream.
How do you win back customers now?
This matters because things aren’t the same and “normal” likely was a talking point to start with.
So we have to focus on the customer and do everything we can to create an environment for them to want to come back, again and again. Not just for them, but also for us.
Also, I specifically didn’t suggest giving away “Popular” or something…I’m not crazy. Fans will pay good money for that song!
2. The Road to Recovery: Selling Experience Has to Change:
Big Ideas:
Your market research matters now more than ever.
Gain a grasp on the three elements of your product.
Know your customer journey and be deliberate about it.
My piece in this month’s ALSD newsletter centers around the premium experience. This is something we’ve talked about previously since Corey Leff wrote about the bump in premium sales as the general admission sales slump.
This idea of improving the premium experience has been on my mind a lot lately as well since I’ve spent a lot of time in the premium area over the years.
In writing this piece, I was guided by the big ideas that your research matters because the shape of your market has changed. That the “product” has to be thought of differently and more comprehensively. And, that the customer journey is a purposeful and deliberate process that you need to focus on.
Let me add a little flavor to this since I can’t include everything in a column that needs to be 700-800 words on average.
First, market research.
Every brand project, marketing project, or strategy project I start begins with some form of the question: “What research do you have?”
I’m consistent in my expectation that y’all are going to do your research and do it in a way that you are consistently in the market.
Now more than ever, this matters.
Why?
Because your market has shifted in ways small and large. You can’t just go the business as usual route, you have to know what is driving behaviors and how you can create value in the buying process.
As an example of changes in the markets I know:
DC has lost residents during the pandemic, stopping a decade-long trend of double-digit growth. That’s going to change the market dynamics.
NYC is starting to see residents return to the City, putting an end to the ridiculous notion that people wouldn’t go back to the City.
In London, people have been slow to return to some core areas of the city, making foot track drop near-certain cultural institutes and venues, challenging their recovery efforts.
Also, like my buddy, Frederic tells me, “Almost every question can be answered by the customer.”
I like that.
Second, I think I shared this article on the three phases of the product last week or a few weeks ago, but I’ll share it again to be sure.
In looking at the way that the premium experience is sold now, you can’t just fall back on the access to the club or the parking spot along with some cushioned seats.
You have to consider all three parts of the product:
The actual product: which is the ticket.
The core value: which is how your customer is improved by going to your events.
The augmented product: which is everything surrounding your experience.
As an example, look at the work Scott Spencer and Suite Experience Group are doing with updating websites of single-game suite sales around the United States. Or, check out the way the Copenhagen Opera House sells the experience with a focus on imagination and the grandeur of the space. Finally, take a gander at this landing page for the Sydney Opera House…if only there was sound.
In researching the sites, I feel like most places can do a better job of their landing page, their copy, and selling the experience but those are just easily linked to examples. The augmented product includes the experience of parking your car like I did at the Lexus Garage at Capital One Arena, not bad at all. It can include benefits to membership like the annual trip Red Sox buyers in the first row take. Or, way you approach Wembley Stadium when you are going to a soccer match.
The point is that every touchpoint matters and every aspect of the experience counts.
Finally, this brings us to the customer journey.
In your research, you should actually be able to recognize and spell out the individualized funnel that your customers take to the sale.
In thinking through the idea of a premium sales funnel, you likely have more than one with funnels for new sales, individual sales, suite sales, and renewals.
This means that you have to think through the customer path for each of these “products” and make sure that you end up at the point you need to so that you can achieve your goals.
The ultimate thing in thinking through a new premium sales process is that you need to rethink what you are doing because the market has changed, the value expected has changed, and your experience needs to keep up.
3. How-To: Use Data correctly:
Big Ideas:
Roger Martin is the world’s best strategy teacher.
I’ve talked about the power of Backward Market Research in the past. This is another way of presenting the idea.
Your challenge with data analysis is to not just rely on the data, but direct the data in a direction.
I’m not going to spend a ton of time on data today, but I will highlight that “data” is this idea that keeps floating around and isn’t often clearly defined.
You have to make sure you define it or else you’ll end up chasing your tail.
The way to stop chasing your tail is to always have a hypothesis. That’s what I’ve been telling you and that is what Roger is telling you here as well.
Why does this matter?
Because if you don’t know which road you are heading down, any road will get you there.
It pays to remember the key points of backward market research:
Begin by understanding what you want your research to find out for you. Formulate a question.
Figure out how this answer will best show up. Is that in long-form, percentages, what exactly?
Design a survey around those first two answers.
Roger’s piece combined with mine will give you a better grounding in proper data analytics and research than something like “analysis” could hope to.
Not that analysis is bad, but analysis without some direction surely is a good way to use a lot of time with no good return on that investment.
4. Profile/Tech/Tools: Dan Rossetti thinks that hiring in sports business has changed.
Big Ideas:
Getting the right skills into your organization is more important than ever.
There still needs to be a change in perspective in many organizations.
New ideas aren’t hard to come by.
I had a chance to run into Dan when we were in Las Vegas in August for Ticket Summit and the ALSD.
Dan started talking with me about his new business and the things he was seeing in the market as hiring began to pick up and life had started to get back moving.
So, we sat down to do a podcast and cover a lot of these ideas.
The entire conversation is worth a listen, no doubt.
But let me highlight these big three quickly.
First, getting the right skills into your organization is key right now.
As we have seen throughout this week’s newsletter, the market has shifted, the ways to get to market can be new or different, and the ideas that are creating success are shifting as well.
That’s a lot of words to say that the things that made you successful before aren’t likely to be the ones that will make you successful going forward.
The challenge is to recognize what the skills you’ll need now will look like and hire for those. Focus on outcomes and not actions. And, be open to new ideas.
Second, many organizations will need to shift their perspectives.
We’ve seen it over and over again throughout the pandemic, but the shifts that are taking place are pretty profound.
Organizations like the NY Philharmonic have created radically new digital offerings. Sean Kelly from Vatic shared the story of an organization that didn’t realize that the value that their customers put on a show wasn’t changed a whole lot by the performance being online. We’ve seen organizations partner with folks like Aaron Knape and SeatZ to deliver a more responsive and fan-friendly experience. And, I’ve shared the data from Booking Protect that showed refund protection uptake doubling in many situations since lockdowns have eased.
The shift isn’t in the tools, but in the focus on the customer.
Because as we’ve seen, the recovery has been hit or miss so far and we can’t take anything for granted.
So, get out of your rut and go to the customer.
Remember the quote from Frederic above!
Finally, keep in mind that new ideas aren’t hard to find.
I’m here every week sharing new ideas, new takes on old ideas, and new ways of thinking.
In our conversation, Dan shares the story of Dr. Bill Sutton and his use of LinkedIn. I’m sure that Dr. Sutton would tell you he found the idea from looking around and seeing what other businesses outside of sports were doing.
That’s really the point.
Don’t get stuck in your bubble. Spend some time looking at the world around you and seeing where someone is being successful and see how that can apply to your situation.
Here are some free ideas that I love that might be helpful when applied to concerts, theatre, or sports:
Tesla delivers cars to their customers’ homes. Is there some part of your experience that you can deliver to your customer at their office or at their home to elevate the experience?
The Penisula’s CRM system tracks you across properties to the point that when I go to the Penisula in Chicago, they ask if I want all of the newspapers they offer and mention that they see that I like a high floor from my time in Tokyo. What kind of personalization can you offer based on past purchase data? Or, past conversations?
If you are ever in London, splurge on dinner at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester. At the end of the meal, after everything else, including dessert, they bring around a candy trolley and bag you up a little treat to see you off with. My lady still talks about that damn candy cart. Is there anyway that you can offer some surprise or treat to push the experience to an even higher level?
The big idea here is that you have to be curious.
You can steal marketing ideas from SaaS companies. You can gain operational effectiveness from talking with project managers in different industries. You can learn from hospitals, hotels, nightclubs, schools, or anywhere…you just have to look.
If I have to imprint my thinking onto the conversation with Dan, that’d be my big takeaway: we have to change our thinking and look for new ideas wherever you can find them.
As I’ve mentioned before, change is the only thing that is certain. We have a choice, embrace it or try to ignore it.
The latter one never seems to work out.
5. Links and Blurbs:
Female artists are using their influence to create change: Adele, thank you. That automatic shuffle button needed to die. Taylor, love the last few albums, but we still need to talk about the “boosts”.
COVID continues to disrupt: Chicago has had to cancel two more days of performances pushing the re-opening back to 2 December. This is likely to be something everyone is dealing with for the next few months. So just keep an eye on this kind of thing.
Let It Be wasn’t a slog for The Beatles: I spent the better part of Sunday watching Peter Jackson’s documentary on The Beatles. I enjoyed it. I didn’t know if it would be enough to hold my attention, but 7 or so hours later…mission accomplished. It wasn’t a slog and Yoko didn’t seem to break up The Beatles.
Lawrenceville, GA gets its own arts center: A lifelong dream fulfilled. Opening an arts center in a pandemic, maybe not.
Nick Saban has had enough of the “unappreciative” Alabama fan base: Y’all…did you see that Iron Bowl?! Holy crap. Also, this is a pretty classic Nick Saban rant. Does Georgia really want ‘Bama this weekend?
Broadway grosses for Thanksgiving week were strong: It is tough to know what exactly to make of this since the shows aren’t broken out individually and since we don’t know a lot about a lot…but this is a good week to tout the idea that if you are in and around NYC, go see a show.
You can find me everywhere with my special Linktree! It is all my links!
Check out my friends at Booking Protect! Customers have been taking up refund protection at a rate that is double what it was before the pandemic began. This is a great opportunity for you to offer more value to your customers in a way that they want while also creating a new revenue stream for your organization.
Also, you’ll be able to see me and the Booking Protect team at INTIX in Orlando. I’m going to do some podcasting from the booth and we will have a grand time. Let me know if you’ll be there.
Meet up with the team in Manchester at the Ticket Business Forum if you are there today.