Talking Tickets 7 May 2021: DTI's Ecosystem! NYC Reopens! The National Rugby League! My Predictions! And, More!
Boom!
We’ve hit the end of another week of the pandemic and things are pointing in a good direction, but I imagine that folks are still a little on edge and a little unsure about what’s next.
So if you need to chat to someone…just let me know! I’m here.
We’ve also put together a nice group on Slack with a few hundred folks from the world of tickets, check us out!
Happy Hour tonight! 5PM Eastern/2PM Pacific as they used to say on the TV!
Help me out by sharing this newsletter. I want to reach 1,000 new subscribers by the 4th of July and I can’t do that alone! So share this with a colleague, post it on social media, or put it into your company’s Slack!
To the tickets!
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1. NYC re-opens and Broadways is coming back on September 14th!:
Big Idea:
Strategy before tactics.
Do your research because the shape of the market is different.
Get the basics right.
Hello, world, I’m Dave and I still identify as a New Yorker. So if anyone needs me to move back to NYC, just tell me when you need me there! I can be there in no time at all.
Let me start out by reminding everyone that re-opening isn’t recovery and the path back won’t be a straight line.
It never is.
My hope for folks is that during the pandemic you’ve all taken the time to do some thinking about your business, your business model, and your strategy.
Don’t even get me started on soul searching! That’s what the private conversations are for!
But I’m not delusional.
I know that a lot of people didn’t.
Like The Broadway League’s comeback slogan: #NothingBeatsBroadway there is a hint of “Let me loosen my tie and I’ll get into the mind of the market. I know exactly what people want and need because I know what I want and need.”
This attitude is dangerous.
While I’m excited that NYC is on the way back, I must caution everyone to get their strategy right from the jump.
I know it is a bit of a refrain now, but let’s walk through the steps of marketing strategy once again:
Research
STP
Set a strategy
The marketing mix
Tickets for Broadway shows should go on sale at any moment. And, I’d imagine it is going to be a bit of a cluster.
Why?
Three reasons to start with:
Everyone will go on sale at pretty much the same time.
Everyone is likely to go to market with a very similar campaign.
Everyone isn’t just competing with Broadway, they are competing with everything all over the place including outside of NYC.
So how do you get this re-launch right?
The simple answer, strategy before tactics.
The longer, less satisfying answer is that there are going to be multiple paths to success. And, you are going to need to be flexible.
Start at the most basic, research.
You can’t afford to just base your decision-making on everyone’s guesses. I had a colleague send me a note yesterday that said, “I’ve been hearing so much about this pent-up demand, but it actually isn’t showing up in my sales data, especially with businesses.”
In this case, there is a good explanation for the lack of pent-up demand among businesses since most businesses are still operating under covid restrictions in regard to entertaining.
But the key idea still holds.
You have to do your research and look at behavior, not words.
Ethnography can start to happen now as there are games happening in cities with fans. You can do some conversations and focus groups to get an idea of what people are doing. And, you can begin looking at quantitative data from around the city, region, or country to understand what is working and what isn’t.
Is this data absolute right now?
No.
As a colleague told me, “we are still a few months away from being able to fully trust our data.”
How would I tackle this if Andrew Cuomo or Bill DeBlasio called me?
First, I’d tell them I’d be there on the next train out of DC! (Actually, I’d drive. It is quicker from my house!)
Second, I’d start with my research.
Good marketers don’t guess. We do the research. Start with my favorite tool, Google, and see who has done research on the subject you are looking to understand.
Next, I’m going to look at my strategy.
Segmentation is important because habits have changed, people have moved, and we don’t know what the pandemic has done that will change people’s behaviors.
So you want to start there using your meaningful/actionable grid to create a solid segmentation.
Targeting!
I’ve worked with some pretty big brands in my time and no one really had the budget to target everyone.
Pick a target segment that gives you a chance of success. We define success as having a large enough population and you don’t have a huge majority of the market captured already.
Position, about you or against the competition!
Broadway has a great opportunity despite The Broadway League’s bad hashtag.
Why?
It is Broadway! And, for my money, there is no place better in the world to go see a show!
I love London and I love Sydney, but if I am going to see a musical…I’m going to Broadway.
For all of you, look at your position. Are you standing against your competition or are you talking about what makes you stand out?
Build a plan that reflects your world. Your reality. And, your research.
Finally, know that you are going to have to be flexible and adapt.
The pandemic should have taught us that. We have to shake and move all the time.
So be willing to experiment, test, and adjust.
Getting the recovery right isn’t going to be easy, but the basics aren’t that hard.
2. Curtis Cheng and DTI’s ecosystem:
Big Ideas:
Pay attention to the way that Curtis continually reinvents his business.
Your competition may not come from your “industry”. And, “industry” is a term that only management thinks about.
Being flexible is a key business skill for today’s world.
I’ve always admired Curtis and his team at DTI because they are always adjusting the way that they deliver value.
If I say I admire someone’s approach to value that is about the highest compliment I can give in business.
I’m prone to reinvention, myself.
During the pandemic, I’ve been studying strategy so that when the pandemic is over, I can decide how the next phase of my evolution progresses.
One of the core ideas of strategy in modern times is the idea of an ecosystem business. In today’s market, the importance of a business ecosystem can’t be overstated.
A couple of key ideas to help you understand ecosystems:
Valuations of businesses have moved to the point where if you manage an ecosystem business, your valuation is going to be higher than just a standalone business. For example look at Apple, Amazon, and Google.
Ecosystems are acknowledgments that your competition may come from outside of your “industry”. And, that “industry” only exists in the minds of management, not in the mind of the customer.
Ecosystems are important in their recognition that value is created through partnerships and that the shape of any business is determined by the market it serves.
So DTI and Curtis have done a great job of building an ecosystem around a few ideas. This isn’t a complete list but to me these standout:
Entrepreneurship
Resale
Supply Chain
I’m simplifying here, but the scope of the business is pretty amazing.
The real power of what DTI is doing is that they are the hub of the ecosystem and they have put together additional pieces of value that all work together to benefit the customer and the partners. Due to the way that they’ve designed their ecosystem, it is remarkably stable because there is a lot of vertical integration and a focus on the supply chain.
An unstable ecosystem can look and feel like a free-for-all.
That’s not what DTI has done.
On ecosystems, I think that each league and team can do a better job of building out an ecosystem around them, full stop.
How do you pull something like that off?
I look at two specific things:
Is there a new area of opportunity or possibility that should be investigated?
Is your solution complex and involves multiple components.
To go further, since I have a lot of readers from all parts of the ticket world, to strategize ecosystem thinking look at these questions:
Can you help firms create value? Do you add value to the customer?
What role should you play?
Should the model of your business be open or closed?
Can you adapt inside the ecosystem?
How many ecosystems should you be playing in?
If you look at what Curtis and DTI have managed, they’ve managed to create a platform and exist in a few different ecosystems at once. They also can play multiple roles in the different ecosystems that they are a part of, adding to their stability.
This is all great, but the most important aspect of what is going on with DTI is their willingness to adapt and change. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Curtis reinvent himself. And, if we only learn one thing from Curtis it is that you can’t rely on doing things the way you’ve always done them to get you to the next success in your business.
Big Ideas:
Test and learn to help your organization recover from the pandemic.
The kids are partying in Liverpool and things seem closer to normal!
I haven’t been to England in almost two years now!
I’ll be back and all of the news this week points me to my return being sooner rather than later.
The important thing about this story as with all of the stories this week is that it is very important that you test and learn.
Beyond testing and learning, you have to take the time to apply your learning.
Just like science, you test and learn.
You have to be flexible because life comes at you fast and the pandemic has thrown us a number of curveballs.
This is important because in the case of festivals throughout Europe, demand for events is coming back very strong. Again, we will see what happens when more shows and events start selling and the market gets saturated, but this is a good sign.
The key as these tests happen, events go on sale, and we start moving towards an end to the pandemic is to communicate effectively and make sure people know what is going on with you and your organization.
Case in point, Oktoberfest is already canceled for September. (I’m bummed! But at least we know.)
What does an effective communication strategy look like now?
You begin where you should always begin with your research and your strategy. Any communications actions you take now should be rooted in your overall marketing strategy.
Don’t start slinging messages out there because you “feel” like you have to say something.
Make sure you know what you are going to say and why it matters.
Let the key be adding value at every touchpoint.
Second, you need to be media neutral.
This means that you need to use the media format that is going to help you reach your goals. Don’t just use the media that “everyone” says you need to use.
My buddy, Jerry Daykin, is one of the kids responsible for the Oreo social media campaign when the lights went out at the Super Bowl between the Ravens and the 49ers. He says that we often learn the wrong lessons from moments like the Super Bowl. And, that these lessons have a habit of sticking around as best practices.
This is why I favor media neutrality in my marketing because I want to focus on the ends and not the means.
Finally, make sure you have a budget in place to reach the audience and get your message across.
Another reason that I shared Jerry’s piece is because there is a false belief that just having social media will solve all of your messaging problems. “Post it to social” or something like that.
That’s not typically true.
Paid social media helps with that, but posting to social media alone doesn’t always do a whole lot.
So prepare a budget to help you make sure your message gets out. Don’t just post to your Facebook or Twitter page and hope!
The key here is that as we continue to emerge from the pandemic, we are going to have to be comfortable for the next bit with a two-step forward and one-step-back scenario more than we like.
That’s okay.
We just embrace that, test and learn.
Then, communicate consistently.
Will we be perfect? No!
But we will be alright as long as we are consistent in our communications.
Big Ideas:
Get your strategy right!
Segment based on behavior and you’ll be surprised at the opportunities in front of you.
Target big juicy opportunities.
There are hints of the Super League here, hints of adding interleague play, and expansion of every schedule to add more “content” in this story.
Like a lot of leagues around the world, the NRL took a huge hit with the pandemic. Now folks are trying to figure out how to get themselves on a firm footing to ensure the survival of their organization.
The common theme that has run through a lot of the examples lately is that the first step has always been towards adding something: more games, more content, more inventory.
If I’m accurate in my reading, we hit a point during the pandemic where there was so much content that this had to be one of the driving reasons for why ratings for specific leagues were down.
Too much of a good thing is too much.
Product Orientation is rampant everywhere we look from sports to tech, to the grocery store.
What Product Orientation says is that marketing is just educating your market, you know better, and that you are going to just create stuff that you know people will love.
It can work.
If you’ve used a post-it note lately, you can see what success looks like.
Of course, if you’ve had a New Coke, you can taste what failure looks like as well.
The rule around Product Orientation is that if a product hits, you can make a fortune. The flipside is that these hits are few and far between. Meaning that most of the time, you whiff.
Mixed in here with Product Orientation is the age-old sales note of “I just need more to sell.”
Which is called Sales Orientation and it only looks at things through the lens of “let me make a sale.”
Forget if it is the right sale, the right customer, or the right idea for the business…I need to sell something now.
This all matters because the NRL exists in one of the most competitive sports environments anywhere that I know of, Australia.
At the same time, they are working to stabilize their business, the AFL has had a long-time interest in growing the game of footie in regions that aren’t historically footie strongholds, the NBL has been establishing themselves as the second-best basketball league in the world, the A-League is looking at re-invigorating the game of soccer in Australia…and, I could go on and hat tip to all the folks I know in the various sports and cultural institutions in Australia like the Australian Open, baseball, netball, the Sydney Opera, and more!
Sorry if I missed you. I’ll buy some pitchers of beer on my return to make it up to y’all.
The key here as with everything is to get your strategy right.
Start by focusing on the customer and the market. Then, do your research.
This will help you segment effectively.
Remember, you segment based on behavior because often your games and events can fill a need that isn’t expressed by people saying, “I want to go to a footie match.”
It fills a void that says, “I’m looking to hang out with my mates.”
Again, I’m a broken record on this:
If you haven’t done some sort of research, you need to do some ASAP. You can’t afford to guess right now.
Segment based on behavior. This is going to open a giant door of opportunity for you by seeing how people act.
Target where there is opportunity. It might look different than you thought it would, but look where the big opportunities are.
Position about you or against your competition.
I profiled AFLW a week or two ago and they are a great example of the right way to do all of this.
The league is growing, establishing a connection to fans that aren’t typically footie fans, and building a community of people that come to sport as they are and not as they feel like they have to be.
There is a lesson there for all of us.
5. I’m featured in Forbes and I share some predictions:
Again, “Go me!”
I set a goal of getting more and better press for myself during the pandemic. Let’s tally it up:
Wall Street Journal
Canadian Broadcasting Company
BBC
Fox 5 NY
ESPN
The Washington Post
So much winning!
This is a much nicer piece about me than I could have imagined. Eddie Vedder described the events around the PJ20 festival as “the end of side one”. Since I hit so many topics in the piece with Eric Fuller, I’ll say that this is like a nice bookend to the end of side one of my marketing career. (Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.)
Why do I say that?
Three reasons:
First, the pandemic is likely to change us and society in ways that we won’t understand until we have a bit of distance from the event.
Second, I’m a big fan of Peter Drucker and one of the reasons attributed to his success, longevity, and endurance even after his death was his willingness to reinvent himself and to continue to push new ideas and grow.
Third, during the pandemic I spent time going back to school, studying strategy at Cambridge and marketing with two of the world’s great marketing professors. And, these learnings have put the ideas I promote, the clients I work with, and the things I want to do into a different perspective.
So it is likely that I’ll find myself changing due to the pandemic, new perspectives, and a bit of the Druckerian reinvention bug that I have.
I had a chance to listen to Alan Weiss’s podcast yesterday and he made some predictions about the post-pandemic landscape.
Alan also said if you are an expert, you make predictions.
In the vein of Alan’s predictions, I want to offer you some quick hit predictions here about the future we are all looking towards right now:
Real attendance will continue to be a problem for a lot of folks. There’s nothing I’ve seen so far that would point me towards people having addressed a lot of the underlying challenges they were dealing with before the pandemic.
The boom of demand like never before won’t actually happen: My bet is more on a sugar rush of demand and then, other, better, marketers will start winning the battle for people’s spending once things start to really open back up.
The secondary market as we know it will change: If anything, I think teams are going to be more conscious of the way that their tickets are distributed and they’ll work to control the flow of tickets even more than they were before the pandemic.
A rebirth of the old-school “I’ve got a guy” type broker is on the horizon: I’ve talked to a bunch of brokers that I’ve known for 10-15 years or more lately and a lot of them are mentioning direct business. I’ve also had a number of people ask me about how to develop more direct business. I think that if more direct business develops, that’s a positive for the industry.
Rising prices will continue to turn off customers: I’m doing a session on pricing for the National Sports Forum in about two-week pricing. It is the single topic that I get asked about the most and it is a topic that seems to have folks really concerned. With good reason. Most pricing is done by guessing or worse. Too many people are running their prices into the ground in a race to the bottom that destroys the brand, the perceived value, and their position. On the other end, a lot of pricing is so out of touch with reality that teams and organizations are teaching their customers that attending a live event isn’t for them or it is only for an ultra-special occasion. Pricing is a problem. (Let me know which part of pricing matters most to you. The poll is open until around noon on Friday, my time.)
An interesting conversation I had on the podcast this week was with my son, Cormac.
He’s my son so I talk to him every day, but a few things that stood out from my conversation with him:
He’s got a better understanding of marketing than about 95% of the people I encounter.
Inherently, he understands that the financialization of teams and events has made the industry more money while also hurting the industry.
It is interesting listening to him tell us about why he follows the things that he does. Especially when he talks about the way that his entire class has picked up and follows the AFL now due to his 5th-grade teacher.
To close out this week on a high, I’ll add some hopes to the list of predictions! Here are 5 things I hope do happen after the pandemic:
I hope we put the emphasis back on actual attendance. As we’ve seen, games without fans have no heat. And, there were so many games that had small crowds before the pandemic that I think we just stopped noticing.
I hope that there is a focus put on marketing: The best marketers in the live entertainment business are the folks with Pearl Jam. They’ve continued to find new ways to add value, innovate, and keep the band in front of its audience in a meaningful way throughout the pandemic. (I’d say Taylor Swift, but she did that thing with the boosts and tickets and turned around to discount the shizz out of her tickets. Don’t discount! Don’t trick your fans!)
I hope that folks recognize the power of marketing and use it to their advantage: Don’t think marketing matters? Ha! Are you using an Apple product? Have you voted in an election? Responded to a request for a meeting or a coffee? Gone on a date? All of that is marketing and sales. The key about using the power of marketing is that we have to recognize that marketing the live experience is about the customer and not us…and let that knowledge guide us. Marketing is everything we do and every aspect of our business. Don’t operate with your eyes closed.
I’m hopeful that our global attention to social justice, equality, and opportunity creates more opportunities for new art: This isn’t selfless either because I know it is good business. If you listened to the old hands, Hamilton would never work. Dear Evan Hansen was no one’s bet for a box office hit. And, Bad Bunny came out of nowhere to invigorate concert goers. We need new ideas, new art, and a focus on helping build the next generation of artists.
I’m hopeful that the industry recovers quickly and without the bounceback struggles that could prolong the challenges of our pandemic year. I hope that people have learned some valuable lessons to put to work and that we all have become more resilient and agile so that we can recover quickly and effectively.
I might be wrong, but like Alan Weiss said, “Experts make predictions!” So there are mine!
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What am I up to?
I’m in DC this week. Strange, but I’ve actually got travel on my calendar.
I’m doing Ticket Summit on August 14-17. I’m leading a panel and I’ll have the title next week.
I’ll be in Boston June 24-25. I’m going to see about doing a happy hour around Fenway on the 24th because I love Trillium beer and the location near Fenway is great!
I’m going to be in Miami for an extended period during July. I’m going to Orlando and NYC in July as well.
Check out the worksheet I put together with the folks at Eventellect. We both know how important tracking your NPS score can be for your business. If you didn’t read the case study last week, go back and look at it. If you want the free worksheet, let me know.
Talk to Simon, Cat, Cath, and the team at Booking Protect. Simon tells me that refund protection purchases have almost doubled from before the pandemic. This indicates that people want peace of mind when they buy. Don’t miss sales by not offering refund protection.
Check out the Group Think festival on June 3rd. This is a British-based marketing, advertising, and strategy-focused event, but they let me hang around! The money from the tickets goes back into the organization to help support the learning and events. So you learn some cool marketing and strategy stuff while supporting helping learn more cool marketing and strategy stuff. Also, Rob told me that I can share a ticket or two with folks…so tell me why you want to go and how you can support their mission and I’ll pick one or two of y’all for a ticket.
Hook up with the folks at Activity Stream. We have something awesome in the works for the fall, but until then Martin is doing some webinars to share more information about the Activate email program that is guaranteed to help you improve your email marketing.
Check out the podcast stream. Two great episodes this week with Cormac and Mark Herschberg. Mark talks about developing your career, leadership, and the skills you need to be successful coming out of the pandemic.
Don’t forget to check the website!