Trouble In Musical Paradise

Hello everyone!

I have been at Zaccaria Group for about 5 weeks now, completing my internship for two days a week. I have learnt so much since my first day about not only public relations but also marketing, advertising and maintaining important professional relationships.

Here at Zaccaria Group, we have recently been having a bit of "trouble in paradise", you might say. I have learned that things do not always run smoothly, as we would hope. What do you do when you are the promoter of a touring musician or act, you've expended your marketing and publicity budget, and tickets are just not selling? I had never considered before that tickets for a well-known show would not sell - as an avid concert-goer myself, I never really think about the logistics and workings behind actually selling a show. As members of the public, we just buy our tickets and attend, that's all there is to it. So I have had my first taste of crisis management in the music marketing industry. The artist at hand is Kate Ceberano - her regional WA shows are selling fantastically but Perth is just not buying it! We have promoted Kate over the past month on television (you can see the television advert in my previous post), radio, print articles and press releases, but still no cigar.

The last two marketing and finance meetings have revolved around strategising ways to improve sales - it has gotten to the point where it is vital to consider all other marketing avenues. The marketing budget has been completely spent, with only 30% of forecasted tickets sold. Not good. As the promoter of this tour, Zaccaria Group takes risks and must put on a show no matter what - cancelling the show is not an option. The worst-case scenario would be cancelling, and this is at the high probability of not only damaging our professional reputation, but also our relationships with the artist's management. Would they sign that deal with us again, knowing we cancelled on them last time? No, probably not. Instead, business would go to our competitors. Not only this, but the artist does not want to be playing a show to a half empty venue. Could you think of anything worse? I have learnt from this that maintaining relationships with important stakeholders is a key skill in public relations practice.

Our outlook in this situation is "SELL TICKETS NO MATTER WHAT!", we will proceed with the show at any cost, because nothing is worth sacrificing a reputation. Our strategy is to bring planned advertising forward a couple of weeks, so tickets start selling earlier rather than in a couple of weeks time. We have also arranged give aways with 96fm radio and changed advertising to different tv networks - we determined this by looking at shows which get the highest ratings, then liaise with that tv network to dedicate a 30 second spot during that prime time tv show. We can also tell that, for example, women over 30 are watching Channel 7 on a Sunday night because of a particular show being broadcast. This is all vital information which helps up strategise ways out of our "crisis".

We have also considered different ticketing strategies. Sometimes it comes into consideration to drop ticket prices so that sales take off, but at times this is not appropriate. Would it be beneficial to focus on selling a more expensive ticket package (such as a meet and greet after the show and a glass of champagne) to entice our audience? Tickets just might not be selling because people do not want to see a cheap show - they want an experience. Again, we need a good relationship with our artist and their talent management for this to occur - there will be no "meet and greet" if we have already hinted chance of cancelling the show.

So that is just one aspect of crisis management in the music PR industry that I have been faced with. I hope to report on my other tasks in my next blog, as I have just realised this has taken up far too much space already! Hope you found it interesting and please feel free to comment below. I also hope you are all enjoying your placements! It seems to be flying by, considering how daunting it seemed at the start!

Until next time,

Delta.

The view from the eyes of the promoter

My internship is slowly coming to an end, and the last couple of days here I have been exposed to different activities which has been pretty awesome.

As we have recently begun festival season, one of my tasks I was given was to compile a publicity folder that required me to select photos from each Sunset Event from the 2011/12 season that could be used to showcase the event at any given time upon request. I found this activity quite fun and interesting, not only getting to look through some amazing photographs, but getting to select photos which grasped the feeling of the festival and really seeing how so many people are affected by music was intriguing. 

One of the main tasks that every practitioner will be exposed too within their career at some point is writing a media, or press release. Janelle gave me the task of constructing a media release for an upcoming Sunset activity. To be honest, it was quite a daunting task to be given as it had been a while since I had constructed a media release and not to mention Janelle is an excellent writer. This would be one of the tasks that I enjoyed the most, but I was a little disappointed with myself with some silly errors made through it. I guess it is a learning curve, and one lesson I learnt through this task was YOU MUST PROOF READ. Such small grammatical errors could have been avoided if I had proof red more efficiently than I did.

Southbound is one of the most popular music festivals held at the beginning the year and the Sunset team is hard at work at promoting the event. As Sunset is located in Fremantle, they formed a partnership with Notre dame student chapter. They joined forces were Notre Dame where they were launching their mezzanine area; this opened up the opportunity for Sunset to do a southbound promotion which gave the students who attended a chance to win tickets. It was my job to compile a music playlist that included 2 tracks from each artist performing to play at their launch. As I am not very familiar with many of the artists performing, I really enjoyed this task because it allowed me to listen and be exposed to a different genre of music and other artists that I am unfamiliar with. Once I had finished the playlist, Maddi (another sunset intern) and I were sent down to set up some promotional material around the mezzanine.

The next upcoming event that festivalgoers are anticipating is Stereosonic 2012. I was lucky enough to sit in with the whole Sunset team, including the directors to discuss the progress and Stereosonic issues. I took in every moment of this meeting because it was really interesting to see the different aspects of business and how they assist or affect the planning of a festival. Stereosonic would be one of my favourite festivals, where each year I have thoroughly enjoyed myself so it was great to view it from the opposite side of the fence; through the eyes of the promoters.

Until next time were I will be wrapping up my blog!

Tahlia