Effective College Talent Buying

The college market might hold the most discretionary income at the moment, said Al Karosas, assistant GM of Penn State’s Bryce Jordan Center, as parents are tightening their belts and telling the ’tweens to stay home (“unless the Jo-Bros hit town again”).

And with thousands of undergrads with not really that much homework to do and oftentimes multiple high-quality venues on campus, college buyers present an attractive option for agents.

Bill Silva Management’s Larry Butler cited the importance of colleges for company client Jason Mraz. Colleges provide a “built-in audience” that is “less risky than other secondary or tertiary markets.” He said for Mraz, “It’s better exposure, not just money,” and that his client’s goal is to keep working and playing to his audience.

With varying budgets and numerous departments, boards and sources of funding, panelists stressed the importance of being creative and remaining profit-oriented to bring in money and continue to bring great events year round, rather than holding one or two large shows and calling it a year.

Marty Kern, major events director at Clemson University in South Carolina, said her students “get it” in that regard and that she “can’t risk taxpayer money.” Instead she makes the goal to pay into the program and run on its profits. She cited a recent “Thomas the Train” show as an example of how her students understand the need to do shows that make financial rather than personal sense.

Panel moderator Barbara Hubbard of ACTS Scholarships added that it’s necessary to fight with administrators for access to rollover money if your program generates profit. With many of “her kids” now playing major roles in the concert world, she repeatedly encouraged the audience to come to her with any questions or for help in starting a college program.

A big hurdle is navigating compli-cated university bureaucracies and making use of what’s already in place such as overlooked artist and agent relationships that were established years ago.

Of everything to be learned in college, Butler said that maybe the most important lesson is learning to work with somewhat difficult people.

“You can’t just refuse to work with someone because, ‘God, that guy’s an asshole,’” he said, adding that now is a good time to get used to it. Employers will be very impressed to meet anyone with this necessary ability, he said.

And these students aren’t amateurs, either, as Curb Event Center Booking Coordinator Sarah Brown said. Her students are part of a music business school in Nashville (Belmont Univer-sity) where they handle full production services in a very “capable, professional” manner.

One audience member, an apparent buyer herself, grilled ICM’s Scott Pang about artist guarantees. She asked the panelist why one agent told her it would cost her an extra $20,000 to book one of his acts because colleges have all that “stupid money.” Pang jokingly responded that her first mistake was “talking to CAA,” but added that he believes hers is a unique situation and that “we don’t look at colleges as a cash cow.”

Kern told one student from Missouri, discouraged about being in a tertiary market two hours away from multiple major markets, that having one offer accepted out of 50 is a great ratio for her. And those 49 rejections don’t make the successful one any less sweet, she said, laughing.

Hubbard weighed in, saying that Las Cruces, New Mexico, wasn’t exactly a booming market when she hit town, either.

She added that good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth is still the best way to create buzz, telling students to pound the pavement at record stores, student unions and those notorious hair salons, where the ladies just can’t keep a secret.

The audience was left with the advice to think big and be extremely persistent, with Assembly Hall Director (University of Illinois) Kevin Ullestad noting that “we all want the bulletproof shows … we’re all in it for the long haul. Find out what works in your market” and pass down the success to future programs.

And get your resumes ready: New Mexico State University’s Scott Breckner said that working in the college field provides a “tremendous advantage” because “we have a constant influx of freshmen who are smarter than us – technology-savvy and with great access to networking tools.”

- Reported by Ryan Borba, Pollstar
- Photos by John Shearer