Arena Marketing 2010 & Beyond
Presented by IAAM
Co-Moderators
Kim Bedier | Comcast Arena at Everett Ctr.
Brenda Tinnen | Sprint Center
Jeff Apregan | Apregan Group
Michele Bernstein | WME Entertainment
Jana DeGeorge | Verizon Arena
Larry Weintraub | Fanscape
The best ways to utilize social media to build audiences and benefit fans, venues and communities was the focus of this opening panel of the conference, sponsored by the International Association of Assembly Managers.
Kim Bedier co-moderated with Brenda Tinnen, who roamed the packed room with a mic so the audience could ask questions and offer input.
Bedier opened the discussion by asking the panelists to describe what methods they think work, don’t work and how best to market for the future.
Jeff Apregan said venues today provide a much broader range of skills and services that are assets to promoters.
“I think for family shows, concert promoters rely a lot on arenas for information – not just for research, but actual execution,” Apregan said. “A lot of times, venues have better marketing deals, existing relationships with radio stations, newspapers, whatever.
“A national tour promoter may really benefit from taking advan-tage of these local relationships and some of the marketing assets the buildings can bring to the table.”
Michele Bernstein said that as the business continues to evolve, in terms of how people find out about concerts, marketing and an online presence is more important than ever.
“It’s smart for us to prepare assets to plug in. It used to be the game was a radio spot, a print ad and TV spot,” Bernstein said. “Now it’s an e-card, it’s a banner ad and a lot of other assets.”
Jana DeGeorge of Verizon Arena said she uses Facebook as one of the ways she interacts with patrons to help generate ticket sales. IPhone and BlackBerry apps are also available and the venue uses e-mail blasts and billboard ads.
Fanscape’s Larry Weintraub said connecting with customers online and digitally is essential in order to turn them into loyal patrons.
“I started out a decade ago helping bands really connect with their fans. What has happened in the last 12 years that I’ve been doing my business, is it’s gone beyond music,” Weintraub said.
“Now it’s arenas, it’s tours, venues – it’s everybody just connecting with their audience.”
Weintraub also addressed the benefits of using Twitter as part of an electronic marketing arsenal.
“The reason you grow your Twitter list is it’s a way for you to connect directly with your customer and offer them some-thing quickly. It forces you to get right to the point,” he said. “What Twitter is really all about is engaging your customer in a quick, one-on-one level.
“It’s also another way of customer service these days. People found out that if they tweet that something’s wrong or have a problem, they’ll get an answer very quickly because it’s in a public forum.”
Bernstein turned the discussion to how much responsibility an artist or band should have in its own marketing.
“Up until two years ago, I don’t think it was that big a thing. Now, it’s become a much bigger one,” Bernstein said. “I know with Britney Spears, when we started, we realized she had no data – no names, nothing. So we started from scratch this viral teaser cam-paign about her and we captured 150,000 names.
“Now, we have clients that when we sit with them, it’s on the check list.”
Apregan brought up one idea that could change the business model down the line: What if the long-established headliners, with their own database and resources, work out a revenue-sharing deal with venues to reach an even larger fan base?
Weintraub said it’s feasible.
“Without a doubt. It’s affiliate marketing and it’s really what every enterprising artist should be doing,” he said. “If I’m manag-ing an artist and we have some-thing going where I can go in every venue, whether I’m playing there or have a relationship there, and say ‘How do we work together here? Will you promote my product?’ It makes total sense.”
Discussion of new technologies, such as Google Buzz and Four-square, how blogs have become the “new PR,” print-at-home ticketing and managing the ever-growing list of electronic market-ing tools wrapped up the panel.
|Tina Amendola|