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Lolla Lineup Leaks

Leaks and rumors are running rampant on the web of confirmed and almost-confirmed artists playing Lollapalooza 2010. The producers (Austin’s C3 Presents) remain mum, but apparently they are the only ones.

Posted Wednesday February 17, 2010
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Festival Season is Fast Approaching...

If you need expertise for the event(s) you are – or want to be – producing or sponsoring, contact Combo Platter. Go here for an overview of experience.

Posted Thursday January 21, 2010
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Another Music Festival is Born

Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, will host its inaugural HullabaLOU Music Festival next summer in an effort to create new revenue for the venue, no doubt trying to duplicate the success in recent years of other nationally known destination festivals such as Austin City Limits Music Festival, Coachella, Stagecoach, and Bonnaroo.

Is the U.S. saturated with festivals yet? Is a startup festival a wise move in this economy? Time will tell, but here’s hoping there’s room for all the current fests, the new ones on the horizon, and those that are still just a gleam in many dreamy eyes.

Posted Tuesday December 1, 2009
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SXSW '10 Initial Showcase Lineup Announced

Music business networking and showcasing festival grandaddy South by Southwest has announced the first round of acts confirmed to showcase during the music portion of their 2010 event. (They also have a film festival and an interactive fest.) As always, it’s a heady roster that will only swell until the last minute when the event takes place in March of 2010.

Combo Platter has attended SXSW for many years and no doubt will be there again next year. How about you?

Posted Tuesday December 1, 2009
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Are You Easy or Playing Hard to Get?

Today I got the the final-last-ever-please-act-now-or-never renewal notice for my subscription to Fast Company magazine. Despite the many prior notices I hadn’t renewed yet, for no good reason other than it was low on my radar and list of priorities (even though I really like it). But today the renewal caught my eye because Fast Company makes it so easy to do – it’s a pre-printed, postage-paid, perforated card that I just tore off the outer cover. All I have to do is pop it in the mail. Don’t have to fill anything out, dig out my credit card, nothing. Couldn’t be easier – the necessary tool was provided and they’d even done the work of providing all the pertinent info. Easy-breezy.

And that got me to thinkin’.

Making things as easy as possible is simple, good business. It astounds me sometimes how certain companies make you jump through hoops to do business with them.

This applies as much to events and festivals as anything else. Certainly most events try hard to make things great for the audience, as well they should. But how easy is it for everyone else to get involved and stay engaged? Event staff, participants like vendors and artists, sponsors, volunteers, suppliers – a critical key to a successful event is to make it a no-brainer for them to come to the table with their A-game. Again, I have at times been astonished at some organizations that take so much for granted and act like they’re doing you a favor by allowing you to be part of the action. That leads to high turnover. Bad business.

Don’t play hard to get. Be easy.

Posted Tuesday May 20, 2008
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Street Teams

Record labels and independent musicians have been utilizing street teams to deploy on-the-street guerrilla marketing tactics for a long time. But mobilizing these fans can be a complicated exercise in logistics and time management.

Now there is an online software platform available for managing street teams no matter where they are. A great idea whose time has come and something events also should look into. It’s comprehensive, user-friendly, with built-in quality control and incentives for the best street teamers.

Check out Fancorps.com.

Posted Tuesday April 22, 2008
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Head's Up for Event Producers

Now more than ever it’s imperative for event and festival producers to be on top of their game in creating unique, interactive ways for sponsors to get involved. More money is being spent in this marketing category, but it’s being allocated to fewer events overall. Meaning, sponsors are eschewing the shotgun approach and instead looking for ways they can really dig into an event and be an active participant. The days of throwing up some signage and calling it a day are behind us for the most savvy marketers, and savvy event producers know this. This means it’s harder to compete for sponsorship dollars, an already highly competitive arena. So if you’re not in the game, then get in now or you’re out.

I could outline an exhaustive list of things you should already be doing to attract sponsors, starting with mobile media and online social networks. But instead I would suggest you research events that are similar to yours but perhaps bigger and see how they pull it off. Some music events that do an excellent job are Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival (same producers); Coachella and Stagecoach (ditto); and South by Southwest. Even if your event is not music-related, you can still use these examples to get great ideas.

Posted Sunday March 30, 2008
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Behind the Scenes

The current strike by TV & movie writers is an excellent example of the critical yet often overlooked talent and hard work that is required to produce…. well, just about anything that people want. Witness the recent cancellation of the Golden Globes, the highly touted kick-off for the all important awards season.

Just as in Hollywood, events and festivals require a huge amount of heavy lifting – literally and figuratively – to be pulled off. I often half-jokingly refer to my love of festival producing as a type of brain damage, and folks with the same affliction always nod knowingly.

Posted Thursday January 24, 2008
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What a Sponsor Wants

I often hear or read questions that go something like this: “How can I find a sponsor that values my (cause, industry, etc.)?”

Like individuals, sponsors want to know what’s in it for them. If they “like” your cause, it’s because your cause lines up with what the sponsor’s customers like, and sponsoring your cause will help them to reach those customers. So to find a sponsor, you have to create value that will give them great ROI – “Return on Investment”. Sponsorship is strictly a marketing decision, and they want marketing benefits in exchange for their money.

Go here for more information to give you some ideas about what to offer a potential sponsor.

I strongly advise you, if you are seeking a sponsor, to hire a professional such as Combo Platter that understands your industry, the sponsor procuring process, and how to speak the language of marketing decision-makers.

Posted Wednesday January 2, 2008
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Tips for First-Time Festival/Event Producers

This advice also comes from personal experience of having known lots of very nice, cool people who were producing various types of events and who made critical errors that can kill an event’s success and hopes for the future. And that would be bad. Your event should be a success!

Start early.

It will take MUCH longer than you think to round up all the necessary elements, especially financing/sponsorship, and that goes double for events that are new and therefore have no track record of proven success and viability. Sponsors, and other partners as well (staff, security, venues, ticket agencies, performers, exhibitors, permitting agencies, etc.) will likely require some vetting of your event, and that takes time. Those folks have their own internal systems for budgeting, decision making, and timelines. Not to mention lives of their own. So if you expect to pick up the phone and hear Joe Major Sponsor tell you he’s putting a 4- or 5-figure check in the mail tomorrow – you’re dreaming. And he’s probably thinking you’re an amateur and a schmuck for even asking. And he would be right.

It will cost probably five to ten times what you think it will. So again, start early.

For a one or two-night club “festival”, give yourself at least 3 months. The bigger the shebang, the more money needed (probably, unless you have rich friends or a family member who owns, say, Target). And time is money, money time. So give yourself plenty of time to raise plenty of money to pay for the costs you know of plus all kinds of things that you haven’t thought of yet.

One thing your event should not live without is in-kind donations. These can range from pizza for the crew to gifts for participants or decor for the venue, all kinds of stuff. A great in-kind donation is credit or gift certificates for a hardware store. A strange event phenomenon is the constant lack of adequate amounts of duct tape, zipties, or tools. This is the event equivalent of losing one sock while doing the laundry.

Do everyone, most especially yourself, a major favor and get someone with experience to work with you, or at least advise you. You wouldn’t want a weekend tinkerer to rebuild the engine of your classic car would you? So get someone with some real experience, which will probably require at least some money, which will take time to raise.

This goes for all event interns, volunteers, and day-of staff who think they’ve gotten it down. That may be the case, but probably not. Being familiar with onsite execution is only one part of pulling off a great event or festival. Many events have full-time staff that work year-round.

A white paper that covers this topic much more in-depth is forthcoming. If you have anything you want to see addressed in that, lemme know.

Posted Tuesday December 18, 2007
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Emotions Mean Business

People make decisions based on emotion rather than facts or logic. That is not meant to criticize, after all I’m a people too; rather it’s a familiar observation borne out time and again. I have read actual poll summaries that say folks preferred one person’s position on the issues, but liked another person more and so that’s who they’d be voting for.

(But I’m not going THERE.)

Where I am going is that this is Reason Number One to use music and events as marketing tools. People, when they’re listening to a cd, or at a concert, or attending a festival, are having FUN. They LIKE being there. They CHOSE to be there doing that instead of somewhere else doing something else, and they most likely spent their hard-earned money to do it. And the best part is, at least at a concert or festival, there’s a bunch of other people who are there for the same reason.

Don’t you think you should be a part of that?

Posted Tuesday November 13, 2007
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