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Friday

05Feb2010

How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team; Part 4

Friday, February 5, 2010 at 9:03AM |

How to develop and give creative direction.

Let’s address timing first. When should creative direction be delivered? Many people provide creative direction during the design development process as opposed to before it begins. In my experience, this is problematic.

The best creative directors I know give robust and clear direction before design development begins because they want their creatives aligned. They want work to emerge from fresh information and sound strategy.

Before the design development process begins, minds are open. As client, we are in a position to set the agenda and focus the conversation. Since work hasn’t commenced, nobody has developed any attachments to particular directions or concepts.

Front-loading the process disables assumptions, draws distinctions, and sparks insights.

Driving a winning creative process isn’t like driving a car.

George Carlin wittily observed, “Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac?”

When we’re driving, most of us think that our judgment is the only correct judgment. Unfortunately, a lot of us think that giving creative direction is akin to driving. We think that giving direction is a real-time exercise. “Slow down. Turn left. Take the next right onto the service road.”

Imagine that you run a long-haul trucking company. Are you likely to instruct your truck driver to deliver his load to a particular destination, or are you going withhold the address, climb up into the shotgun seat, and commence giving directions on a piecemeal basis? This would be an hilarious scenario if it were not so common and so counterproductive in developing good creative work.

Some people think they need to see conceptual design drafts before they can judge whether they like the concept and how it might be executed. This is one legitimate way to work, however it tends to start things off on a negative foot. When most people are asked for feedback, what they hear is “Tell me how this could be better” or “What’s wrong with this.” This tends to drive the conversation and the dynamic to a negative place.

It’s much more constructive to give robust direction early, then choose among options that are right. This focuses the conversation on what’s working and it also helps build a positive and constructive atmosphere within which your creatives are likely to give you better work. Your chances of getting a number of good, on-strategy options goes up when you give creative direction early.

If you find yourself giving strategy direction once the process is underway, it might be a sign that your briefing process needs work. This is not to say that the creative direction process isn’t ongoing; it happens throughout the development process. What takes place once creative development is underway is primarily winnowing and suggestions to develop particular ideas further. If the briefing process is working, we’re choosing among options that are all more or less on strategy. We’re not trying to get the process on-strategy.

How to develop an effective creative brief.

Good creative direction results from a disciplined marketing methodology, the product of which is a creative brief document that clients provide to their agency or design team before the design development process begins.

If you have a style guide, make sure that you provide it before the design development process begins, as well. Your style guide will save your design team a lot of time and, presumably, will save you a lot of money.

A good creative brief answers both strategic and practical questions in clear and simple terms:

How will creative products help achieve business goals?
What are your communication goals and objectives?
What specific concerns or information – e.g. contemporary vs. classical look, legibility, brand personality, brand values, etc. – should be considered in design development?
What behavioral outcome(s) is the product intended to accomplish?
Who are the target audiences? What is their gender, age, education, lifestyle, economic status, social status, marital status, parental status? What is their past and projected relationship to the products or services being marketed?
How will the creative product(s) be used by the target audiences?
How will the creative product(s) be distributed? If the design deliverable(s) will be used across multiple channels, make sure the design team knows this before the design development process begins.
What is the manufacturing (printing, web design, etc.) budget?
What is the timetable for manufacture/implementation and distribution?

Advertising,

Branding,

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Timing

Thursday

04Feb2010

How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team; Part 3

Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 9:08AM |

Make clear agreements.

Design professionals do their best work when they can set distractions and concerns aside to focus on producing work. Settling timetable and financial terms early helps keep these things from becoming distractions later. Clear agreements help create the conditions for a fruitful design development process.

The old saw, “Good fences make for good neighbors,” is sound advice. Clear, specific, and unambiguous agreements that govern the design and production process help prevent misunderstandings and the arguments and resentment that can ensue from them.

Nobody likes to borrow trouble, especially at the inception of a project. It can feel awkward to discuss challenges or issues that may arise during a project, but it is what responsible partners do. Getting over an imagined skirmish is much easier than healing the wounds from the real thing.

When particulars about scope of work and terms of service are left unaddressed, both parties are likely to advocate resolutions that are least costly and easiest for them. When projects go awry, somebody usually loses out. Given the up-down relationship dynamics between client and agency/design firm–it is often the agency/design firm that takes the loss. These things become an issue when nobody has planned for them, so plan for them. I make it a practice to create contingency lines in my budget so that I have some room to adjust fees upward if I think it’s the right thing to do.

Keep your agreements fresh, especially in established, long-term working relationships. The most fractious arguments that I’ve witnessed have occurred between people who both assume that a body of agreements has evolved over time that govern every project. Since some projects are much more straightforward than others, it’s a good idea to assess the relative ease or difficulty of a project before you discuss it with your design team. The more complex the assignment is, the more likely it is that you need to craft a specific project agreement.

If a resolution to a disagreement is unfair, don’t expect your design team or agency to feel good about the resolution or about you. Getting good creative products from your designers isn’t usually something that happens inside one project or one meeting; it happens over the period that describes the temporal arc of your relationship. Don’t forget that the fees you pay are not just for specific projects, they are also the means by which you maintain the relationship.

The most important variable you will negotiate concerns the number of development rounds you can expect over the project’s life. Establish the number of development and revision rounds that are included within project fees in advance. Agree on costs of additional development rounds, if necessary.

Setting terms before a project begins helps ensure that disagreements or misunderstandings won’t create hard feelings later. Arguing about process, budget, timetable, etc. during the design development process steals focus from creating an effective final product. Acrimony sucks the joy right out of the project for those who are doing the work. It is the very rare creative who crafts wonderful design projects in an atmosphere of resentment.

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Wednesday

03Feb2010

How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team; Part 2

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 11:59AM |

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Understanding creatives.

Imagination and creativity are the currency of our time. Invaluable and precious, that currency is the ability to source fresh, elegant, and beautiful solutions. One can’t research their way into something new. As Henry Ford once remarked, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” So, if you value the ability to move from the obvious into the realm of the unexpected, the realm of surprise and delight, cultivate your understanding of and ability to work with creatives.

I write from experience. When I was younger I made every mistake in the book. I behaved as the biggest jerk on the planet. I have whined, wheedled, complained, yelled, threatened, pontificated, condescended, and patronized my way through relationships with creatives. Why some of the most talented people in the world chose to endure my infantile, insecure, and arrogant demeanors remains one of the great mysteries I confront.

Having made more mistakes than most of my friends and colleagues - even when taken as a group - I’ve learned a few things and, by way of some small atonement, I want to share some of the lessons I’ve learned. While I may have not always been a great client, I have always loved and respected creatives. I love working with them. And I thrive on the wonderful product that emerges from working with them.

For the purposes of these posts, let me define what I mean by creatives. I’m referring to those people whose work products singly or collaboratively comprise our communications products: graphic designers, copywriters, photographers, illustrators, videographers, models, costume designers, composers, musicians, conductors, scriptwriters, lighting designers, audio designers, art directors, and creative directors. Forgive me for any omissions since I’m sure there are some.

Creatives are people. Like you and me, they respond well to people who are skilled at managing performance, giving clear direction, and who treat them with respect and warmth. They do not respond well to being treated as just another vendor who can easily be replaced - and probably at a lower cost. They also don’t respond well to people who think writing big checks will somehow make up for coercive or abusive behavior.

We’re all fighting myths perpetuated by television like that episode in Mad Men when a brilliant idea emerged five minutes before a meeting. These myths belie the truth that big ideas don’t usually come from someone being struck by insight-lightning. In the real world, the best ideas emerge from a sound work process where responses to creative direction are diligently explored and winnowed down so that the best ideas can be further developed.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, there are still plenty of people out there who cling to their imagination’s portrayal of the tortured artist going home every night to their fire-warmed, candlelit garret to read Yeats or Kierkegaard while drinking absinthe into the wee hours. While there are creatives like this, most of them left this period behind when the rest of us did. Yes, creatives are different from many other people, but they are not zebras living among horses. Nobody does creatives any favors by romanticizing who they are. Be real with them and you will build a much stronger and more productive relationship with them.

Still, creatives aren’t accountants, network administrators, lawyers, human resources staff, etc. They are fiercely individual even when that fierceness is masked by a soft-spoken, deferential demeanor. They are highly individuated, sometimes quirky, and often scornful of convention. Ironically, many of the most talented are tentative and insecure. Their processes aren’t linear and many of them can’t explain how or why they arrived at solutions they create, although my experience is that the most articulate creatives rise to the top. If like me, you value Socratic dialogues, don’t expect creatives to respond well. Most are fantastically well-equipped to create wonderful work but less well-equipped to defend it.

Most creatives work for inner satisfaction, not extrinsic rewards. Usually, motivating them is not a problem since they love their work. The challenge is working with them in a way that doesn’t de-motivate them. One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is to trust the development process once you have clearly established your creative objectives. Try to reserve judgment until everything is on the table. Let the process work through.

One of the biggest differences between creatives and the average working stiff is that most creatives I know work from a sense of vocation. They feel called to their work. They don’t slog off to work; they run towards their day. It is precisely because many of them feel they don’t have a choice but to do what they do that they feel particularly vexed by clients who don’t treat them right, regardless of whether they’re clueless, mean-spirited, or disrespectful. In spite of their efforts to not take their work personally, it’s very difficult not to. It is just the nature of creative work and the extent to which subjective decisions are necessary and important.

Perhaps more than most of us, creatives feel a strong desire to please those for whom they work. They are tasked with harmonizing functionality, beauty, and meaning. It never ceases to amaze me that they mostly succeed at their attempts to do so. The fact that they are often successful shouldn’t diminish anyone’s estimation of how very difficult it is accomplish this. When they fail, as all of us do on occasion, their attempts to succeed should be accorded respect, not disparagement. Mountain climbers sometimes perish on the mountains they choose to climb. When tragedy strikes, most people would never think of responding derisively or of scoffing. For reasons that evade me altogether, some people respond to a creative fall with scorn or contempt. Needless to say, people like this should be kept as far away from creative enterprises as it is possible to get them.

For most creatives, failure is a soul-stealing experience not unlike that resulting from the “Dementor’s kiss” as described in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books. It is very difficult for many good creatives to take a second, third, or fourth sally at a difficult creative problem. This is not because they are overly sensitive or because they have egos like eggshells. It is because most creatives know that the best ideas come early and that if a solution has not emerged early, it is increasingly difficult to craft a solution the longer the design process drags on.

Smart creatives I know are good at understanding that clients are not always going to give feedback in the most effective way. They coach their teams to approach work strategically, to avoid being too sensitive, and not to let their egos get bruised when the feedback process is less than ideal.

Working effectively with creatives is not unlike working effectively with anyone else. To some extent, treating them as if they were exotic and different is counterproductive, but understanding how they are different can make one more productive. We all feel special. We all feel that we are unique and most of us hope that our uniqueness is not only visible, but valued. I never cease to be amazed at how much better work product is when it is delivered by someone who feels valued, trusted, and secure. Conversely, setting a disinterested or overly tough tone when working with your creatives can spook the best ideas right out of someone’s head.

Don’t be surprised if your creative team is just as nervous or scared by the breakthrough idea as you might be. Do everything you can to get those breakthrough options on the table and even if you must pass on them for whatever reasons, embrace their appearance with joy and enthusiasm when they do appear. In a world where most people choose faster horses, breakthrough ideas can take you further faster than you might imagine.

Next: Part 3: Making agreements that make for better creative.

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Graphic Design

Tuesday

02Feb2010

How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 11:24AM |

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Part 1: How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team

Of all the aspects of my career over the years, I love working with artists the most, whether it has been as a musical or theatrical collaborator, a commissioner, a producer, a creative director, or an art director. Playing a role in bringing something fresh and new into the world is a special experience - one that I wish everyone could have.

Working effectively with creative personnel is something that I’ve been interested in writing about for quite some time. Not everyone knows how to collaborate with and support creatives so that they will produce their very best work. In fact, the way that some people work with creatives hurts work quality as opposed to facilitating it. Some folks will never know how good their creative product might have turned out if they had known how to get the best from their creative team. As it is, they can only look at the products that exist and wonder what might have been.

Frankly, a lot of the poor marketing and branding campaigns that I see in all likelihood started out with much better ideas and more compelling executional drafts, but they were left bleeding in a ditch somewhere along the way.

When mediocre branding or dulled-down creative fails to produce results, it’s not that branding, communications, and design strategies don’t work. These strategies succeed or fail in execution. Executing well is increasingly harder to do. With the advent of new media, literally everyone has access to communication tools and contrary to what you might read in blogs and discussion forums, gifted amateurs with one or two good ideas are not going to revolutionize communications effectiveness. They may very well get lucky a time or two, but building creative that is on strategy over the long haul requires experience, training, skill, discipline, research, passion, and the ability to facilitate the productivity of other gifted people.

I’m hoping that this series of posts will help improve both your and your organization’s ability to produce effective and compelling communications tools. Sometimes we forget that until a consumer or audience member has a direct experience with our product, their behaviors are governed by what we communicate and how we communicate. Increasingly, words are less important, and images - both still and moving - are where the action is. So learning how to embed information and narratives in pictorial contexts is a vital skill - one that you can acquire and hone.

I hope you enjoy the series. I’m loving writing it.

Understand what’s strategic.

The most important and strategic choice you’ll make is choosing the agency or design team with which you work. That choice implies that you like their work, trust their judgment, and can afford their services. If any of these things are not true, keep looking until you’ve selected a firm where all of these things are true.

Making an agency/design firm selection requires two commitments. The first commitment is obvious. You are making a commitment to your choice’s success while working with you.

The second commitment is less obvious: you must commit to your own decision, recognizing that second-guessing your choice undermines the health and productivity of the relationship. It’s a little like marriage. How many marriages work when one or both partners can’t stop thinking about or wishing for somebody outside the marriage?

Most good creatives are intuitive and can sense a lack of commitment. They are likely to interpret their hunch any number of ways - some of them counterproductive. If you don’t communicate the truth openly, they will make up their own story about what you think and chances are it won’t help you. Trust emerges from commitment and loyalty. Trust is the magic ingredient when it comes to crafting great creative products.

What is the difference that makes a difference?

When any of us choose an ad agency, a graphic design firm, or a graphic designer, we take a look at work that our candidates have produced to date. Since it is human nature to try and make the best possible impression in the business development process, we can assume that our candidates show us their best/favorite work. Most of us want to be evaluated at our best. Certainly, none of us are excited to present work about which we have mixed emotions or don’t like.

My experience is that most agencies and design teams produce work that reveals a fairly significant range of quality and effectiveness. Some work is stellar and beautiful. Some is frankly a yawn, and some is just plain poor when compared to what you will see included within their business-development portfolio.

Most art directors and designers are surprisingly candid when discussing their work products, especially when trust has been established. “That’s horrible,” “I hate that,” or “I wish we had never taken that project on” are commonly heard among trusted colleagues appraising work quality. My experience is that the best creatives are toughest on themselves when appraising their own performance. Professionals can’t afford to lie to themselves about work quality. It is the road to perdition.

Let me hasten to add that for the purposes of this article, I’m not talking about immature firms or designers where somebody has gotten lucky (Yes, luck can and does influence design quality). I’m discussing firms that are staffed by solid, experienced professionals who have produced a significant body of work over time.

If the same people use the same process to develop design products, how is it that outcomes can be so different? Why is some work product wonderful and some is just acceptable? What variable changes to drive a different result? It may surprise you that the we - the client - are that variable. Design firms and agencies that are a cut above consistently produce good work. Great work, however, requires a great client. It is very difficult to produce great creative for a poor client.

Being a good client is an art.

Effectively playing the client role is more difficult than producing good work. Being a good client requires the ability to get the very best out of creatives. The best clients inspire and give trust, have a gentle touch, are well-organized, listen actively, and create safety zones for their creatives to take risks and make bold choices. Good clients understand the creative process and are sensitive to the creative temperament.

In practical terms, a good client brings clarity and decisiveness to the design development process. Nobody is likely to achieve an unarticulated objective. The best clients have done their work first before commencing the design development process. They know what they’re looking for and can conjure it up in descriptive, practical, tonal, and personality terms.

While this sounds easy, it isn’t. Most people confuse their ability to understand and envision outcomes impressionistically with the ability to give clear and understandable direction. In practical terms, what this means is that no client should expect any communications product to be of a higher quality than the direction provided, even though it sometimes happens that the quality of creative products exceeds the quality of direction given.

When the creative product quality exceeds the quality of strategy direction, it is usually aesthetically better, but not necessarily strategically better. There’s a lot of pretty product out there that doesn’t get the job done, because goals weren’t clearly articulated and the target audience wasn’t clearly defined.

The best work results from the best direction that is delivered at the appropriate time. So, what is necessary to give good direction and when should it be delivered?

Come back later this week for Part 2: How to Get Ready for Success.

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Graphic Design

Wednesday

27Jan2010

The Live Nation-Ticketmaster Merger Impact.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 9:29AM |

Continued from "I feel a great disturbance in the force."

Live Nation’s potent marketplace power emerges from its relationships to artists. Their primary customer is – and will continue to be – their 1,300+ artists, including long-term agreements with such big names as Madonna, U2, and Jay-Z.

Doubtless, many in the arts and cultural sector are unperturbed by these events. These people, after all, are in commercial entertainment. What does this have to do with us? We are concerned with art not commerce.

I would plead the case that today’s commercial act is tomorrow’s (and arguably today’s) fine artist. Increasingly, art that matters to audiences bubbles up at the confluence of high art and popular art streams. Tony Bennett may have just been a nightclub act at certain points in his career, but just try to tell his fans that he’s no artist now and see how far you get. As I have been reminded more than once in life, Mozart was once a pop figure.

It is obvious that regulators fail to grasp that the relationship that matters in the live event industry is with the artist. Most key business decisions are controlled by the artist or their management. Artists control: who manages them; where they play; when they play; how they are represented; the sponsors with whom they will associate their image; the causes that matter to them, etc. Live Nation gets it.

"We now have an artist relationship with premium ticket sales and venue ancillaries. [We will] expand that relationship to include tickets, sponsorships, fan clubs, DVDs, etc.," says Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino. (Billboard.biz, Live Nation Takes Ticketing In-House, January 11, 2008)

Why would Ticketmaster merge with Live Nation? Because Ticketmaster’s contract with Live Nation was set to end at 2008 year end, Ticketmaster faced losing its largest client. Live Nation had already announced that it would commence a 10-year agreement with CTS Eventim, giving the largest ticketing company in Europe a secure foothold in the North American market in exchange for a turn-key infrastructure reputed to be “the most technologically advanced ticketing system in the world.”

Live Nation’s plans to operationalize Eventim and abandon Ticketmaster contained some strategic flaws, chief among them having to replace or match Ticketmaster’s existing 6700 retail locations and its network of global call centers. Presumably Live Nation understood that the physical and human resource assets possessed by Ticketmaster were worth acquiring to realize their vertical integration plans.

In what other sector would regulators allow one entity to exercise such significant cross-industry control of: product development; product management; product distribution; product marketing and promotion; product sales; consumer marketing data; ancillary product development, manufacture, marketing, and sales? Will this merger survive eventual anti-trust challenges?

Currently, many independent companies and individuals benefit from working in the live event industry. Artist managements and agencies entertain competing offers from promoters with experience in particular markets with particular artist genres. In turn, the successful promoter can seek the best venue and ticketing deals and the most advantageous media buys.

The new competitive landscape is markedly altered. Even when the occasional independent event promotion takes place inside one part of the product-development-to-consumer pipeline, the chances are assured that the new merged entity will get its piece of the action - even if that piece of the action is just ticket fees and surcharges.

Imagine that you are an artist who is successfully breaking into the big-time, or that you’ve been around a long time – your career has cooled off into the has-been category – but now it appears that you’re getting your second wind. You’re making a come-back. In either scenario you’re going to be an attractive property to an agent or manager who wants to monetize the opportunity. Will you choose a stellar boutique agency with a great track record or will you feel forced to choose the mega-entity that controls tours, venues, promotions, media, market data, ticketing services, and ancillary artist-franchise product sales? This merger significantly advantages Live Nation over other artist managements.

Is it reasonable to assume that Live Nation’s artist-management division will choose an independent promoter over taking a tour route to a venue or market controlled by its own promotional division? Why would it choose to let the event’s promoter profit fill somebody else’s bank account?

How likely is Live Nation to mount an event in a venue that doesn’t use Live Nation ticketing services when tens and often hundreds of thousands of dollars in ticket fees and surcharges are at stake on a per event basis? In many of the markets that matter, Live Nation has or will have venues that it manages. Will it promote its most lucrative attractions in venues it does not control?

It is no secret that the music recording industry is reeling and that artists and attractions increasingly depend on touring to generate revenues. To maximize revenue generation, merchandising ancillary products - including sponsorship and product endorsements - is a key strategy. If the Grateful Dead were still around, it wouldn’t be a band. It would be the Grateful Dead franchise.

One sector that will feel the impact of this merger is large publicly funded performing arts and entertainment venues - performing arts centers, sports complexes, arenas, convention centers. Many if not most of these venues were built on the public dime. Those who advocated building these complexes made economic development and quality-of-life arguments to get the projects done. Feasibility studies, business models, and financing plans were predicated on these venues retaining particular revenue streams, among them ticket office commissions, user fees (seat taxes), rental income, and commissions on merchandise sales.

Many of these venues are quite large and expensive to operate, but expense is not the only strategic corollary to size. Bigger venues make for bigger gross potentials and higher profits. The new Live Nation-Ticketmaster entity’s enhanced marketing power puts them in a power position with respect to these venues.

Gary Lustig, Managing Director of Ticket Philadelphia, raised a salient and important policy point with respect to the merger. “The Department of Justice should have looked at this from a data perspective. It's patently anti-competitive to allow Ticketmaster to own and share with Live Nation data collected as a result of the marketing efforts of non-Live Nation venues and promoters. Basically if a promoter brings an artist to a Ticketmaster-serviced venue, Ticketmaster gets unfettered access to the ticket buyer data and can share that data with Live Nation freely. Ticketmaster can also market to those ticket-buyers even though the ticket buyer didn't necessarily desire to be a Ticketmaster customer.”

One can build a big venue but not just any artist or attraction can attract an audience that will fill it up. Live Nation’s vertical integration strategy endows the entity with awesome bargaining power when it comes to negotiating who does ticketing. Everyone knows that Live Nation artists are more likely to play a Live Nation-managed or -ticketed venue because it benefits both the company’s bottom line and - at least indirectly - the artist’s bottom line as well.

Who loses in this scenario? Those venues that feel forced to abandon their own internal venue ticketing operations to contract with Ticketmaster. Why would they do this? To increase the odds that Live Nation’s heavy-hitting artist roster shows up in their venue.

Venues that once counted on ticketing revenues to help keep the venue operating will lose a substantial, ongoing revenue stream in this scenario. While there are some savings, venues still have to staff ticket offices at some level, even with a Ticketmaster contract. Once venues go down this path, they lose control of audience data and ability to market. It is a slippery slope downhill from there.

While most Ticketmaster venues share in Ticketmaster’s fee revenue, if they abandon their own systems for Ticketmaster, they will lose at least a portion of ticket purchase fees. Venues that move to Ticketmaster will still earn some fee revenue depending on the deal that is negotiated with Ticketmaster.

What this really means is that taxpayers may likely be stuck paying higher taxes to keep these venues open and operating at all. Monies that were once available to partially offset what was always a losing proposition will line the coffers of the new Ticketmaster-Live Nation entity.

This news is another sobering reminder just how important it is to our sector to GET REAL, to focus on those issues and priorities that matter.

To put things in perspective, when a venue loses its ability to ticket internally because it is forced for marketplace reasons to contract with Ticketmaster/Live Nation, it loses more revenue than it will ever hope to get from grants. It loses its ability to control its destiny. It loses its ability to build and understand its relationships with individual audience members. It loses its ability to develop and implement special short-term fee assessments for capital improvements. It loses its ability to manage customer service levels and build loyalty programs.

Venues are built to provide arts and entertainment experiences to the communities that surround them. If the artists and attractions that excite audiences and fulfill the venue’s purpose won’t play a venue because it’s not a Live Nation venue or because it’s not ticketed by Ticketmaster, nobody wins. Every venue needs winners. Venues need to keep at least some share of the revenue that winners produce. With each passing year, however, that amount has been reduced. Increasingly, the expectation is that venues should fundraise to pay for events that used to pay for themselves. A loss of ticketing fees - where they exist - is just one more step in that direction.

It’s impossible to know the end game here. Will Live Nation develop a venue management division the goal of which is to act as a management contractor for most major market large venues? Given the foundation that this expanded vertical integration gives them, it is not a stretch to imagine such a scenario.

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Tickemaster-Live Nation Merger Ticketing

Neill Archer Roan