Neill Archer Roan's Working SMARTWorking SMARThttp://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010-02-15T14:54:02ZSquarespaceHow to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team; Part 5http://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010/2/12/how-to-get-the-best-work-from-your-agency-or-graphic-design.htmlNeill Archer Roan2010-02-12T15:56:32Z2010-02-12T15:56:32Z

Planning Your Creative Briefing Meeting

The creative briefing meeting opens the design development process. When we present the brief, we have the opportunity to emphasize and expand upon select communications objectives. We can highlight particularly important product features, messages, and brand values. We can nuance our creative team’s understanding of our target audiences, discuss our consumer-research methods, and address logistical issues or concerns that have arisen in the past.

Process your brief internally first.

If the marketing buck does not absolutely stop at your desk–if you have a boss or CEO who insists on signing off on marketing projects before they are implemented–make sure that you complete your creative brief’s internal approvals process prior to delivering it to your creative team. Waiting to show your boss design deliverables while they are in the developmental stage could prove catastrophic. Your boss may not grasp how the products reflect the goals, objectives, and strategy that have driven their development.

The chances that your boss reflects your target audience are probably slim to none, so design deliverables are unlikely to resonate. Your boss may make the classic mistake–substituting her aesthetic for the target audiences’. She may demand that you go back to square one or make changes that are expensive and off-strategy. When this happens, it is usually because the proper groundwork has not been laid, and the strategy has not been sufficiently processed inside the organization before it has been delivered to the agency or designer.

Deliver the brief in advance.

I have learned that it is a good idea to deliver the written brief three to four days in advance of the briefing meeting. Because creative teams often meet before your briefing to identify questions or concerns that may be prompted by their review of your written document, advance delivery facilitates your team’s review of the brief. No matter how good a brief is, it cannot help but be predicated on previous experience and assumptions that may require further clarification.

Don’t be surprised if your brief or strategy is questioned. First-rate creatives often push back some on strategy, channel selections, media choice, or marketplace assumptions. That’s a good thing because it requires us to defend our strategy formulation. Probing can reveal weaknesses in strategy, prompting reconsideration or a modified approach. It is always better to surface flaws early.

Make a companion presentation.

I always prepare and deliver a companion presentation to my creative brief. In addition to organizing my thinking in advance and ensuring that I make the meeting productive, the presentation facilitates my ability to take everyone through the art (photography, illustrations, charts, forms, etc.) and copy that will be used in the project.

Any design project is comprised of visual counterpoint between images and text. It is vital to discuss what we think those images that we plan on using say or don’t say. It has occasionally been my experience that different people do not infer the same message or have the same emotional experience from the same image. Reviewing images and discussing message and experience brings people together who have various degrees of visual and cultural literacy. What you or I might think is clear or iconic might be completely missed by someone else. As images become increasingly important and target audiences become increasingly culturally and socially diverse, we have to implement processes that help us avoid making mistakes. This is especially important for those of us who work in heterogeneous metropolitan markets.

Facilitate art review.

In practical terms, too, images require prioritization and critical review. For example, we may want to use a particular image in a way that isn’t feasible. The image may say something vital, but its resolution may be insufficient. There may be some technical issues with an image that you don’t see, but your art director or designer flags such as poor focus, noise, or chromatic aberrations. Your design products can’t be any better than the quality of art comprising them.

To facilitate the image review, when I make an image slide for my briefing presentation, I include the following information about the image: people in the image; size of image in pixels, i.e. 4367 px X 2911 px; permissions information (licensing); name of photographer; and caption information. Because intellectual property issues are increasingly thorny, if the photo has been licensed through a stock company, I include license information.

If we’ve done a good job developing and delivering the creative brief, chances are that the design development process will yield products that are not only visually compelling, but that are on-strategy as well. This is a lot easier said than done. Creating a messaging-design-channel gestalt where each component adds value and reinforces the other challenges the most skillful and experienced among us.

]]>How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team; Part 4http://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010/2/5/how-to-get-the-best-work-from-your-agency-or-graphic-design.htmlNeill Archer Roan2010-02-05T14:03:56Z2010-02-05T14:03:56Z

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:

  1. How will creative products help achieve business goals?
  2. What are your communication goals and objectives?
  3. What specific concerns or information – e.g. contemporary vs. classical look, legibility, brand personality, brand values, etc. – should be considered in design development?
  4. What behavioral outcome(s) is the product intended to accomplish?
  5. 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?
  6. How will the creative product(s) be used by the target audiences?
  7. 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.
  8. What is the manufacturing (printing, web design, etc.) budget?
  9. What is the timetable for manufacture/implementation and distribution?
]]>How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team; Part 3http://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010/2/4/how-to-get-the-best-work-from-your-agency-or-graphic-design.htmlNeill Archer Roan2010-02-04T14:08:12Z2010-02-04T14:08:12Z

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.

]]>How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team; Part 2http://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010/2/3/how-to-get-the-best-work-from-your-agency-or-graphic-design.htmlNeill Archer Roan2010-02-03T16:59:06Z2010-02-03T16:59:06Z

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.

]]>How to get the best work from your agency or graphic design team.http://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010/2/2/how-to-get-the-best-work-from-your-agency-or-graphic-design.htmlNeill Archer Roan2010-02-02T16:24:57Z2010-02-02T16:24:57Z

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.

]]>The Live Nation-Ticketmaster Merger Impact.http://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010/1/27/the-live-nation-ticketmaster-merger-impact.htmlNeill Archer Roan2010-01-27T14:29:06Z2010-01-27T14:29:06Z

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.

]]>I feel a great disturbance in the force.http://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010/1/27/i-feel-a-great-disturbance-in-the-force.htmlNeill Archer Roan2010-01-27T13:12:11Z2010-01-27T13:12:11ZYesterday, the American cultural sector experienced yet again another sobering reminder that its real influence over key policy issues is far outside the purview of the sector’s power-and-policy centers.

Yesterday,  the U.S. Department of Justice approved the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.  Approval of the merger requires Ticketmaster to 1) sell  its recently acquired Paciolin ticketing software platform to Comcast-Spectacor or another regulator-approved buyer and 2) to license Paciolin to Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), a principal competitor of Live Nation and the second largest promoter of live events in the North American market.

Regulators also require the new merged entity to guarantee that it will not retaliate against venues who choose to use other ticketing agencies or promotional agencies. I look forward to regulators who clearly don’t understand the industry trying to enforce this provision.

If the industry or consumers need a signal that regulatory agencies are clueless about industry dynamics, approval of this merger is a prime example. It is no exaggeration to compare this merger’s approval to the Empire’s construction of the Death Star in Star Wars IV: A New Hope, except - unlike American regulatory agencies - the inhabitants of the planet Alderaan presumably would never have approved the Death Star’s building permit.

So who, metaphorically speaking, inhabits Alderaan? Anybody working in the live event industry who is not a part of the new Empire. Live Nation’s vertical integration strategy will disproportionately influence the management and agency of artists, tour routes, ticketing services, arts-and-entertainment-consumer-marketing data, artist merchandising, promotional media buys, and sponsorship deals.

With annual revenues approximating $1 Billion and net income reported in excess of $300 Million, Ticketmaster is a powerhouse. It dominates the college and professional sports space, ticketing for some 225 sports teams. When one considers these numbers in tandem with brand awareness, the average person might assume that Ticketmaster has most of the muscle in this merger. Not necessarily. Live Nation is a dreadnaught waiting to happen.

Live Nation articulates its goal as “a direct relationship with the music fan through managing our own ticketing platform, and to be the leading online live music destination website. [We will] connect the artist to the fan.” 

Live Nation is well on its way. According to its their 2007 Annual Report, Live Nation’s database grew in just two years to over 23 Million records from 2005.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have built their business model and plans based on a few strategic concepts that seemingly few professional marketers and even fewer policy wonks seem to grok.

First, those who have consumer-behavior data possess the keys to the kingdom when it comes to making cost- and revenue-effective marketing decisions in the future. The longer one gathers data, the more one knows; the more one knows, the more powerful one’s ability to build or maintain a leadership position.

Second, events are channels. They are real-time social aggregation engines where there is no fast-forward button. People who share time, space, and experiences together –who can be identified after the fact by their data footprints – comprise a large audience that sponsors will pay handsomely to reach. In this age of particle markets, it is increasingly difficult to find real-time channels where audiences comprise large segments that make sense.

Tomorrow: How this merger will impact the sector.

]]>Beyond Importancehttp://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2010/1/22/beyond-importance.htmlNeill Archer Roan2010-01-22T19:00:58Z2010-01-22T19:00:58Z

 

Andrew Taylor’s must-read blog, The Artful Manager, currently features a post entitled “Broken” that sums up how I’ve been feeling about the cultural sector for several years now. Click here to read Andrew’s post.

Andrew and I talked several times during this year’s Arts Presenter’s conference. It was two weeks ago today that we sat together at Remi sharing a light lunch and a heavy conversation about the state of the field and the challenges confronting us. It is no secret that we are not in our “salad days.” Challenges abound. Disruption and change dominate the contextual landscape within which we operate, yet from all appearances many people continue doing the same old same old while expecting better results.

My feeling of frustration has reached the palpable stage - that stage where my better instincts tell me to closet myself away in some remote location far away from friends and colleagues until I have restored some semblance of balance. It is sobering to feel the inner curmudgeon that I swore that I would never become taking center stage in my personal and professional persona.

This year’s conference theme supposedly focused on how to operate more effectively during tough times. My experience of the conference sessions that I attended was that this theme was paid scant respect. In its place I heard our sector’s doxology dutifully repeated over and over and over and over again:

Glory be to the arts. The arts are important. We are necessary to the well-being of society. We bolster healthy economies. We save children. We build community. It is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.

If our sector were a person, we would be an intolerable bore - like the person one meets at a party or worse, a networking event - who is driven by a compulsion to persuade everyone with whom s/he speaks how terribly impressive and important s/he is. Is it any wonder that policy makers’ eyes glaze over in sector meetings at least until they commence scanning the room for exit signs?

Let’s assume that with some people that the “We’re indispensable” argument is still required. Please, somebody tell me what our next topic of conversation is? Do we have an agenda beyond our “art-as-spinach” compulsion (Eat it. It’s good for you.)?

Let me hasten to add that I do not believe that this lack of rigorous self-appraisal and evaluation within the cultural sector is Arts Presenters' (the organization's) fault. The problem is with the field, itself: Us. We are the problem.

Sometime, in the not-so-distant past, when our sector was the subject of disrespect and derision and characterized as the toy department of life, we answered the call to defend ourselves and to make the case that what we do is valuable. At some point we've either made the case or we haven't. Either way, it is now as if we are stuck in a message-loop where all we seem to do is to act as arts advocates.

Some would say that the advocacy job is never done and never will be. They may be right. I suspect, however, that our ceaseless affirmations have stolen focus from reinventing ourselves, and from evaluating whether we're creating the value we must in order to deliver on our promises.

I would like to speak up and suggest a theme for next year’s conference: GET REAL. I would love to come to a conference where participants engage in candid and unvarnished dialogue about assessment and evaluation. No, I’m not talking about sharing evaluation that affirms that we’re important. That would be more of the same.

I’m suggesting that our sector just might have blown through a lot of time, money, and opportunities over the last couple of decades. Or, perhaps not. The point is that there is almost never any discussion about how and where we refresh and reinvigorate our sector, its people, and what we have to offer our communities. Beyond “We’re important.”

I would love to listen to conversation about mistakes or errors in direction. Poorly thought-out initiatives. Ideas that didn’t pan out. Most importantly, I’d love to hear people talk about how or whether organizational learning and advancement occurred as a result of those errors, and - if not - why not.

It is very difficult for people and organizations whose sole agenda is to be affirmed by others to engage in a robust and fearless self-appraisal. Personally I think we are strong enough and good enough to have these conversations.  Whatever opportunities or resources we might have wasted cannot help but pale when compared to the good work that we’ve accomplished.

]]>Why you should think twice about cutting professional development and conferences.http://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2009/12/15/why-you-should-think-twice-about-cutting-professional-develo.htmlNeill Archer Roan2009-12-15T16:31:19Z2009-12-15T16:31:19ZFor the last several months it has been conference season in the arts and entertainment sector. Conferences have always been important to people who work in the cultural sector. They are times to exchange ideas, trade war stories, take a breath, glean a little inspiration, and re-calibrate one’s perspective.

They are also places where interrupting the daily grind and escaping from the crisis de jour can equal the impact of an intervention. It is no overstatement to claim that these events can be life-saving. Like many life-saving events, we’re not necessarily aware that they’re occurring in real time, but that doesn’t change the nature of the outcome.

I know more than a few people whose addiction to their work and loyalty to their “story” has conjured the work equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome. They have developed a perversely fierce loyalty to those notions and opinions that constrain them. Part of their story is that they’re needed at work and being absent for a few days would be tantamount to a moral lapse. I know of what I speak because I have counted myself among these loyal prisoners on and off for decades.

Ironically, this year - when travel and professional development budgets have been cut in many organizations - they’re far more important than usual. In most cultural sector enterprises it has been a very tough year. Many younger arts professionals are confronting the toughest times and most daunting challenges of their lives. It is as hard or harder than it has ever been to ring the revenue bell. Conversely, making cuts can seem like bailing a boat with a thimble. Many organizations require comprehensively re-thinking everything from staffing to strategy, but that much change requires uncommon clarity and gumption. It also requires admitting that the future for which we prepared ourselves will not come to pass and that a different and more relevant vision must be articulated then embraced.

For a lot of people, their education and experience has left them ill-prepared for current times. It is human nature to assume that tomorrow is likely to be a whole lot like today. There aren’t many conversations that include the phrase, “What if tomorrow is radically different from today?”

If ever there were a time when the workforce within our sector would benefit from exchanges of ideas and conversations about what’s working and what isn’t, that time is now. Sometimes good, old-fashioned moral support and encouragement to keep on keeping on can cure what ails you. When I think about the many times in my career when I have been disheartened, discouraged, or just had plain run out of ideas, they are too many to list. Those tough moments were made endurable by respected colleagues or seminar leaders who were there for me with an insight, suggestion, or sometimes just some empathy or shared laughter at how pathetic things were.

It is easy for any of us to forget that our cultural sector enterprises rely more on human capital than financial capital. The stewardship and refreshment of people is of  strategic import. Yet, I know of a number of organizations who are better stewards of the plants in their lobbies than the people in their offices.

If working with a robust, resilient, and resourceful team matters to you, make sure that you keep your team supplied with opportunities for renewal and growth. Don ‘t stop with giving them the tools they need to succeed; give them ideas, as well. Finally, if the buck stops with you, make sure that you get the care and feeding you need as well. Remember that the heaviest lifting is often done by you.

Hope to see you soon. Our professional community gatherings are far poorer for any of our absences.

]]>Don't Let Anxiety Run Your Pricing and Promotion Strategieshttp://www.theroangroup.com/working-smart/2009/12/1/dont-let-anxiety-run-your-pricing-and-promotion-strategies.htmlNeill Archer Roan2009-12-01T15:55:08Z2009-12-01T15:55:08ZAs many arts and entertainment executives may have supposed, this Thanksgiving-Christmas season is likely to challenge marketing teams in meeting sales goals. Despite government assurances that the recession is over and a sustained rally in the stock market, many consumers are still feeling a budget pinch. While there is no question that consumers will loosen their purse strings, I think our sector must assume that consumers will be choosier in their purchasing decisions and that their decisions will more strongly reflect priorities, value received for money spent, and consumer values.

So what does this mean in practical terms for marketing executives? It means that tickets will be more difficult to sell as consumers weigh their options and consider their priorities more carefully. The past shows us that, when times are tough, consumers often give something that’s needed as opposed to something that’s wanted. The I-expect-value-for-my-money trend started gathering steam before the meltdown occurred, and the meltdown has accelerated that trend. Highly perishable purchases like tickets to arts and entertainment events are likely to fare less well when compared against value-durable tangibles.

It is crucial to message persuasively about the lasting value of spending time together with loved ones. We want our audiences to think about how important shared experiences and shared memories are to them. We’re not just selling a good time; we’re selling stronger relationships that are built on the memory of sharing joy and having fun together.

In this messaging scenario, messages about wowing people with artistic quality or entertainment value must be enriched with those values that consumers hold dear. The “You’ll be impressed, amazed, stunned, etc.” message just doesn’t cut it at a time when special effects make the improbable and the impossible routine and predictable.

Remember that product-centered, quality messages are so pervasive as to be meaningless. Most consumers are incapable of assessing dimensions of quality, and frankly those dimensions are so subtle as to be almost imperceptible to most consumers. Because they don’t know them, they can’t imagine them. They can very well imagine, however, feeling closer and more connected to friends and family. That’s a precious deliverable and a promise that we can make and, more importantly, keep.

The current sales environment also means that organizational colleagues will undoubtedly apply pressure on marketers to develop more aggressive promotions and offer bigger discounts. It is very difficult for marketers to be disciplined about achieving yield goals when faced with anxious colleagues who insist that discounting is the silver bullet. So, should marketers pull the discounting trigger?

Price is the most important cue in the overall value array. Promotions that reduce the price of an event will devalue it if some specific buyer behavior or attribute does not reasonably explain the discount. In other words, discounts should always be attached to conditions or reasons to maintain a strong rate fence. Without that rate fence, you will create resentment among existing buyers and undermine consumer loyalty.

When we consider consumer behavior in the context of the consumer product adoption continuum - Awareness, Consideration, Choice, Repeat - we need to ask ourselves whether a discount will achieve awareness. Probably not. Attaching a reduced price to an unknown is poor strategic thinking.

If a consumer is in the consideration phase, discounts can be effective tools when a consumer has already decided to buy but is trying to determine the best place to buy. So, if a particular artist or attraction is appearing at multiple venues in your trade area, a discount may cause a consumer to choose you over another venue so long as the discount is sufficiently large to overcome any barriers or concerns.

If a consumer is on the fence about purchasing, a discount might just be the required incentive that causes the consumer to go ahead and choose your event over another priority. Unfortunately, other people who have already decided to attend but haven’t gotten around to making their purchase yet will also receive the discount. This scenario can significantly reduce your ability to maintain your target yield. Plus, those people who have already purchased at a higher price will not feel good about missing out and you may find yourself creating resentment.

Another big problem with discounts is that they impact ROI with a double-whammy. Not only do you forego revenue when the discount triggers are pulled, you also must pay the price of advertising the promotion so that consumers are aware of the opportunity. So foregone revenue and promotional costs when aggregated can make an already bad sales situation much worse. While you may conceivably boost your audience numbers by running a promotion, your costs of acquiring that audience may be much higher when you analyze your return on investment.

To succeed as a marketing executive requires considerable discipline and a strong understanding of both your business model and your business goals. Tough sales environments like the current holiday season can bring on anxiety that gets in the way of thinking strategically and executing on plan. Bluntly, you can take a bad situation and make it worse.

Arts and entertainment programming executives sometimes shift accountability for a non-performing program choice from themselves to their marketing colleagues. This is human nature and sometimes they are correct; marketers don’t always make the best strategy choices. In our business, we are saddled with a planning horizon that requires programmers to make choices long, long before a presentation occurs - sometimes years. Popularity of artists and attractions can wane and, as we all know, it only takes days for an economy to tank. None of us have a crystal ball.

In my first big job in the industry I was responsible for both programming and marketing so I was at fault, no matter what, when my audience decided to stay home and watch TV. I learned some valuable lessons in that environment, chief of which was that if I was forced to spend extra time and money on persuading consumers to reconsider a decision to stay home, discounts never worked. What worked was making a strong case for value from the audience’s perspective, not from the organization’s.

Some things don’t change.

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