REPORTING FROM NEW ORLEANS — Transparency and keeping good relationships with agents and promoters continue to be the best ways to attract shows to a venue, explained participants in the Agency Panel during the International Association of Venue Managers VenueConnect here, July 26-30.
Moderated by Billboard’s Ray Waddell, the panel included agent Darin Murphy from Creative Artists Agency who said in-person visits to his Nashville office are still the best way to stay on his radar.
“You can’t beat the personal relationship; it’s always good to stop in and say hello,” said Murphy, who then emphasized the importance of maintaining the relationship after the initial meeting. “A lot of buildings do a great job via email staying in touch with us and relaying what’s going on. Information is key and I want to know what is working in your market so that I can make a case to the artist and management about why they should play your building.”
It’s a combination of relationship-building and being honest about what is and what isn’t working in a market, said Murphy.
“And if we can't see you this time, we’ll come see you next time,” he said.
It’s standard advice from a panel of industry icons that included agents asking for unfiltered reporting and promoters asking buildings to put more skin in the game.
“Be willing to do something creative to get the show,” said Darin Lashinsky from buyer National Shows 2. “If a building emails us with their avails, and then tells us they’re not willing to take any risks on the show, they’re not being very helpful.”
Lashinsky said he prefers to work with venues that will do co-promotes, or help pony up the artist guarantee. And if he’s promoting a show that’s in his own backyard of Nashville, he expects marketing support from the building staff.
From a marketing standpoint, “the most valuable thing a venue can do is give us a one-sheet that details all of their marketing assets available to promote my show,” he said. “We can use that to push other venues for help and tell them ‘you’re in the market, you should be able to figure this out for us.’"
Lashinsky said his staff always gets involved with promoting shows on social media, but he prefers to piggy-back those efforts off the venues own campaigns. Randy McElrath, VP of Booking for Live Nation’s Houston office, said his company also “leans heavily on the venues, especially if they have a good sponsored site with a sports team” or other local partnerships that have a big online following.
“And on show night, we will have interns sit in the venue and tweet ‘here is the shortest line for beers,’ or ‘these restrooms are now open,’” he said. The idea is to create a real-time communication channel with fans that can occur concurrently with the concert.
“And the tweets are coming from real human beings and not automatons?” asked Waddell.
“Well, it depends on what you think of interns, I suppose,” McElrath joked in response.
While much of the panel focused on the needs and concerns of agents and promoters, Waddell did relay a concern he said he’s heard from many venues — the number of holds that never turn into shows.
“A lot of venues are telling me that these holds are really starting to stack up,” and becoming a big liability, especially when large numbers of shows never materialize, said Waddell. “So what exactly is a strong hold versus a weak hold?”
CAA’s Murphy responded that the nature of today’s touring business means that routing is very preliminary and changes several times up until the announce date.
“I usually like to ask people to please hold something for us, but if they need the date, we’ll work with you,” he said. “There’s no strong hold versus soft hold — it either looks good or it doesn’t, but if you say you’re going to hold it, then hold it and call me if something comes up and we can vet it out one-on-one.”
Ryan Jones with William Morris Endeavor said one of the reasons holds have gotten so far ahead of the actual show date is because artists are increasingly going on sale one year to six months before the show date. Lashinsky followed up, saying the big gap between on-sales and show dates is typically done to coincide with a national promotion, whether it's an artist's new album, appearance on a show like The Voice or a visit to a late night program like Jimmy Fallon.
“It costs so much to market a national tour that it makes sense to piggyback the on-sale with a promotional push,” he said. “That way, we can spend the remainder of our time with our own marketing department deciding how much further we can stretch it out and add to the budget to get us to the end.”
McElrath agreed, adding “trying to re-create the buzz of a national break is really difficult. If you miss the bus, it's hard to re-create that excitement.”
Interviewed for this article: Darin Murphy, (615) 383-8787; Darin Lashinsky, (615) 242-3323; Randy McElrath, (713) 693-8600; Ryan Jones, (310) 285-8000; Ray Waddell, (615) 321-4245