Funny Marketing

I was interested to read in the ClickZ newsletter that the late US comedian Red Skelton used to collect the addresses of members of his audience, then write to them next time he was due in town. A simple but very cost effective tool for selling tickets and building a fan base that most acts fail to exploit to this day.

The Curse Of Booking Fees

In times of recession, customers look for value. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find people balking at paying a booking or processing fee for something they reasonably expected to be part of the price. (You don't pay Sainsbury's an extra fee for putting your can of cat food through the till.)

Even if we pay the fee, our opinion (and therefore our loyalty) of the company goes down.

I’m aware from my own experience that contracts between theatres and producers are often based on a percentage of box office. Naturally theatres and agencies are reluctant to let promoters have a percentage of the 'fee'. Even so, they must find a way to introduce a clause that allows them to deduct a processing fee from the money owed. Companies like airlines and theme parks who own the entire process have no excuse at all.

Cricket Ticket Sales Score A Duck

I went to my first cricket match in 40 years last week. Well, not a proper cricket match- a Twenty20 game which has none of the cat-and-mouse excitement (for which, read 'boredom', unless you're very keen) of first class cricket but is an edge-of-your-seat hit-and-run event.

So the game was fun. But. What was disappointing was the Hampshire Rosebowl's sales set-up. Although we wanted to book well in advance and the date was known well ahead, it was only a month before that it finally went on sale Even a week before, the ticket office were uncertain about exactly when we would be allowed to buy tickets. This is not the way to sell tickets. Always have the Action available when you stimulate the Desire.

Then there's the website. Try to buy tickets by clicking on a specific game and you are still sent to a general online booking page which you then have to click to book tickets for your chosen game. Did whoever designed it actually try to use it?

Perhaps you'd prefer to book by phone. So you call the (premium rate) number given on the website, which I did four times during their opening hours, and only ever got a pre-recorded message directing me to, you guessed it, the website.

Do these people want to sell tickets?

If you're going to do it, do it properly

Last Monday saw the launch of Celebratio, an event management and ticketing system from SecureTicket for which The Lewis Experience has been providing PR and marketing support. What I like about the people at SecureTicket (apart from the fact that they're very nice) is that they realise the danger of the false economy.

So they chose the Cafe Royal for the launch- a top class, sophisticated venue right in the heart of London, not some anonymous hotel on the fringes. They got a well known celebrity (Maggie Philbin, the BBC's Face Of Technology, pictured with Rashid Qajar, chief executive of SecureTicket) to host it instead of relying on their excellent but unknown selves. They served champagne not cheap sparkling wine. They commissioned a short comedy film and hired a live band, rather than simply offering a power point presentation.

The result was a well-attended evening and potential clients going away with an image of a company that doesn't just promise great things but actually delivers.

If you want to know more about Celebratio, which by the way is Latin for 'audience', visit the website secureticket.biz.