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June 2012 Sharing Forms

Blumenthal Performing Arts (Charlotte, NC)Your Current Ticketing System: Audience View

Broadway (Where Applicable) Sales & Commentary:THE BAD NEWS: Did not have a good Broadway year in 2011-12; season subs and smaller packages were both down and these missing-in-action buyers didn’t migrate over to the single ticket column. Missed our budgets on most shows, but sold comparable to other markets with the titles we had. JERSEY BOYS would have been very successful, IF it had been two weeks instead of three. Same situation with MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET. STOMP, after selling out the last time it was here a couple of years ago, did poorly. That audience was extremely price sensitive. We were one of the more profitable engagements for LA CAGE and interestingly, the leads from that show have performed very strongly in the telemarketing room when called for 12-13 season tickets. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is selling well and will close our year at the end of June. But it is selling back to front, which tells you something about how the 99% are watching their pennies.

THE GOOD NEWS: Our missing buyers have come home for the 12-13 Broadway season. Next year is doing very well. We have a renewal rate of 76% YTD plus record breaking new acquisition. We currently have 1,530 new buyers compared to 419 this same time last year. Why? Likely returns from THE LION KING and WICKED, two of the most popular shows we present. LION KING, in particular, has a history of driving very strong acquisition in Charlotte. We are currently at 7,335 in subscriptions and will continue to market those this summer. We are looking at analysis to see if we can get a handle of ‘who’ these new subs are so that we can look for more just like them!

Concerts/Fine Arts Sales & Commentary:Good popular concert year with a number of sellouts. This category outperformed everything else last year. Have a sold-out Jackson Brown coming up in July. We had a decent but disappointing run of Alvin Ailey this past spring. This show has always done excellent business for this but did about half of what we expected this time. Was third time in the market in my tenure here, so may need a break. Or maybe another example of folks watching their pennies.

Family Shows Sales & Commentary:

Price sensitive market. See comments on BEAUTY and STOMP. We ended up doing a number of family specials on STOMP and these were wildly popular but so deeply discounted the revenue was sad. We did almost 2,000 for Kids Nights (child free with paying adult), which was a new record for us.

Children’s’/Youth Theater Sales & Commentary:

Other Categories/Genres Sales & Commentary:

E-marketing / Web/ Mobile / Social MediaWe have begun a more concerted effort to test our email by doing multiple versions and seeing which ones perform better. We have focused on our season ticket campaign to test against since we do regular and pre-planned emails to that group for months. We are testing subject lines on some and the actual ‘kind’ of email in others—IE, a Contest Based Email, a Graphical Email and a Content Intense Email. Here’s what I think we have learned. Different people prefer different things. Who knew?! So we are basically going to rotate through different versions of each of our emails to the lists and eventually, everyone should get at least one that floats their boat. See examples below with results. Also, use of the word BROADWAY and Great Seats seems to improve open rates.

SISTER ACT EMAIL TEST: Each email was different looking, but all had the same subject line—Purchase Broadway Season Tickets Today.

OPEN RATES Click Thu Clicked Video Clicked BuyCONTENT RICH 17.9% 1.2% .5% .8%GRAPHICAL 17.9% 1.9% 1.2% 1.0%CONTEST* 18.1% 1.8% 1.1% .9%

*Buy state may be under-represented on contest emails because they have to leave email to do the contest and can purchase directly from the entry page without going back to the original email

CONTEST VERSION CONTENT RICH VERSION

GRAPHICAL VERSION

TRACES EMAILS: Each email looked the same, but had different subject line.

OPENs Click Thu Clicked Video Clicked BuyPurchase Broadway Season Tickets Today! 17.5% 1.2% .8% .4%Save Great Seats Now 18.8%! .8% .6% .3%Buy Season Tickets Now 16.7% 1.1% .9% .4%

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIMENTS: We decided we would send our season ticket buyers some images they could post to their season Facebook pages (including one that will work in the big box at the top) and/or Pinterest. We are going to do a set for every show that approves using their art this way and are emailing directly to the buyers along with a note thanking them for their subscription. We also keep images posted on the Season Ticket Buyer page in case they want to switch them out. Below are examples. I don’t know if anyone is using these or not (because I can’t afford Crowd Factory!), but I think it’s a cool idea and only costs the time to do the graphic. I saw a similar concept posted this weekend on Gamecock Central, a sports board. See below. Anyway, the hope is to give OUR FANS something they can post proudly by combining the show art with a cool headline that makes them want to use it and tell the world they are Broadway Fans.

SPORTS EXAMPLE: Posted to Gamecock Central sports board and immediately posted by me and every other Gamecock fan that saw it PS--#5 on ESPN Plays of the Week! Go Gamecocks!

HERE’s same idea applied to Broadway. And WICKED LOVED IT!

Here’ example of our Pinterest Graphic

Biggest Recent SnafuHmmmm…..not meeting our budget goals ??? That sounds about right.

Best Accomplishment

THE BLUMEY AWARDS: Blumenthal presented the first Blumenthal High School Musical Theater Awards. Our Education Department did an amazing job with this event and my staff did an excellent job maximizing exposure for it through both traditional and social channels. It was great at every level—public service, community relations, audience development. You name it, this event delivered for us. Our winners will be at the Jimmy Awards in New York next week competing with kids from about 30 other cities (Observer is sending a reporter to New York with them!) and we hear about “The Blumeys” on a daily basis, from excited kids to teachers, to parents to donors who want to help with this event. Big winner in terms of getting a higher profile for the arts (these kids got treated like sports stars for a week by the media!) and for extending our brand beyond our regular fans. We will begin planning for an even bigger event for next year and think we will grow the participating schools from 20 to 30. We had almost a full Belk Theater for the first ceremony this year and I think we will sell it out next season.

TICKET BROCKERS: We got some major coverage of ticket brokers because we sent an email out to our Broadway buyers warning them about brokers advertising and selling tickets for next year’s shows NOW—before we even have subs seated and the first single ticket printed. We got major TV and print stories as a result. KEY LEARNING: Media read our customer emails and get their story ideas from those—vs. the media updates we send out! The next time I need to place a story in the news, I’m sending an email to our database instead of a press release to the editors.

SEASON KICKOFF: Had a terrific season kickoff event for WAR HORSE. There was an audible gasp from the audience when Joey came out. Also think we upgraded the quality of our email and social media

programs this year in a major way. I moved my best graphics person over to email creation and that has really paid off, as did moving to a much more sophisticated ESP (What Counts). It is a big more complex uploading lists vs. having everything synched with the Ticketing system, but it’s worth the extra work. Much better metrics. Much better delivery. Much better!

NEW TICKET PLATFORM: Relatively smooth year transitioning to a new ticketing platform. Audience View is very rich in data and we are trying to make use of all the richness in our marketing by working hard on segmentation of lists and careful targeting.

STAFF REORG: Moved my social media person into a contractor versus using a staff position (she was also the communications manager). This has allowed her to really specialize in social media with multiple clients. Very pleased with how this has worked for us. I think this is a job that benefits from having a dedicated specialist vs. in-house marketing generalist.

Year Ending Financial Status We will finish in the black but have had to tap into our endowment to a larger extent than normal as almost nothing hit its budget goal this year. (Who hired these marketing people anyway?) Fortunately, we have had many years when we took nothing from the endowment, so we were able to make ends meet without draconian measures. But we have reduced our budget for next year and will be very conservative in our spending until consumers prove to us they are really back. But fortunately, the season sales look very strong and that is normally the key to having a good year. So hoping the bad year is behind us!

Organizational News and/or UpdatesWe have hired a new Development Vice President and she is sharp. Think she will be a good partner with marketing and will make a difference in our fundraising activities. She has been the manager of a local theater, which gives her great insight into what actually goes on here and she gets the tactical side of ticketing, holds, sponsorship rights, etc. Good addition to our senior leadership team.

Special EventsThe Blumey Awards as noted early

Promotions of Note (Great Successes or Dismal Failures)We did a lot of Travelzoo offers this year. This daily deal program continues to perform well for us. Wealso tried a Living Social and it performed well for BRING IT ON. Also experimented with Google’s daily

deal but it didn’t do much. Living Social remains very challenging to schedule (they need about six weeks notice to work you into the schedule) and gives you no data. Travelzoo is definitely our preferred partner of these.

We have created some large new banners for our buildings that show what the theater look like inside. We are using GREAT SHOWS LIVE HERE as the headline. These look so good we are thinking we need to put photos of the theaters on the show event pages and feature the interiors more prominently on the website.

How many shows/events (presenting, producing or as rentals) does your PAC program annually?About 900 total performances plus another 3,300 activities like classes, meetings, etc.Blumenthal itself presented 225 performances last year, including 116 Broadway curtains.

Please list your staff positions/titles:

VP Marketing

Show Publicist & Communications ManagerE Commerce Marketing & Promotions ManagerShow Marketing & Promotions ManagerVisual Communications ManagerCreative Services Business ManagerMarketing Coordinators (3)Graphic Designer (1)Vendor Contracts: Media Buying and Social Media Management

Miscellaneous Commentary, Ramblings or MusingsMajor challenge continues to be staying on top of the fast changing and ever evolving digital marketing world—digital advertising, email, website platforms, MOBILE (did you know you need to have your videos saved in six different ways for them to be viewable on ALL mobile platforms?), Facebook’s latest change or set of rules on promotions, etc., while continuing to manage all the other more mundane and old fashioned marketing tasks that still need to be done. Digital is so challenging to staff because it demands both right and left brain skills. You really have to be able to concept/create wonderful content and then turn around and analyze hard data to be good a digital marketing and finding people who can do that is a challenge for anyone who isn’t GOOGLE’s HR Director.

The Kentucky Center for the Performing ArtsYour Current Ticketing System: Tessitura

Broadway (Where Applicable) Sales & Commentary:

2011-2012 Productions: Beauty and the Beast Flashdance Million Dollar Quartet Memphis West Side Story Jersey Boys

Highs: Dynamic pricing instead of discounting Familiar shows sell Strong local partnerships with other organizations Later season start, enabled longer opportunity to build load in of sales

Lows: More unfamiliar shows in season did not sell Group sales declined Ad Budgets remain the same, but the overall pie is being split in many ways more than in years

past with the addition of online, search engine marketing (etc.) Marketing trend geared to Social media, but implementation and ongoing support problematic

due to lack of dedicated staff

Concerts/Fine Arts Sales & Commentary:

Classical: During most of the 2011-2012 Season, orchestral music at the Center was endangered by the ongoing contract dispute and negotiations between the Louisville Orchestra management and Musicians Association. While an agreement (in principal) was reached in April, the Louisville Orchestra concert calendar is yet in flux.

In the interim, the KY Center presented two world class classical arts performances:

1. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Pinchas Zukerman, Guest Conductor and Violin Soloist2. Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell, Music Director and Solo Violin

These orchestras performed to only a handful of audiences around the country in 2011-2012.

Ballet: The Brown-Forman Nutcracker was performed by the Louisville Ballet in Whitney Hall from

December 10-23, 2011 Cinderella was performed in Whitney Hall on March 9 and 10, 2012 The Louisville Ballet presented their 60th Anniversary performances at the Brown Theatre with

guest artist, Wendy Whelan of New York City Ballet

Opera:The Kentucky Opera presented three productions during the 2011-2012 Season:

Carmen – September 23, 25 and 30 2011Marriage of Figaro – November 18 and 20, 2011Merry Widow – February 17 and 19, 2012


Yum Family Series: The National Acrobats of the People’s Republic of China, Direct from Beijing TAO: The Way of the Drum

Childrens’/Youth Theater Sales & Commentary:

Stage One Family Theater: Theater for Young Audiences (presented in Bomhard Theater) Ferdinand the Bull was presented, October 3-28, 2012 The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, November 20-December 19, 2011 Number the Stars, February 6-March 9, 2012 Lyle the Crocodile, April 14-May 12, 2012


Louisville Theatrical Association’s production of Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles played in Whitney Hall on December 2 and 3

Leigh Ann Tuohy was the guest speaker for the Toyota “An Evening with…” event on February 5 at the Brown Theatre

The Kentucky Center was home to all of the concerts associated with the Kentucky Music Educators Association from February 9 through February 11.

Texas Roadhouse hosted their annual appreciation and awards dinner in the Bomhard Theater and Main Lobby on February 24

The Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana held their anniversary celebration at the Brown Theatre on March 25

The Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce made the Brown Theatre one of their stops on their tour of Louisville for their canvassing conference on March 27

E-marketing / Web/ Mobile / Social Media

Apart from Search Engines, Facebook is driving the most page views on our website. However, e-mail is still more reliable than social media at driving conversions and sales.

We see no benefit currently from Twitter (for either website traffic or sales), and will be looking into Pinterest as a new social media option.

Biggest Recent Snafu

No “snafus” to speak of. However, our biggest marketing stumbling block is not having an agile website, one where Marketing can easily update content, load new graphic files, add/delete landing pages, etc. We’re currently exploring tools like HUBSPOT to fill the gap.

Best Accomplishment

Booking and selling top shelf talent in-spite of unusually high turnover among key positions in our Marketing/Programming staff and the sluggish economy including world class classical programming.

Year Ending Financial Status

N/A

Organizational News and/or Updates

The Center has formed strategic partnerships with other non-profit entities. In many cases, we have partnered with visual arts organizations to act as a venue for rotating public installations. In these cases, the Center insures the artwork and offers in-kind labor for installation, but art acquisition and transportation costs are left to the curatorial organization.

Special Events

“Thunder at the Center”. Event coincided with the Kentucky Derby Festival fireworks and air show. 1,500 tickets (sold out event). Food/drinks, Activities for children (hip hop dance classes, art classes, face painting, storytelling, drum circle)

The Kentucky Center served as the home base for Western Kentucky University fans before the NCAA basketball matchup between WKU and UK at the Yum Center on March 15 at the KFC Yum! Center

The Kentucky Center hosted the BluLu to NuLu Bash on April 6 in the Main Lobby and on the Front Steps to celebrate the Project Blue Drum art installation on the front steps as well as the city’s monthly first Friday trolley hop

Promotions of Note (Great Successes or Dismal Failures)

This season we learned we should do fewer promotions (discounts), in order to reach a higher per-seat-sold revenue. Even if we sell fewer seats, getting the higher price for them is better for our bottom line.

How many shows/events (presenting, producing or as rentals) does your PAC program annually?

1,500 events annually (concerts, meetings, parties etc.); 125 touring concerts


Rob Thomas, Director, Marketing & CommunicationsChristian Adelberg, Marketing ManagerChris Long, Digital Marketing ManagerLaura Greenwell, Associate Marketing ManagerRobbyn McClain, Graphic Designer

Miscellaneous Commentary, Ramblings or Musings

Reserved for the conference.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (Newark, JF)Your Current Ticketing System: Patron Edge


Only one Broadway show on this season’s roster (after the “Hair” cancellation). After arduous promotion, marketing, and a social media-driven “sing a song from West Side Story” contest, the show slightly exceeded goal. Next season, there are no Broadway shows on the calendar. We’ve come to the current decision that it is just simply too difficult for us to compete in our market with the “real” Broadway twelve miles away. Should great titles or unusual opportunities present themselves in the future, we may revisit the decision. We are in conversations with local presenters/producers to consider other musical theater products that we might create together and would be unique to the market. In the meantime, theater performers will continue to be represented in our American Song series as well as a new afternoon “conversations”-type series that next season will include folks like Ben Vereen and Elaine Stritch.


Executive Producer/Vice President David Rodriguez came aboard in January and hit the ground running, adding programming to the current season and creating the 2012-13 seasons which was announced at a community/press/donor event on May 3rd.

In addition to time-tested NJPAC programming in the classical, jazz, dance, and variety genres, David has added several new initiatives including expanded American Song, Soul, and Gospel series, a funk series (including George Clinton with Parliament Funkadelic and Morris Day and the Time); expanded hip hop events; more comedy; and a new four-part film/discussion series curated by author, critic and filmmaker Nelson George designed to complement the jazz, funk, soul, and hip hop initiatives in the 2012-13 season.

We now consider ourselves to be a “12-month” facility and will continue to program events throughout the season, rather than “booking for the brochure.” With the arrival of “America’s Got Talent” (see below), we have ramped up our free outdoor summer programming, adding more recognizable names to our long-running “Sounds of the City” series (also reflecting more closely the fare we’re presenting in the 11-12 season) and creating a four-night “Friday Night Live” series with artists like Family Stone (of Sly and the Family Stone fame) and Blood, Sweat and Tears, among others). On AGT nights, we will be partnering with local community organizations to showcase their talents as audiences assemble to collect their tickets for the TV tapings.


Arts Education and Programming will be working more closely together so that some of the traditionally “mainstage” performances will be offered as “family” events and will also include some schooltime performances. To this end, we are no longer continuing our traditional “FamilyTime” series, instead offering simply “family programming.” We’re also hoping to engage more artists in community/education initiatives when they come to Newark.



A variety of public affairs events are on tap or were just recently held including: a screening and panel discussion for 250 Newark Science and Tech High School students of Participant Media’s new film, Last Call at the Oasis, focusing on the worldwide water crisis; a major book giveaway (with attendant fanfare) to every third grade student in Newark of a full set of Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series (see below); and a partnership with Big Brothers and Big Sisters to unveil a series of PSAs to encourage mentorship in New Jersey. Funding for many of these events comes through a new President’s Fund for Community Engagement which was created and funded in honor of founding NJPAC President Larry Goldman. Upcoming events may include partnerships with the United Way, a Participant Media film series (with panel discussions), and a “Conversations at NJPAC” series of TV programs to be produced for NYC/NJ public television. All of these events are being produced by the NJPAC Public Affairs Department.


Just completed work with a consultant, Bond Strategy and Influence, for a complete diagnostic of our digital strategies. Anticipated outcomes include the development of an overarching digital business strategy to enhance and enrich NJPAC’s social media presence, website, e-communications, PR, paid media, and influencer efforts. We’re hoping that we are able to follow up on their recommendation to create a new Digital Community Marketing Manager position in the new fiscal year. We will evaluate overall recommendations when a new Marketing VP is hired.


Probably would be a “mis-hire” of a VP of Marketing. After about four months, we parted ways. The intrepid Diane Lebron has been serving heroically as Acting Head of Marketing while a search is underway. She’s done a heckuva job under difficult circumstances, especially given that much of what we’re promoting for the new season is quite different from our traditional offerings. Yay, Diane!

Best Accomplishments

As noted above, the hugely popular NBC-TV summer series, “America’s Got Talent” will air live twice weekly from Prudential Hall at NJPAC. A massive production team moved in right after Memorial Day (through the third week in September), with the live shows beginning on July 2nd. As it turns out, we only had to reschedule a handful of performances to next season to accommodate Nick Cannon, Howard Stern, Sharon Osbourne, Howie Mandel and crew. Currently, we are working on creating marketing, PR, and fundraising opportunities with the anticipated large crowds, most of whom we assume have never been to NJPAC before. Our operations, MIS, engineers and stage crew have already logged in a lot of overtime to accommodate our new friends from Hollywood. So far, it’s been a little odd to turn control over our building to an outside entity and we expect as we get closer to air dates, it will get even more intrusive. But the overall visibility and the rental fees will hopefully make it all worthwhile!

NJPAC was the impetus for best-selling author Mary Pope Osborne to donate 120,000 books to Newark third-graders. Osborne’s book, “A Good Night for Ghosts,” part of her enormously successful “Magic Tree House” series, is being adapted into a musical and will be performed for all Newark’ fourth-graders as part of our “James Moody Democracy of Jazz” Festival in October. When she read about literacy rates for third-graders in Newark, she decided to donate a set of 28 of her “Magic Tree House” books to all 4300 third-graders in Newark’s public and charter schools. We hosted a great event for over 100 teachers (Meredith Vieira from NBC’s “Rock Center” was there for a story she’s doing on the author) and the following day took a logo-wrapped bus to five Newark schools where Mary was greeted like a rock star. Incredibly cool couple of days.


We reported to the Board the other day that we expect to use the remainder of our Reserve fund to achieve a balanced budget, but it’s going to be tight. Moving forward, NJPAC has committed to our Board that we will no longer utilize a Reserve fund after FY ’15. In the interim, we’ve created a $5 million Vision Fund ($1.7M raised so far) which will provide for three years of additional reserve, as well as creating a fund for innovation in programming. A combination of more programming and aggressive marketing and fundraising will be sought to achieve our commitment to the Board. Keep your fingers crossed.


NJPAC’s new restaurant, NICO kitchen + bar, opened in February to very favorable responses. Replacing the former Theater Square Grill, NICO’s concept is “Italian without Borders,” offering a contemporary high-energy ambience for weekday power lunches, sophisticated happy hours and a “shared plates” dinner menu (think tapas). NJPAC’s exclusive food service vendor is Culinaire.

Over the past few months, NJPAC has made a number of television appearances including a live segment from Prudential Hall as part of the NAACP Image Awards (NBC-TV). Additionally, interview segments featuring Renee Fleming and Paul Simon have been taped at NJPAC, airing on HBO and PBS respectively. A huge media presence attended the sold out New Edition concert in February coming as it did the day after Bobby Brown walked out of Whitney Houston’s funeral.

NJPAC is in preliminary conversations with the organizers of Super Bowl 2014, which will be held at the nearby New Meadowlands Stadium, about complementary programming beginning a year prior to the event and leading up to the actual week of the Super Bowl.

Special Events

NJPAC hosted a community/press event announcing officially its James Moody Democracy of Jazz Festival, slated for October 15-21. Grammy Award-winning bassist and composer Christian McBride will serve as

Artistic Adviser. The festival will feature two star-studded concerts: For the Love of Moody, a tribute to the longtime Newark resident featuring George Benson, The Manhattan Transfer, David Sanborn, and others, and Miles Davis and Gil Evans: Still Ahead, an all-star recreation of the landmark original Gil Evans arrangements of the classic Miles Davis recordings of Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Miles Ahead featuring Terence Blanchard, Sean Jones and others. The Festival will also feature the inauguration of The Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and the world premiere of a new jazz musical for children, Magic Tree House: A Night in New Orleans based on the books by the popular best-selling author, Mary Pope Osborne. Additional community events will be held in and around Newark including a new monthly jazz brunch.

An official announcement event was held in April to herald the return to NJPAC and Newark of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. The four-day event, the largest poetry event in North America, will be held October 11-14 (yes, immediately preceding the Moody Festival) and will feature current and incoming U.S. Poet Laureates Philip Levine and Natasha Tretheway, as well as a remarkable roster of widely-published and award-winning poets, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, among others. At times during the Festival, ten or more separate stages in and around NJPAC will offer events simultaneously for audiences from 100 to 2,000 people.



Over 300. As noted, this is a number in flux and senior management has determined that more curtains, more partnerships, and more rentals are among our goals to increase earned revenue going forward.


Acting Head of Department, MarketingMarketing AdministratorCreative DirectorAssociate Director, Creative Services and Brand ManagementAssociate Director, Marketing InformationAssociate Director, Promotions & Audience EngagementMarketing ManagerCreative Services ManagerChief Customer Officer (consultant)Senior Graphic DesignerGraphic DesignerAdministrative Assistant, PromotionsMarketing Assistant

VP, Public AffairsSenior Director, Public AffairsManaging, Public and Media RelationsAdministrative ManagerDirector, Office of Volunteer Services


New York City Center (New York, NY)Your Current Ticketing System: Tessitura


n/a


Ticket sales have been strong all season, including a special two week run of our Encores productions of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along which finished 12% ahead of its goal and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes which exceeded its VERY optimistic goal by 6%. Alvin Ailey’s first season under the leadership of its new Artistic Director, Robert Battle was very successful with both audiences and critics, and our annual Flamenco Festival played to 94% capacity. Last November, we launched our new producing partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center with Cotton Club Parade, a critical and popular success. Our audiences and the critics were so enthusiastic about this show that we are hoping to bring it back this fall with enhancement from commercial producers who are interested in taking it to Broadway.


N/A

Children’s’/Youth Theater Sales & Commentary:

N/A



LOVE THIS STUFF! We are now able to advertise to folks we are interested in for $.23 CPM instead of in the New York Times at a rate of $26 CPM.

We have done so much and adding more and more each day. If I elaborate I’ll never get this report in.

But thing we have enjoyed the most:

RetargetingFacebook advertisingFriend sponsored Facebook Advertising

Partnering with artists on blogging, tweeting and Facebooking

Mobile traffic has increase and we are sure it will continue to do so. Sales are still only 2% or so of total sales.


You may all remember when it was listed as best accomplishment – well that was then. The Fall for Dance Lounge has lost its mojo. We need to rethink who and what it’s for. Stay tuned to see how it will change next season.

Best Accomplishment

We have had a fantastic reopening season in our renovated theater. We continue to receive accolades for the renovation, including a Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, NYCC has won the Municipal Art Society's 2012 Masterworks Award for Best Restoration and the audiences seem to be enjoying the improvements and enhancements.

Our use of Revenue Management Application for tessitura has been really useful to maximize ticket revenue. We increased the income for the Flamenco Festival by $32,000 using dynamic pricing.


It looks like we will end the year with a sizable surplus after keeping expenses down and exceeding our ticket revenue goals across the board.


The renovation has also resulted in increased interest in using City Center for a wider variety of productions. This summer, the Lincoln Center Festival, in association with us, will mount the Sydney Theater Company’s production of Uncle Vanya starring Cate Blanchett. This will be the first straight play at City Center since its early years when dramatic stars like Paul Robeson, Jose Ferrer, Tallulah Bankhead and Orson Welles, graced our stage.

Another exciting development is that New York City Opera has formed a multi-year partnership with City Center and BAM to present their next three seasons using both of our theaters as their primary venues. For us, this means that City Opera is returning to its roots, having been created at City Center in 1945 and having performed here until it moved to Lincoln Center in 1965. While it is not clear whether City Opera will be able to sustain itself over the long-term, we are thrilled that they will be coming back to City Center. I am not sure that either Lincoln Center Festival or City Opera performing at City Center would have happened had we not renovated the theater.

Special Events

Last November, we launched our new producing partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center with Cotton Club Parade, a critical and popular success. Our audiences and the critics were so enthusiastic about this show

that we are bring it back this fall with enhancement from commercial producers who are interested in taking it to Broadway.


We have been able to increase our Facebook likes this spring mostly by using sponsored Facebook ads with a merrily sweepstakes we implemented through Wildfire.

Our most recent retargeting campaign for Gentleman Prefer Blondes we had a 805% return on investment (we spent $10,000 and made $90,000) with a $16.58 CPA. Love it– you don’t get that from a print ad!


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Hawley Abelow - VP, Marketing and Communications

Christopher Williams – Director of Marketing

India Branch – Marketing Manager

Michelle Vellucci – Communications Associate

Paul Gaschler – Graphic Designer


We are VERY sorry we aren’t joining you all for this meeting. Hope it’s a great meeting and we’ll see you in the fall!

Cincinnati Arts Association: Aronoff Center & Music Hall (Cincinnati, OH)Your Current Ticketing System: Paciolan

BROADWAYNOTE: CAA does not present or market Broadway in Cincinnati, but is a financial partner.

2012-2013 Season 2 weeks, on season: Blue Man Group, Memphis, Million Dollar Quartet, War Horse, Sister Act Opt in to one of these shows: Jersey Boys (2 weeks) or Peter Pan (1 week) 6-show package, no “choose your own” or minis

# 2011-2012 Subs: 18,145# 2012-2013 Subs: 13,800+Renewal rate: 70%

Subscription numbers are down from last year’s high, mainly due to programming. 11-12 was a very familiar season of blockbusters. 12-13 includes some newer shows. But 12-13 season numbers still represent at least a 2,000 sub increase over the two years prior to 11-12.

Continuing to do as much subscriber retention as possible – non-sales “touches” In 11-12, single tickets for last 5 shows were put on sale at holiday time, which led to strong

advance sales, and selling out one week of Les Miz without any show advertising. Will do this again for holiday 2012.

Doing summer events for two of the lesser known shows – bringing MDQ in for public performances, and War Horse for an open house – in hopes of building early word of mouth.

BIG BROADWAY NEWSEarlier this month, we announced that effective July 23, all Broadway in Cincinnati ticketing and subscriber services will be consolidated into one location at the Aronoff Center for the Arts. Currently, BIC is operating out of a satellite office about two blocks from the Aronoff Center and selling subs and singles through Ticketmaster, with CAA selling allocated singles through Paciolan. CAA will absorb the BIC staff (who will all relocate to the Aronoff Center) with four employees working for CAA and four employees still employed by Broadway Across America. CAA will handle all single ticket sales through Paciolan and subscription sales through Archtics (based out of Broadway Across America’s ticketing central in NYC). The consolidation will reduce overhead for BIC; enhance the partnership between CAA and BIC; strengthen synergies between our operations, marketing, development, and education efforts; and most importantly, reduce customer confusion and improve customer service.

“CAA PRESENTS” (2011-12 Season) HITS: Masters of Illusion – Live!, The Temptations and The Four Tops, An Evening with Yanni,

Rain – A Tribute to the Beatles MISSES: 101 Years of Broadway, Kings of Salsa, Arlo Guthrie: Boys Night Out, Imagination

Movers: Rock-O-Matic 2012 2012-13 Season TBA later this summer

DIGITAL MARKETING Earlier this year, we finally entered the 21st century with the purchase and installation of digital

signage and a content management system (Tightrope Media Systems). This is phase one of a two phase installation, and includes signage in the lobbies of our main theater – Procter & Gamble Hall.

We recently contracted with a social media consultant for the next few months who will develop a comprehensive social media strategy, including an initial audit/analysis, implementation, and training of a full-time digital marketing manager.

Yes, after nearly two years of lobbying, we will be adding a Digital Marketing Manager to our staff, who will oversee our social media efforts, website, and digital signage.

Due to a variety of season distractions and lack of staff time, we postponed our website redesign. We are currently interviewing consultants to help us jump start the redesign process this summer.

THE WORLD CHOIR GAMESCincinnati is proud to be hosting the 2012 World Choir Games (the Olympics of choral music) from July 4-14. The Aronoff Center and Music Hall will be two of the larger venues at which many of the Games’ events will be held. In addition, we are providing ticket services to all of the events, except the opening/closing ceremonies and the awards presentations, which take place at the US Bank Arena (a

Ticketmaster venue). As you can imagine, this is a monumental undertaking for the city and our staff, which we have supplemented with temporary hires. More than 360 choirs from 48 countries with about 15,000 participants are registered to attend, and the event has recruited more than 4,500 local volunteers (including me), not including our venue ushers. The Greater Cincinnati region is gearing up for the single largest convention and biggest international event in Cincinnati history. We are excited and optimistic that in addition to a large-scale event, this will also help energize even more positive momentum in our downtown community. www.2012worldchoirgames.com

MUSIC HALL REVITALIZATIONThe start of construction for the Music Hall revitalization project, previously slated for May 2013, has been delayed another year and is now planned for May 2014. There are numerous challenges, the most immediate being the title transfer of the property from the City (the current owner) to the Music Hall Revitalization Company (the private not-for-profit group that is managing the project), as well as subsequent applications for historic and new market tax credits. The project budget is approximately $165M. The scope and other funding sources for the project are under evaluation at this time. This continues to be a challenging project not only for us as the facility manager of Music Hall, but also for the Hall’s resident companies (Ballet, Symphony/Pops, May Festival, and Opera) who will be displaced to other venues in town during the 18-month construction period.

Directly across the street from Music Hall, a 450-car garage has just opened underneath a newly renovated Washington Park (one of the oldest parks in the city), scheduled for completion in early July. This $47-million project is the centerpiece of the renaissance of the historic Over-the-Rhine district – once the most crime-ridden parts of Cincinnati, and now one of its trendiest neighborhoods, as witnessed recently during a hugely-successful ten-day Fringe Theater Festival in the area.

COPORATE AND FINANCIALThanks in large part to a stellar Broadway season, we are projecting a substantial surplus in our budget for FY 2011-12. (The B’way season included sell-out runs of Wicked, Les Miz, West Side Story, and Mama Mia! … could every season be that rich?). We are being conservative with our projections for next season.

EDUCATIONOur education programs continue to be challenged in maintaining participation. We are holding onto similar attendance patterns from immediate past seasons. Budget challenges for schools along with the demand on time in the classroom continue to be significant barriers.

CONCERTS / FINE ARTS The Opera is coming off of a summer season last year in the red. They are optimistic about sales

this summer, as the season includes the 90-year-old company’s premiere of PORGY AND BESS (the full-length opera).

After a lengthy search period, the Symphony announced their new Maestro/music director: French conductor Louis Langree, currently the music director of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival.

Last season, the Ballet premiered a much-anticipated new million-dollar-plus production of The Nutcracker at the Aronoff Center. Due largely to dynamic pricing, the ballet set sales records.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: The Broadway / CAA consolidation; ticketing the World Choir Games; the addition of the new

Digital Marketing Manager position. Our sixth annual Dancing for the Stars event was one again hugely popular, selling out two weeks

before the event (the event included our new police chief as one of the ‘stars’).

http://www.2012worldchoirgames.com/

SNAFU: Booking Imagination Movers: Rock-O-Matic 2012 and later discovering that the popular Disney-TV show had not aired in the market in nearly two years, resulting in a huge lack of awareness. Additionally, Disney did not come through as expected on their promise to the tour to help promote the show, and the TV show did not start airing on the new Disney Jr. network in the market until after the tour played here. Despite an aggressive marketing campaign, the show tanked.

How many shows/events (presenting, producing or as rentals) does your PAC program annually?Upwards of 1,000 per year, including about one dozen resident companies (Broadway, Symphony/Pops, Opera, Ballet, May Festival, etc.).

Of these, what quantity is your team responsible for, in terms of marketing, sales and publicity?A dozen or so. We offer support services to most of our resident companies / clients and occasional fee-based marketing for our rentals.

Please list your staff positions/titles here:Van Ackerman, Director of Marketing/PRCurtis Trefz, Graphic Design / Marketing ManagerBridgett Raffenberg, Social Media Consultant (temporary)TBA, Digital Marketing Manager (new position, projected start date = early Fall 2012)

Tennessee Performing Arts Center (Nashville, TN)Your Current Ticketing System: Tessitura


Had a strong sales season, exceeding goal on most productions.

Off to a good start for the new season, currently 200 subs ahead of last year at this time (5650), looking to get to 7650 end of season. Season is Anything Goes, White Christmas, Traces, Catch Me if You Can, Flashdance, Lion King, with off series of American Idiot, Rock of Ages, Peter Pan and the world premiere of The Nutty Professor musical directed by Jerry Lewis. (Hey Michael or anyone else that has marketed a show from scratch literally, what of the many marketing tactics you tried were worth the time/ROI?)

Hits: Mary Poppins, South Pacific, Wicked, Rain, So-So: Spamalot, Memphis, Addams FamilyMisses: Blast

Concerts/Fine Arts Sales & Commentary:Still learning the subtleties of the South (i.e. “how dare you bring that un-American Bill Maher to your venue”.).

Hits: Bill Maher, Yanni, Azziz Ansari, Chris Cornell, Screwtape Letters, Angelah Johnson, Joe Bonnamassa, Disney Live, SeinfeldSo-So: Under the Streetlamp, Artic Monkeys, Celtic Woman, Shen Yun, Experience Hendrix, US Army Field Band, Kristen ChenowethMisses: Cloris Leachman (cancelled), Seal (a likely miss), Legends of Russian Ballet (cancelled)

E-marketing / Web/ Mobile / Social MediaWe are going to be launching a new, separate site for our other venue (War Memorial Auditorium), and branding the venue separate from TPAC to give it a concert hall/music feel different from a performing arts center.

We also launched The Attic Sessions (theatticsessions.com) mini-documentary series that highlights local or national musicians, their craft, and their take on our city, with acoustic performances. This artfully-done Series has opened up relationships with us and local musicians and the music industry with the goal of putting our venue on the map against competing world-renowned venues and putting performances in our hall. The Visitors Bureau awarded us a “Brand Champion” of the Month for the series’ highlighting music in the city.

Best AccomplishmentWe had a huge success with our year-long pilot program partnership with Disney Musicals in Schools (5 local schools chosen to be given Disney/TPAC resources in order to put on a Disney production [Jungle Book/Aladdin/etc.]) in their schools with culminating performances at TPAC. It was highly successful and will be increased next year.

Year Ending Financial Status Rebounded from previous year, and ended with a surplus.

Organizational News and/or UpdatesWe are aggressively re-branding our War Memorial Auditorium venue and hiring a full time booker to fill the space (more active presenting instead of renting).

Special EventsUnfortunately, we’re not moving forward with our “Art of” alcohol tasting events. Small crowds provided break-even numbers, but very taxing on staff. Anyone have strong sponsor support for one of these?


400,000 guests/year

Please list your staff positions/titles:VP, Marketing & SponsorshipMarketing ManagerMarketing CoordinatorMarketing & Sponsorships CoordinatorCreative Services ManagerNew Media ManagerGroups Sales ManagerAsst. Group Sales ManagerDirector of Corporate Partnerships

Miscellaneous Commentary, Ramblings or MusingsMiss me in Charlotte. See you soon.

Massey Hall & Roy Thomson Hall (Toronto)Your Current Ticketing System: Today – Paciolan;Sunday June 25 – Tessitura!

Concerts/Fine Arts Sales & Commentary:Fall – we took a couple of big hits on what were thought to be solid programming decisions: Al Gore, Liza Minnelli, other than those shows, everything else performed reasonably well. Overall ticket sales fairly good results. Some events that were historically sold-out /close to sold-out events, took longer and more marketing efforts to get there. Some did not. We saw price sensitivity at the top end more than ever before and are taking this trend into account through the pricing strategies for next season’s shows.


Classical – continues to be our most challenging catgeory; audience numbers/sales dropping dramatically but requirements/desire to continue programming from a board level still strong. We have reduced the number of concerts and subscriptions but continue to present major artists/ensembles where a case for success can be made (taking into account sponsorship, profile building, mandate, etc.)

Lectures – Nat Geo Live strong new product Popular/Classic Rock – strong sales in the classic rock genre continueDeveloping Canadian artists at smaller venues and graduating them to larger Halls proving to be a successful strategy.

E-marketing / Web/ Mobile / Social Media:

Built substantial e-database; need to increase opt-ins, increase effectiveness of email campaigns – looking for examples of successful initiatives. New EMMS – Mail 2 promises increased functionality for targeting, & reporting.

Website – enhancing for increased media assets to be incorporated (media player tool embedded in event pages); plans to enhance to integrate social sites into event specific pages; rebuilding some functionality to eliminate flash and enable for iproducts

Mobile – Optimized our site for mobile earlier this year. Introduced mobile ticketing in the spring and the good news is that we have seen continued growth in terms of visits and sales. The bad news is TNEWS (online TESSITURA product) will not have mobile ticketing enabled until late 2012…so first we had it, then we won’t. Not ideal. Looking for some feedback on QR Code experiences.

Social Media – Currently using social media to further establish community engagement, to heighten awareness of our promoted shows and to integrate communication initiatives into the blogosphere.

We’re participating in dialogs that are happening on line about music in our community and we want people to think of us when they discuss options for attending live events. Looking to develop more targeted strategies and objectives in the next season.

Blog – soundboard.ca is currently the focus of our social media activity.

Twitter – 3 accounts! Challenging set-up/strategy because of 2 venues and our branding is the names of the 2 halls. Also set up a soundboardto twitter account for more generic, overall music editorial content and conversation.

FB – build events for shows; listing tool


2 subscription campaigns fall on top of system conversion

Best Accomplishment

Year 1 National Geographic Live series: sells out (80% subscription, 20% single ticket), added second night to series plus student matinees for next season.

One of our major daily newspaper’s used the cover of our season brochure as the half-page colour visual for an article on the upcoming show.

Year Ending Financial Status Tracking toward a modest surplus as anticipated. Programming revenues down from budget but rental events strong and help minimize the variance.


Massey Hall received gift of land adjacent to the venue by a condo developer building beside us. Enabling the long-awaited plan for a reinvisioned Massey Hall to begin.

Special Events

Annual fundraising gala concert with Lyle Lovett (July 26). Challenges with date, artist restrictions on sponsorship.

How many shows/events (presenting, producing or as rentals) does your PAC program annually?75 house/presenting events; 98 ticketed rental events; plus TSO (Toronto Symphony Orchestra concerts approx. 140 events)

Please list your staff positions/titles:Marketing ManagerMarketing CoordinatorMarketing AssociateDigital Marketing Associate

Miscellaneous Commentary, Ramblings or MusingsQuestion re: artist endorsements of charitable organizations (i.e. World Vision) – some fairly aggressive organizations requesting onsite presence and promotion has potential for some conflicts with awareness and messaging of our own not-for-profit status (and clashes with development). Has anyone else run into similar scenarios? How have they navigated?

Questions for other Tessitura organizations: ticket stock, design; business practices change? Conversion problems?

Segerstrom Center for the Arts (Costa Mesa, CA)Your Current Ticketing System: Tessitura

Broadway (Where Applicable) Sales & Commentary:We have two Broadway series, a 2-week Broadway series and a 1-week Curtain Call series that includes shows we don’t feel will do well over a 2 week run or which are returning soon after a previous visit to the Center. We had gained several thousand subs for the 2010/2011 season, which had Wicked, South Pacific and Mary Poppins, but we lost all that ground for the 11/12 season, primarily due to programming.

The Broadway Series included Shrek, Blue Man Group, White Christmas (3 weeks), Million Dollar Quartet, Les Miserables and La Cage Aux Folles (opening late July). Shrek and White Christmas came in under budget, Blue Man, MDQ and Les Mis came in over, La Cage looks to be a tough sell.

For Curtain Call, we had Come Fly Away, Traces and American Idiot. Traces tanked, Come Fly Away and American Idiot came in over budget.

We applied dynamic pricing to several of this year’s shows with great results. Les Miz will come in $1.1 millon over budget, American Idiot was nearly $300K over.


Dance was a challenge this season, even though on paper, it looked quite promising. We had San Francisco Ballet performing mixed rep and Romeo & Juliet, Kings of the Dance, Les Ballets du Monte Carlo with Cinderella, Alvin Ailey and American Ballet Theater with the world premiere of their new Firebird. Subscriptions were down this season from the previous one, and none of these dance events reached its budget goal.

To try to address the downward trend in dance, we conducted focus groups to see what was going on with our subs, and we hired The Pricing Institute to analyze our sales and seating maps to try to come up with a new model for dance subs. So, for the 12-13 season, we simplified our subscription seating maps to more accurately reflect how patrons were buying tickets, took the top balcony and the rear section of the second balcony off subscription sales to consolidate subs into the Orchestra and First Tier sections of the house, and revised pricing to help fill areas in those lower sections that had been problematic in the past. We’re only a couple hundred seats off last year’s total with a large direct mail effort and other advertising yet to come, so we’re feeling pretty good about the changes we made.


Our two Family Series, one for kids ages 4-8 (5 shows), the other for those ages 7 and up (3 shows), did well with subscriptions for the 11/12 season, but single tickets were a mixed bag, some shows performing well, others not so well. Every performance had pre-show activities for attendees that ranged from craft projects to dance lessons and these were very well received by our patrons.


Other Categories/Genres Sales & Commentary:We presented our first “Off Center” Festival over two weeks in January, a series of progressive theater, dance and music events similar to New York’s “Off The Radar” festival. Attendance at all but one or two shows was excellent, some sold out, the festival turned out to be quite a hit. The second festival is being planned for January 2013.


We launched a mobile web site in late January that so far gets a lot of visits but not the corresponding number of transactions. We’re at over 21,000 likes on Facebook. Actively tweeting and recently launched a Pinterest page.

Biggest Recent SnafuWe had a sold out Cabaret series performance scheduled for late October, “Stephen Sondheim – a Conversation”, at which Mr. Sondheim would be interviewed on stage and Brian Stokes Mitchell and Christine Ebersole would perform some of his songs. As luck would have it, Sondheim was scheduled to fly in that morning, but he got snowed-in in New Jersey. The other artists were already in town, so rather than entirely waste their fees and all the efforts that had gone into putting this event together, it was decided to still have a performance that evening and to bring Mr. Sondheim back for the originally intended performance at a later date. With a frantic search for music to fill out the performance and an afternoon to rehearse, the show ended up being one of those insanely magical evenings in the theater that everyone who attended will remember for a long time. The rescheduled Sondheim visit, with all the original artists, and the same attendees for the original performance, will now take place in July. While this weather situation basically doubled the cost of the event, we were able to soothe the disappointment of 2,000 patrons and put on a really terrific show.

Best Accomplishment

This was our 25th Anniversary season, and in addition to a weekend celebration with a number of free events in October, we implemented a program called “Access for All” which allowed people to buy $10 tickets to nearly every event on our campus during the season. People signed up for weekly emails announcing which shows were being offered for the following week, and response was tremendous. Our original intention was to have new people take advantage of these offers to attend shows for the first time, but I think there were significant numbers of regular patrons who bought these tickets. Regardless, it generated a lot of goodwill in the community, allowed us to work more closely with our resident companies to tie them into the anniversary and overall, was a great success. Also, throughout the season we included pages in the program that detailed the Center’s successes and history over the past 25 years,

and those were then all bound into a commemorative program, paid for by our programs publisher, The Orange County Register, which we sent to subscribers and donors.


We are looking to end our fiscal year in the black.


Special Events



We presented 66 events and two rentals.


Vice President, Marketing and CommunicationsDirector, Public RelationsDirector, MarketingManager, Creative ServicesManager, Group ServicesManger, PublicationsManager, Audience DevelopmentGraphic Designer (2)PublicistMarketing AssociateGroup Services Associate (2)Marketing Sales AssociatePublic Relations Assistant


PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST (Pittsburgh, OH)Your Current Ticketing System: Tessitura


MEMPHIS started off our 2012 calendar year well, sold to 70%, $790k, surpassing budgeted sales by $60k.

BILLY ELLIOT had a two week run in February, 51% capacity, $1.4 million, missed budget slightly. Had a weird issue. Do you know that pivotal scene where young Billy soars through the air after dancing with his adult self? There is legislation in Pennsylvania prohibiting the flying of children actors. With all the problems in the commonwealth leave it to PA legislators to prohibit stage theatrics. Billy danced among puffy clouds with his older self instead, which was sad given how great that scene is.

CIRQUE DREAMS: POPS GOES THE ROCK made its world premiere in Pittsburgh. The show was a major struggle given the lack of strong promotional materials, which is often a problem when a show hasn’t opened yet. I will not say how much we lost on the engagement but it was painful.

LA CAGE with George Hamilton did less than expected numbers with 53% capacity sold and $635k in revenue.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST did killer numbers, 91% sold, $990k. Put in place a couple of price increases, one very early that helped to maximizing revenue.

BLUE MAN GROUP like BEAUTY also did killer numbers, 95% sold, $1.1 million. Had interesting talks with our union regarding clean up for the show (which spews various things into the first few rows).

ADDAMS FAMILY closes our 2011-2012 season in August, presented in cooperation with Pittsburgh CLO, our resident musical theater company. It is a two-week run that is trending well, in large part due to two subscription load-ins.

The 2012-2013 PNC Broadway Across America – Pittsburgh season was announced in March with a live Pittsburgh event featuring numbers from FLASHDANCE (launching the national tour appropriately enough in Pittsburgh, where the movie was filmed), LES MISERABLES and a stunning appearance of Joey from WAR HORSE, which is launching our season in November. Other 2012-2013 season events include BOOK OF MORMON, SISTER ACT, PRISCILLA, and ANYTHING GOES. Season specials are JERSEY BOYS, MARY POPPINS, STOMP, and AMERICAN IDIOT.

The response to the 2012-2013 season has been very strong. We are up 20% over last season at the same time. Renewal rate is 83%. As of June 11, total subscription seats sold are 9487 (6863 renewed, 2624 new). BOOK OF MORMON, WAR HORSE and a generally strong season all around are driving sales. Swap-a-show continues to be a big hit and eliminates that common objection of someone not wanting to see one of the shows for whatever reason.

Our new television spot debut during the Tony Awards:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mkf0Ysvk9I&feature=youtu.be

A patron tweeted that we won the Tony for best commercial. While no one noticed, the footage is not of Pittsburgh. It’s from Boston but shot in a generic way. By using Boston footage, it took what would have been tens of thousands of dollars in production costs down to a couple of thousand.


Beach Boys (featuring Brian Wilson and Mike Love), Benedum Center, 2607 seats, 91% sold, $314k. One of the highest grossing single engagements in our history, due to large # of VIP seats sold.

Glen Campbell, Farewell Tour, Byham Theater, 1100 seats, 82%, $57k; touching concert featuring Glen and his family. Glen Campbell is suffering from Alzheimer’s and this was billed as his last tour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mkf0Ysvk9I&feature=youtu.be

Straight No Chaser, Benedum Center, 2311 seats, 80%, $84k; this concert has consistently sold out over the last 3 years. Seeing a bit of attrition but still making money.

Yanni, Benedum Center, 1388 seats, 48%, $102k; a promoter co-pro.

Temptations, Benedum Center, 1394 seats, 48%, 76k; our oldies shows are not performing well for us.

The Priests in Concert, Byham Theater, 705 seats, 53%, $26k; this was rescheduled from last year due to visa troubles… lost some sales in the process… really Priests having trouble getting out of their country?

Blues Brother Review, Byham Theater, 762 seats, 58%, $24k

John Prine, Benedum Center, 2293 seats, 80%, $129k

British Pink Floyd, Benedum Center, 4577 seats, 80%, $169k; amazes me that we bring this show back again and again for years and it does fantastic numbers

Distant Worlds (concert experience based upon the video game), Benedum Center, 2109 seats, 73%, $127k; what’s with video games becoming live concerts (Zelda, Video Games Live, etc.)?

David Garret, Benedum Center, 2436 seats, 84%, $79k

Cedric Watson and Bijou Creole, Byham Theater, 386 seats, 30%, $9k

Under The Streetlamp, Byham Theater (concert next Monday), 650 seats, 50%, $21k

Other shows on sale: Cake Boss, Celtic Thunder, Citizen Cope, Jim Gaffigan, John Ritter


Imagination Movers, Benedum Center, 1394 seats, 24%, $41k; sold very well in the last two years and crashed and burned this year.

Fresh Beat Band, Benedum Center, 2520 seats, 96%, $86k; probably took the Imagination Mover’s audience.

Max & Ruby, Benedum Center, 2682 seats, $67k


The Highmark First Night Pittsburgh festival is a family friendly, alcohol-free New Year’s Eve celebration of the arts produced each year by the Trust. The festival attracts 50,000 people to its fireworks displays, concerts, crafts, performances, and countdown to midnight with an eco-powered ball-raising, which is televised and is consistently the second most-watched show next to ABC’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. The Pittsburgh program draws a viewership of 220,000 people. This year’s First Night festival was the best-attended to date.

Pittsburgh International Children’s Theater is a production of the Trust. In addition to mainstage children’s touring productions at our Cultural District Theaters, we also tour the productions to Pittsburgh suburbs to perform in High Schools. Recent shows include: The Way Back Home, Eric Carle Stories, and Charlotte’s Web. All Children’s Theater shows tend to meet or exceed the modest budget set for these productions.

Pittsburgh International Children’s Theater Festival, produced by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, drew record attendance this May. The weather was favorable. In addition to the international performing arts groups, the festival featured a huge inflatable structure entitled Mirazozo constructed by UK artists Architects of Air. The festival takes place on the grounds of the University of Pittsburgh. We were contacted a few months before the festival and were informed of strict clearance measures that were being instituted. The procedures were so onerous (requiring FBI and international background checks on all artists and guests) that we thought that we were going to be forced to cancel. Fortunately, the Trust was able to work with the university to put acceptable and more reasonable measures in place. These stringent procedures were a result of the Penn University Sandusky scandal that continues to make national news.


The Trust’s annual Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, a ten day free event in June that attracts ‐400,000 people, just concluded. This year saw the return of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra along with the likes of Bruce Hornsby and a newly-established Blue Grass music day, which was a hit. The festival also saw the debut of a new work by Pittsburgh’s acclaimed Squonk Opera. For the second year, the Trust produced an international jazz festival during, and in cooperation with, the established arts festival. The jazz festival is building audience but it continues to be a challenge to brand, market and produce both festivals at the same time and give each its own identity.

Our contemporary dance series under our Pittsburgh Dance Council brand did well for most presentations in the beginning of 2012, which including: Dance Works Rotterdam’s Anatomica,Armitage Gone! Dance, Jiri Kylian and Michael Schmacher’s Last Touch First, and Lar Lubovitch Dance Company,

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust showcased cutting-edge performing and visual arts from the Netherlands for its Distinctively Dutch Festival, which took place from February through June 2012. Highlight events included the world premiere of Detroit Dealers by the artist consortium Wunderbaum, the world premiere of JacobTV’s The News, the high-tech and interactive performance of DieSpace by Pips:Lab, and the multi-gallery installation of Global Navigators featuring over a dozen acclaimed Dutch visual artists. To further the festival footprint and reach, a number of local, national and international connections were made to tie the Pittsburgh more closely with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. These activities included architectural lectures with Dutch architects and the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture, an evening of Dutch Poetry programmed through City of Asylum, a symposium on Rethinking Cities in the 21st

Century featuring an international speaker’s line-up. We collaborated with a jazz presenter, Manchester’s Craftsmen Guild, to tie-in their Dutch women of jazz series and also worked with the Carnegie Museum of Art to develop a self-guided tour of their Dutch works, which in turn promoted the festival. The Phipps Conservatory, renowned for their floral shows, also programmed a room of flowers with a Dutch theme and promoted the festival with signage and through their social media channels. The Dutch Ambassador to the Netherlands attended our press launch and attended several events.

Web Site/New Media

In February 2012, the Cultural District launched a mobile version of its events pages. In addition to mobile sales capabilities on the main site at CulturalDistrict.org, each of the resident company privately branded sites received mobile sales capabilities as well. The decision was made to NOT invest in apps for iPhone or Andriod but to make mobile pages that can be viewed across all mobile web browsers.

To compliment mobile sales for events, the we are now creating mobile pages the front end of our website at TrustArts.org. This would include an event’s scroller and mobile-optimized pages for all

subsections of the main site. We expect to launch the mobile pages and be fully mobile from front end to back end by August 2012.

The current mobile event pages can viewed at:

http://trustarts.culturaldistrict.org/m/pct_home

The Trust was successful in attaining a ‘connections grant’ from a funding source for $30,000, which will go toward a project aimed at selling tickets through Facebook. Through a specially developed Facebook app that integrates with Tessitura, patrons will be able to share their ordering of tickets meaning that people can order and show friends on the seating map where their seats are. Then friends can select seats next to or around their friends and use Facebook’s interface to share their experience and invite others. A few Tessitura organizations are on the bleeding edge of developing this app, which will become available to Tessiturians once all the bugs are flushed out.


Our ParkPGH real-time parking received a challenge from an individual who claimed to have the patent on the technology that we developed independently. After meeting with lawyers, it was determined that it would cost hundreds of thousands to fight in court. The Trust was able to gain funding from a host of partners and settle the claim. ParkPGH has since expanded to the city’s Northside. The Trust continues to struggle with how much resources to devote to this parking application for areas outside of the Cultural District. Mission creep is something that we are especially sensitive to.

Best Accomplishment

We are very happy with our 2012-13 Broadway season announcement event, described in the Broadway sales section above. Bringing Joey into the theater was a WOW moment and did exactly what we hoped… it got people who had little idea of the event converted to likely attendees and advocates for the show. The turnout was great and positive feedback is still coming in.


The Trust is completed its financial year with a surplus and continued its history of never running a deficit since its incorporation in 1984.


Our biggest news is that we just experienced an unplanned board chairmanship resignation, which was the result of a juicy scandal that made headlines regionally and some national hits. Here is one of the many stories: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/highmark-names-new-leader-628860/

The Trust refurbished over 2800 seats in its flagship Benedum Center in January – a $500k project. New cushioning now helps to make the theater one of the most comfortable venues to enjoy a show in the region.

We have a complex presenting arrangement where the Trust books touring Broadway shows across two halls – the Trust’s Benedum Center and the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Heinz Hall. Heinz Hall management has decided to present additional Broadway shows for 2012-2013 outside of, and in addition to, our series arrangement. Market competition from one of your own partners is not good. To say the least we will be keeping an eye on how this all shakes out.

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/highmark-names-new-leader-628860/

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/highmark-names-new-leader-628860/

http://trustarts.culturaldistrict.org/m/pct_home

As with many PACs, we estimate our yearly media print spends and negotiate a rate with media partners. Due to the reduction of print ad spends by tours, we have seen a challenge in attaining the annual spend. One of our media partners let it slide. A second is being more aggressive in keeping us to the estimated spend. I wonder what other PACs are experiencing and if you are changing the way that you buy print media?

Overall Fundraising increase 2011 versus 2010 of 10%. The Trust was successful in a court appealed opposition to the proposed expansion of a strip club‐

in the Cultural District, which would have doubled its footprint. The Trust has been involved with a major performing arts organization that does not currently

have a presence in the Cultural District. The company and their board are evaluating various options regarding capital resources necessary to invest in their current 25 year old physical plant ‐versus moving to another facility.

Although a contract settlement was reached with IATSE in August for a three year/six year deal, ‐ ‐some members led an effort to pressure the Trust to utilize their membership for its free, outdoor events, such as First Night, the Three Rivers Arts Festival, the Pittsburgh International Children’s Theater Festival and its quarterly Gallery Crawls. The Trust and IATSE are now involved in discussions, outside of mutually agreed upon contract constraints, and, at the insistence of the‐ Trust, only in the context of the entire relationship. The Trust’s position being that any changes outside of the theater venues will only be considered in the context of changes inside of the theater venues.

The Trust is working on the development of an arts leadership fellowship program with CORO Pittsburgh, a non profit organization that prepares diverse, talented and committed individuals ‐for effective and ethical leadership in the public affairs arena. This collaboration involves the recruitment of qualified candidates from around the country for a nine month experiential ‐education in management and public affairs.

The Trust anticipates closing on a vacant building contiguous to its Education Center and movie theater within the next few weeks. This acquisition should allow the reanimation of its ground floor into a coffee shop/restaurant and allows for a more practical “unlocking” of the upper floors of some of the surrounding buildings.

The Trust recently met with the board chairs and executive directors of its resident companies to discuss the current rental rates/structures. This facilitated session was the result of discussion at a recent Trust board meeting; the board chairs of each of the organizations being ex officio ‐members of the Trust board. The rent averages but 4 5% of each organization’s total annual ‐operating budgets and the session also allowed the Trust to communicate the total amount of financial underwriting it provides to each organization through rental subsidies (some 50%), Tessitura services, marketing and other services, aggregating close to $2 million annually. Given that the Trust is, therefore, the largest donor to each of the organizations, the discussion also included the appropriate and proper acknowledgement of the Trust’s financial support by each organization.

Special Events


Member companies of Pittsburgh’s Cultural District (The Trust, Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh Public Theater, Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh Opera, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Symphony and August Wilson Center) have completed a multi-year project, funded through a pooled fund Pittsburgh foundations, to overhaul the overall the District’s web presence and functionality.

A campaign is underway to inform existing audiences of the new functionality and attract new patons. We have created a grassroots promotion that involves toting a row of theater seats to outdoor events. Below is a picture.

People are invited to visit the site to enter to win a chance at the Golden Seat, which is a $5000 gift certificate good toward Pittsburgh Cultural District events. Here is a link to a short video promotion under production for the campaign:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EOsUeS7Sn0&feature=youtu.be


We promote about 300 Trust performances directly and assist with 20 or so rentals/co-pros a year. The Trust has several festivals (First Night Pittsburgh, Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh International Children’s Theater Festival, a Festival of Lights, and our country-specific festivals like the 2012 Dutch Festival). While each company has its own marketing effort, the Trust is charged with marketing the Cultural District as a whole through a number of communications vehicles. In all, there are 1500+ events and programs we promote either directly or indirectly per year.


Emily Balawejder, Multimedia SpecialistVeronica Corpuz, Public Relations DirectorJamie Cuba, Show Marketing ManagerDinah Denmark, Publications ManagerMarc Fleming, Vice PresidentKristin Garbarino, Marketing Technology Manager

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EOsUeS7Sn0&feature=youtu.be

Courtney Mead, Graphic DesignerDiana Roth, Communications CoordinatorDerek Scalzott, Show Marketing Manager


To continue our brand refresh, we have updated and redesigned our institutional materials (biz cards, stationary, folders). We are in the process of rebranding our theaters and facilities and hope to complete that over the summer. An institutional testimonial video is in the works and coming along nicely. It provides a great history of the organization and helps to tell our story in a visual way.

VICTORIA THEATRE ASSOCIATION – Victoria Theatre & Schuster Center (Dayton, OH)Your Current Ticketing System: Patron’s Edge


We’re still working very hard for everything we sell here in Dayton. Even blockbusters like JERSEY BOYS and WICKED have not sold as expected. We have solid titles for next year and are back to our usual 1 week. Here’s hoping we see a change for the positive.


Same here.


Starting a new pricing structure for our family series. 4 for $40 – shamelessly imitating our friends in Cleveland. Excited about growing this series.




Biggest Recent SnafuSecondary ticketing is causing us a lot of grief. People think our second run of engagement is either sold out or that tickets are $200-$400. Sigh. A communications struggle for us.

Best AccomplishmentDoes maintaining something resembling sanity count?

Year Ending Financial Status We should end the year in the black or with a small surplus, despite some shows not selling as expected.


Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Schuster Center next spring…. Planning a weekend of events plus year long projects. Any collective wisdom welcome!

Special Events



Varies but usually 6 Broadway on series, 3 Variety on series, 4 family on series, 9 films on series, and then from 5-12 extras.


VP Marketing & CommunicationsPR & Promotions ManagerDigital Marketing ManagerGraphics & Publications DirectorGraphics & Publications Manager


So wish I was there…. Have a great time and share all your notes with me!

PlayhouseSquare (Cleveland, OH)Your Current Ticketing System: Paciolan


We finished the year at just over 20,000 season ticket holders and revenue is down in all areas. However, this spring we have exceeded revenue and seats for the 12/13 season vs. where we were at the same time period last year. We have the strongest renewal percentage in years (1400 seats away from 85% as of this writing--I think we’ll get there as the deadbeats still have two weeks to pay up) New acquisitions more than quadrupled and donations are up as well. We were able to maintain an entry level price point of $7.00 per month!! That’s with a 12-month payment plan, which is no longer available as of June 30.

{We all know that brilliant marketing is the cause for this uptick, but okay, I’ll give a bit of thanks to The Book of Mormon, Beauty & The Beast, Sister Act and War Horse!}. Advance group reservations are also up against same time period last year.


I don’t know. Steve used to do this part and the new guy doesn’t’ know enough yet.


Sesame Street had a down year, but then Tao and Peking Acrobats met and then surpassed goals. The Nutcracker continues to be strong, but only when we present every other year. This year, the Cleveland Orchestra will present the Joffrey Ballet’s Nutcracker. We’ve always felt that “real” music vs. canned was vital to the quality of dance productions, but the cost has been prohibitive and so we’ve not presented much dance. This deal with the Orch could turn into a very cool partnership and might revitalize dance in Cleveland.


We sold out our Children’s Theater Series for the third year. We keep it in a small theater and sell just under 1400 seats for a 4-show series. Tickets are $10 per show, so the season ticket plan is a “4 for forty”.

Our 2nd annual International Children’s Festival had attendance of nearly 5000 ticketed and many more “lurkers” who just came for the free crafts and music. Next year, we’ll be looking to wristband at all points of entry so we can at least gather data. The tickets are affordably priced at just $10 until March, then they go up to $14 from March to May. Even with that price, we still get a big number of families who do not attend the shows.

Very sadly, our VP of Education passed away after a very quick bout with lung cancer and we didn’t have leadership during our most critical time for this kind of programming. She was very beloved and perhaps her loss inspired us to work harder, but it took a real toll on the staff.


Jazz sales continue to decline and we are booking less and less. Dave Koz is probably the only reliable artist we have.


Allied Live places, adjusts and reports on most of our bigger online campaigns. We are finding the relationship with them to be positive.

Email marketing is still working for us. Some stats below:

51 email campaigns per month/620 per year115,000 households per month/1.4 million per year

Last fiscal year, show-related eblasts sold 18,000 TICKETS PER MONTH/216,000 PER YEAR!

Even taking a very low average ticket price of $20, that’s $360K.


Best Accomplishment

Stay with me, because this is all about me. I lost three key staff members; another senior member who had emergency medical leave and yet another who went on maternity leave. It has been a challenging year, but we got through it, we survived and we learned how to work closer and support each other as a team. Can I get a hug?


Did not make budget in any area other than our hotel and fundraising and I can’t take credit for either one. Our budget will balance, but marketing took an especially big hit at budget time this year. Though we believe we’re going into a promising year, our belts are tight as we recover from last year.


We are building a giant pergola/chandelier structure thingy in our main intersection. It is still in design and it could be an engineering feat to suspend this giant chandelier in the middle of the street, but I think it could become a Cleveland landmark and icon if we pull it off. We would announce the project in the spring.

We also begin construction on one of our office buildings to convert them into 99 luxury rental apartments. Two new restaurants have opened in our buildings and we have plans for three more in the next year. This particular area of downtown is really coming together.

Special Events

Our curb side Gift Card Drive Through on December 22 was a big success. We did $15,000 in sales during that day. It also gave us some fun PR—the weather was great that day and with the Christmas music and our little elves running around, it made PlayhouseSquare look like a very festive place to be. We did all of the transactions curbside on iPads. No one had to leave their cars. We will repeat it again this year.


Thanks to Dana in Dallas, we stole the yarn bombing idea for Hair. A knitting group spent days making baby booties, hats and gloves. We strung them on fishing wire across the theater lobby in a rainbow of color. It was a great visual and received TV coverage, as the knitted items were to be donated to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital.


We program 1200 curtains. Marketing handles around 800.


VP of Ticket Sales & MarketingAssistant Director of MarketingMarketing & PR Managers (4)Digital Marketing ManagerBrand Communications Manager (also services Development & Education)Area Development Marketing Manager (also services Real Estate Division)

Marketing CoordinatorProject CoordinatorAssistant Director of Inside Sales & ServiceGroup Sales ManagerDirector of Ticketing Services

Box Office StaffSeason Ticket Services StaffTicket Operations Staff

Marketing interns (4)


Legalized gambling has come to Cleveland. The Horseshoe Casino opened this month. They are looking to partner with us and do not have their own theater/stage…….yet. They are looking to buy tickets for their VIP’s as well as blocks of tickets to lure their rewards card holders to Cleveland. We’ve just started meeting, so we’ll see how things go. I have some reservations, but they are estimating 13,000 people per day and those are not residents.

The Bushnell (Hartford, CT)Your Current Ticketing System: ProVenueMax

Broadway (Where Applicable) Sales & Commentary:Traces – Disappointed in sales; first show on season (tough spot); a challenge to educate patrons in advancePeter Pan – did well; played over Thanksgiving weekendMemphis – did well;The Addams Family – did well;Les Miserables – essentially sold out; triggered dynamic pricing twice ($10 each time; all sections)Fiddler on the Roof – did wellCome Fly Away – did well; although hit just shy of budget

(off-sub)WICKED – unfortunately Hurricane Irene hit while WICKED was in town. There was a performance cancelled and we had to reseat a sold-out house into remaining, tight inventory. Jersey Boys – Not as much of a demand as we thought for tickets (still a demand, though); the Halloween snowstorm of 2011 came through while this show was in town. Had to cancel a few performances and seat patrons in remaining inventory.

Overall, with two blockbusters off-subscription; we think this took away from our subscription sales/renewals. There were plenty of seats so patrons chose to purchase tickets to either blockbuster and forego a subscription. For FY 12, we were at 79% renewal

Concerts/Fine Arts Sales & Commentary:The Hartford Symphony Orchestra (HSO - local arts organization rents space from The Bushnell) hired a new music director for the 11-12 season. Sales continue to hold. In addition, the HSO brought a few more events into our building this season.

Family Shows Sales & Commentary:Gazillion Bubble Show – cancelled;The Nutmeg Ballet’s Nutcracker – did well;Sesame Street Live – slow sales; curtain times a little late for small childrenBuddy Valastro: Cake Boss – did well!Family Fun Day featuring Dragon Scales and Faerie Tales (free event) – did extremely well

Our most successful event in the Family arena was our Family Fun Day. We hadn’t held this event in a couple of years, due to under-attendance. This was because the performance (associated with the FREE Family Fun Day) had a $5 attendance charge. We’ve realized, in order to get the attendance we want, the whole event had to be free.

Two years ago, we had 200 attendees, this year, over 1,200.

Childrens’/Youth Theater Sales & Commentary:11-12 variety of shows good:The Little Red HenGoodnight Moon and the Runaway BunnyWarriors Don’t Cry (Bushnell-produced)Mufaro’s Beautiful DaughtersThe House at Pooh CornerUpcoming 12-13 is a great season:The Silent BoyDoktor Kaboom!A Brown Bear, A Moon and A Caterpillar: Treasured stories by Eric CarleAndrew Clements’ FrindleWarriors Don’t Cry (Bushnell –produced)The Rainbow FishMatheMagic! Starring Bradley FieldsThe GruffaloMy Heart in a Suitcase

Musings: Morning shows general sold out (always a waiting list); noon performance a challenge to sell. We do not schedule during wintery months. For scheduling keen on master tests, vacations, etc. Great pricing ($10/ticket). Study guides very popular and important. Teachers love that the season is always literature-based.

Other Categories/Genres Sales & Commentary:Outside of Broadway, some of our most successful events this year were in a part of “lifestyle programming” – shows that connect to audiences personal interests. We had great success with: Cesar Millan: The Dog Whisperer, MythBusters: Behind the Myths, and An Evening with Buddy Valastro: The Cake Boss. Success through celebrity and audience engagement.

We plan to book more programming of this genre: Theresa Caputo: The Long Island Medium (sold 2,000 tickets – less than $1,000 advertising); Chef Anthony Bourdain, Video Games Live and America’s Got Talent.


Our website has not been revised/revamped in 6 years. We are currently awaiting funds to completely redesign the site. We have picked a vendor, but are in a holding pattern right now.

As part of the redesign, we are looking to create a mobile site, as well as an app.


Best Accomplishment

Year Ending Financial Status The center will end the year with a modest operating surplus.


Special Events

In February of this year, we held a “Sneak Peek” event for our current Broadway Series ticket holders. During this event, the VP of Programming announced the upcoming Broadway season. As part of this event, we teased that there would be a “special guest performance”.

We anticipated about 300 people coming to this event (out of a list of 3,000 households).

The response was overwhelming and we had about 1,000 patrons in attendance that night. There were many season ticket holders who wanted to bring friends interested in becoming subscribers.

And, the special guest performance was by the NY cast of MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET. We have heard from many patrons that this was a great way to get everyone excited about the season and The Bushnell.


How many shows/events (presenting, producing or as rentals) does your PAC program annually?Over 100 (shows not performances)

Please list your staff positions/titles:There are three people in the marketing department, which reports to the CFO/COO:

Associate Director, MarketingCommunications ManagerMarketing and Media Relations Coordinator


Adrienne Arsht CenterYour Current Ticketing System: Tessitura

Broadway (Where Applicable) Sales & Commentary:2011-2012 Season: (5+No Add-ons)

The Addams Family – exceeded goals; did very well for us over the Halloween weekend Shrek – underperformed in early December Million Dollar Quartet – underperformed in late December Come Fly Away – exceeded goal by 38% The Lion King – exceeded goal; hit nearly $5.1 MM; 67,000 tickets sold

(this broke our box office records for sales and attendance) Overall: Sales exceeded goals collectively by 8%, hitting an overall 78% of GP. Subscription sales

were down 5% from the year before.

2012-2013 Season: (5+2 Add-ons) Rock of Ages – opens in Oct – curious to see how movie affects this Mary Poppins – opens New Year’s Day Les Miserables – opens in Feb - curious to see how movie affects this Priscilla Memphis Stomp (Add-on) Fela! (Add-on) Subscription sales are strong so far – we’re about 70% renewed so far, and 84% toward matching

last year’s total before looking at peel-offs – we’re about 1,000 subscriptions ahead of where we were at this time last year – we’ll see if we can keep pace.

Concerts/Fine Arts Sales & Commentary:Jazz Roots 2011-2012 (6 concerts)

Overall Sales 97% of GP Used dynamic pricing all season, helping exceed GP on 2 of the concerts Exceeded goals by 13% Subscription sales down by 1%, still strong at 725

Jazz Roots 2012-2013 (6 concerts) Unforgettable – A tribute to Nat King Cole: George Benson, Freddy Cole, Mancini Orchestra Super Sax: Candy Dulfer, Maceo Parker Jazz and the Philharmonic: Bobby McFerrin, Dave Grusin, Terence Blanchard, Eric Owens, Mark

O’Connor, Mancini Orchestra Monk & Coltrane: T.S. Monk, Ernie Watts Quartet, Nnenna Freelon, Kevin Mahogany Cubop – Celebrating Diz & Chano: Paquito D’Rivera, Jon Faddis, Giovanni Hidalgo, Dave Samuels,

FIU Big Band Generation Next: Piano: Hiromi, Gerald Clayton This is the 5th Anniversary Season of Jazz Roots Almost halfway through the sub campaign, 53% of the way to last year’s total

Masterworks Classical Music 2011-2012 (5 concerts) Perlman & Protégés Jean-Yves Thibaudet w/orchestra Garrick Ohlsson w/orchestra Midori w/Minnesota Orchestra Lang Lang in recital 3rd Year of the series

Small subscriber base increased by 100 to 448 Overall sales were 61% of GP, exceeding goals

Masterworks Classical Music 2011-2012 (4 concerts) The Goldberg Variations (Bach) w Simone Dinnerstein Philadelphia Orchestra Pittsburgh Orchestra Cleveland Orchestra (Beethoven’s 9th) 4th Year of the series Programming continues to be a challenge as there is not a plethora of major orchestras regularly

on tour

Masterworks Dance 2011-2012 (3 companies) Mark Morris: October dance slot continues to be a challenge – missed goal by a bunch. Pilobolus: great photography – sold at 96% of GP for 2 nights – made up for the MM shortfall Alvin Ailey: sold nearly 10,000 tickets for the 4th year in a row.

Dance at the Arsht 2011-2012 (non-Masterworks) Decadance: 2 full performances in the studio theater Ayikodans: 3 sold-out performances in the studio theater – 97% of GP Flamenco Festival Miami 2012: Decent sales for the 5th season of the festival – announced 10

weeks prior to dates.

Masterworks Dance 2012-2013 (3 companies) Ballet Austin – Light/Holocaust & Humanity Project: the ‘project’ part will be a large community

collaboration effort to speak out against bigotry, hate and bullying. Savion Glover Brenda Angiel (Ocho)


Marionetas – Spanish and English performances. 3rd time in 4 years, very well sold.

This summer will mark the 4th in a row for AileyCamp, welcoming 100 at-risk youth for a free 6-week camp. It will culminate in a free public performance on one of our main stages – last year we had 1400 attend.

This fall will be our 4th a row presenting Rock Odyssey – a rock-n-roll telling of Homer’s The Odyssey. We invite every fifth-grader in Miami-Dade County (26,000 students) to attend for free over a 2 week period.


Theater Up Close 2011-2012 (6 shows) The House of Bernarda Alba (w/UMiami Theater Dept) – sold 103% of GP Captiva (Zoetic Stage) Santaland Diaries (Zoetic Stage) NE 2nd Avenue Moscow (Zoetic Stage) Death & Harry Houdini (House Theater from Chicago) – sold 100% of GP This was the inaugural year of this series – our first time packaging straight theater programming

in our Studio Theater. We had approximately 200 subscribers with a minimal campaign. Through our first 5 years of operation, we had consistent challenges selling show runs in the this space –

this was a break-through year for us, exceeding all sales goals and having attendance of at least 85% across all shows.

We partnered with other theater companies to help offset some risk.

Theater Up Close 2012-2013 (6 shows) I Am My Own Wife (Zoetic Stage) Girls Cs. Boys (UMiami Theater Dept) Nutcracker, The Play (House Theater from Chicago0 All New People (Zoetic Stage) Brothers Beckett (Alliance Theatre) The Savannah Disputation (Zoetic Stage) Just announced June 10.

Summer Programming 2012:Summer Shorts: Year #6 (17th overall) at the Center. Attendance was on par with years past selling around 60%. Format was 9 short plays, all within 90 minutes.

The Donkey Show: we’re reimagining the show that played in NYC for several years, and currently runs at the A.R.T. in Cambridge every Saturday night. The audience will be on the stage with the performers throughout the show – we’re selling Dance Floor tickets and VIP Table tickets. It’s announced for 4 weeks, and we’re hoping to extend to 8 weeks.

Other Shows from 11/12: Daniela Mercury (Brazilian Recording Artist): disappointing sales Stuffed and Unstrung: disappointing sales Idina Menzel. Love her. Sales were great. Salute to Vienna – amazing sales – 5 year in a row. BB King – Sold out. Raul Esparza. Disappointing sales. Reggae Jam (3 bands, including Third World & Inner Circle) – decent sales. The Roots – 107% of GP B-52s – decent sales. Ry Cuming (Australian songster) – who? Small sales in the Studio Theater.

E-marketing / Web/ Mobile / Social Media We have engaged Adage Technologies to rebuild and redesign our website. We are about to

complete the Discovery Phase, which included 24 in-depth phone interviews with various stakeholders, information architecture, process flows, and an itemized SOW. We’re about to select what will make it into the final plan and budget.

We just went live (1 month ago) with Select Your Own Seat. Too early to gage results. We are participating with a consortium of Tessitura users to create a Facebook application that

allows Facebook users to purchase tickets directly through Facebook. Part of the concept is to leverage the social nature and platform of FB to encourage group outings at the Theater.

We are changing our email provider from TMS/Wordfly to Mail2. The implementation will take place late summer.

Biggest Recent SnafuOn Sunday, May 20, during flooding rains, a drainage pipe burst in the Ballet Opera House – during the 2nd act of The Lion King. Water flooded the 3rd tier and down in the lobby space, and began to food into the theater chamber. The performance was stopped, and the entire audience (sold out performance!) was safely evacuated. This was the final performance of the first of four playing weeks.

Here’s a 7 minute video of a patron and his evacuation experience. This was up immediately, along with photos, and tweets – a good lesson about the speed of social media. One of the biggest challenges was holding off the media until we had something substantial to say. The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnaVv4vZgnQ

Crews worked well into the night to identify and fix the problem pipe – and the damage was assessed quickly, with a determination that the runs could continue on Tuesday. We are able to notify press by 3pm the next day (less than 24 hours after the incident) that the show would go on. 3 bathrooms and 1 elevator bank were knocked out of commission.

Thankfully the damage was not worse, allowing the run to continue. We refunded one third of the tickets, and were able to move two thirds of the audience to a future show. Until we made the announcement on Monday, sales slowed to a halt – and picked right back up again after 3pm.

Best AccomplishmentOne of the members of our young professionals group, Gil Green, is also a major director/producer of music videos, based in Miami. He produced a new :30 spot for our big summer show, The Donkey Show – we shot it all in 1 day, and used staff as the talent. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPGaJZIqKWI&feature=plcp

During an advance meeting with Disney Theatrical, we presented the Miami ticket-buying landscape, accompanied by sales trends and predictions. This helped manage expectations to a realistic trend – and the actuals followed it pretty closely until the end, when we surpassed the projections. Disney was thrilled.

Year Ending Financial Status We are currently on track to have our 5th year in a row with a balanced budget. We have a big challenge ahead with The Donkey Show, with a goal of $1.8 MM.

Overall, going into July, our sales are up 7% versus budget.

Organizational News and/or UpdatesThe Real Estate conversations have calmed down now that the Florida legislature is not in session. Gambling issues did not get passed this last session, but we expect them to come back in the future.

We continue to manage a healthy intern program, with 12 on board this summer. Our 3 year total for the program just surpassed 50. 2 former interns are now part of our full-time Marketing/PR team.

Special EventsOn April 28, we welcomed Kevin Costner and his Western Band as the entertainment for our annual Gala. It was a huge success – our Chairman of the Board chaired the Gala and practically sold it out before invitations went out. We netted about $400k.

Promotions of Note (Great Successes or Dismal Failures)Partnered with the Fontainebleau on Miami Beach – the hotel hosted our 5th Anniversary Jazz Roots launch event. They provide about $20k in value with all of the food, drink, and space provided for nearly 200 guests – the who’s who of Jazz in Miami. It was also the unveiling of our 5th Anniversary season video, which can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N9i3WPkH2E&feature=plcp

We were able to secure a Disco Dance Team (for the Donkey Show) to perform a 3-minute segment at the half time of the NBA Finals game 2 Road Rally event at the American Airlines Arena.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N9i3WPkH2E&feature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPGaJZIqKWI&feature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPGaJZIqKWI&feature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnaVv4vZgnQ

We have unveiled a “Disco Donkey” – a mobile, large pink donkey (with green afro) to be accompanied by street team – and make appearances at various events as well as frequent the night club scene. And yes, you can actually go inside it and party with the street team, but you’ll have to enter through “the rear.” A photo? Here you go…

How many shows/events (presenting, producing or as rentals) does your PAC program annually?500 Events annually

Please list your staff positions/titles:Was able to add a Marketing Director—totaling 3 with respective portfolios of shows to oversee. Due to budget watching, did not add a PR Director or Data Analyst (), and moved 1 (out of 3) from Group Sales to part-time Box Office. Current Team:

VP, Marketing Sr. Director Marketing Director Marketing (x2) AVP, PR Publicist PR Coordinator Promotions Manager Marketing Coordinator Marketing Assistant Creative Services Director Graphic Designer (x3) E-commerce Manager E-commerce Assistant Group Sales Manager Group Sales Assistant

Miscellaneous Commentary, Ramblings or Musings We cut down on printed materials this year – eliminated the Summer Brochure – in the past it

was a 16 page book, printing anywhere from 300k to 600k. We’ve asked to be more frugal with Travel and Entertainment this year. Disappointed that although much of Rock of Ages was filmed 3 blocks from us, the film studio

declined to consider a Miami premiere at the Center.

€¦ · web viewjune 2012 sharing forms. blumenthal performing arts (charlotte, nc) your current...

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