From handling business “in the trenches” to studying the largest companies in the world in grad school, Jeremy Larochelle offers his unique insights into business, entertainment management, marketing, and more!
It took a lot of searching, but I found a bunch of my work as a photojournalist and graphic designer and organized them onto the site. I will continue to update them as I uncover new gems (and make some new ones).
Check out the portfolios at Jeremy Larochelle Content Creator.
I decided to migrate my drummer clothing company website, Spirit and Groove®, to this site. I have kept the brand’s social media channels as-is and will continue to offer two lines of drummer t-shirts and drum hats under the GROOVE Stripes® and Groovy Fun lines with the anticipation to launch a Groove Powe® collection soon!
You can shop Spirit and Groove by CLICKING HERE!
I recently asked my LinkedIn network what KPI’s, besides revenue, they use for their entertainment venue analysis.
I figured this would be a tough question because I removed the most prevalent answer when it comes to venue management analysis – revenue generation. I wanted to omit the low-hanging fruit to force my network to consider other Key Performance Indicators regarding their entertainment space and how valuable they can be.
For those who do not understand what KPI’s are. Here is a quick and simple breakdown from Investopedia. According to their site. “Key performance indicators (KPI) are a set of quantifiable measures that a company uses to gauge its performance over time. These metrics are used to determine a company’s progress in achieving its strategic and operational goals, and also to compare a company’s finances and performance against other businesses within its industry.”
The revenue metrics are the most important and fairly easy to digest in regards to entertainment booking. If you book a band and they sell out the venue. That is a positive KPI. Just remember, if you are in charge of assigning revenue metrics you should include ancillary income such as food and drink sales. I have seen many situations where one act didn’t sell out the room but brought in a demographic that drank the house dry resulting in an overall larger return on investment.
Key Performance Indicators go beyond just revenue-generating metrics. Better institutions will assign them to other areas of the business eco-system such as cost reduction, process improvements, and customer satisfaction. All of these variables work off of one another and when assigned properly and analyzed consistently can lead to exponential growth. Here are a few suggestions of non-revenue generating KPI’s to consider for an entertainment venue.
Cost Reduction: Is the venue overstaffed? Are your performance hours not in-line with your demographic (e.g. does the room die at 11:00 pm, but you are paying entertainment and employees to be on-site until 2:00 am)?
Process Improvement: Are you getting your guests in fast enough and moving them to areas of revenue such as the bar efficiently?
Customer Satisfaction: Are you monitoring the social chatter regarding your venue? Are the reviews of your entertainment, venue, and operations positive? Are you surveying past customers to learn about their experiences to share with your team?
*BONUS – Employee Satisfaction: Are you talking to your team to see if THEY are happy? Do you survey guests regarding their experience with specific employees through analysis such as Net Promoter Scores and satisfaction surveys?
These are just a few suggestions regarding non-revenue KPI’s you can adapt for your entertainment venue. Just remember each business environment is different and you may have to tweak your analysis to uncover your areas of weakness and opportunity. If you would like some help analyzing your entertainment venue, give me a shout.
I celebrate my five-year anniversary with Mike Moloney Entertainment on March 1st, 2018 and what a crazy, chaotic, and fun ride it has been. So, I wanted to share with you five take-a-ways from my time as a booking agent and entertainment manager. Enjoy!
Gone are the days of malls, mom and pop stores, and various other brick and mortar outlets. They have been replaced by online merchants, specialty “long-tail sites like Etsy,” demand channels such as eBay, and social sales through Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram among others.
When the distribution point of your product changes, it is imperative that your marketing strategies change with it. Why? New distribution points suggest you are dealing with consumers who have adopted new purchasing behaviors or, perhaps even more challenging. You need to re-train existing customers on these new digital protocols without losing their business. A great example lies in the fact that online buyers can’t physically touch the merchandise before they buy it. For some, who have grown up in the “online” world. This isn’t an issue. However, for department stores such as JCPenney’s and Macy’s with a funnel full of brick and mortar customers used to handling the merchandise. This is a problem that must be addressed.
The savvy marketers at Zappos quickly found the solution to this problem with their free returns and exchanges policies. Today, major retailers (including the aforementioned) have followed suit and now offer free returns. Some go so far as to streamline the process by providing return labels inside their packages and expedited reimbursement paths through the customer’s account section of their site. While John Q buyer still can’t touch the product before he makes his purchase, these policies reduce the perceived risk of their pre-purchase rituals and help close the gap between the brick and mortar and online worlds.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the changes the new “online” marketing landscape has forced on firms large and small. Customer reviews have become imperative for a company’s success as well as PCI compliant websites, PayPal payment channels, mobile-friendly landing pages, and social listening and engagement by the brand.
However, one core marketing element remains unchanged.
Opportunities to See still dominates the marketer’s playbook. Ultimately, the adperson’s primary goal still boils down to getting the brand name in front of as many relevant consumers as possible, so you can get them into the sales funnel where they will start the buying process.
I will argue that it is even more important now than ever.
In the past world of brick and mortar selling, competition was somewhat limited by physical location. E.g. you had to have a store or place for your customers to go to compete. Today, many barriers to entry like this have been torn down like the Berlin Wall. It no longer matters where you are located or how much intellectual and financial capital you have. If you have the will and an internet connection. You can compete. Last year, popular online commerce platform Shopify announced the company supported over 375,000 merchants alone by the end of 2016. That’s just one “out of the box” provider that caters to the “limited entrepreneur.” Add in other services such as Volusion, Magento, Bigcommerce, Wix, WordPress, and proprietary sites and it is very likely your business (no matter how niche it may be) is competing with a plethora of other brands across the web for the same customer’s attention. However, it get’s even more difficult. Since it takes the average online patron numerous views across multiple channels before they click “buy now.” Getting your message in front of those customers as many times as possible becomes a key ingredient to your success.
Yes, the distribution channel has changed and, yes, marketing strategies have changed with it. However, don’t let modern agencies scare you with new terms such as bounce rate, page views, click-through rate (CTR), cost per thousand (CPM). It all boils down to one basic fundamental that hasn’t changed in marketing strategy.
Opportunities to See.
First and foremost. This is just my opinion on where the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) genre is headed. However, I will apply some scientific theory to my analysis. If anything more, than to just make me sound MUCH smarter than I am.
With that being said, I want to start off by presenting you with the basic Adoption Cycle. It looks something like this. Some may notice it is a bell curve with a normal distribution and standard deviation.
The adoption cycle concept runs through nearly every conceivable business offering and music consumption is no different. Credit of the current model can be traced back to Everett Rogers who organized consumers into various groups based on their personality traits. According to Rogers, these traits influence their adoption of a new offering in the marketplace. The fashion industry is a great example of how the adoption cycle works. In this example, Gucci will unveil a new line at Milan Fashion Week. Right out of the gate, Innovators will spar and pay top dollar to be the first to don the coveted threads as they are typically of a higher social class and thus inelastic to price. Shortly thereafter, the Early Adopters will seek out the new styles. Many of these individuals are of the opinion class, industry gatekeepers, who influence the longer running growth of the Early Majority, which follows to the apex of the Bell Curve.
At this point, another economic principle takes hold. With Innovators, Early Adopters, and the Early Majority showcasing their new wears, more potential consumers are influenced and demand increases. However, those left are more price sensitive, so they seek out alternatives, which are satisfied through bargain stores such as Macy’s and Target that appeal to that Late Majority. At this point, Gucci has lost their competitive advantage and the company will move onto the next great design, leaving the market to these lesser profitable sales channels. With that exit, price continues to drop allowing the Laggards to pick up knockoff items for bargain prices at lower-cost outlets. Then, the cycle starts again with the newest fashion.
One might think that the adoption cycle is entirely the brainchild of the master brand to get you to purchase new items every year. And in many ways. It is. In the technology market, this is called product obsolescence. However, the cycle is also a reflection on how different consumer personalities correlate to a particular product at various price points on the supply/demand curve and when analyzed from this perspective. One can more-easily predict when a product, fad, or trend is about to change or even disappear from the mainstream market altogether.
This analysis can be applied to the product of music as well. How many times has a friend told you about a new group that you have never even heard of? In this situation. That friend is an Innovator. Or have you ever listened to the radio or a curated playlist, heard a great new band, and then went and streamed their album. (That channel who lead you to the band is made up of Early Adopters). A year down the road, you go to their sold-out 600 seat show to join the Early Majority who have been influenced by those Innovators and Adopters. A year after that, your new favorite band is in-town playing before 1,500 Late Majority fans who have finally caught on. As the years follow, the band continues to pick up fans, but at a less rapid pace. They play to 1,850 the next year and 2,000 Laggards the year after that while a newer act fills the venue across the street on their second route through town.
This is also the case with entire genres of music. Remember Grunge? How about the Ska movement?
Which brings me to my contention regarding EDM.
Specifically in the U.S., we currently seem to be sitting at (or even slightly over) the apex of the bell-curve regarding the EDM adoption cycle. Evidence of this lies in where the genre has permeated society. It used to be that EDM was underground, held at house parties and hidden raves where Innovators caught artists such as Armin Van Burren, Daft Punk, and Afrojack on their rise. Music consumers looking for alternatives to typical live-music caught on, helping push these artists into larger clubs and thus acquiring a steady stream of Early Adopters. Eventually, DJ AM among others brought the genre to thousands with residencies in Vegas. Quickly pushing the genre up the Early Majority side of the curve. Today, EDM has found homes in most casinos, numerous festivals that dwarf anything live-music can match, and even terrestrial radio bringing the entire genre to the apex of the bell curve. Now, it is not uncommon to catch quality DJ’s in Nordstroms, restaurants, and even Whole Foods, which suggests the genre has not only peaked but actually may be moving into the Late Majority.
This does not mean that EDM is over. The bell curve representing this genre’s adoption is quite large compared to other musical choices such as, say, Texas Swing or even punk, which only lasted in the mainstream from about 74-84′. EDM’s start can be traced back to Jamaican dub in the 60’s with electronic music entering the mainstream in the 1980’s. This means that if we are in fact cresting today, in 2017, the genre has taken nearly 40 years to cover half of its adoption cycle. Even if its fall is half that time, we still have a lot of booty shaking electronic bass to go.
However, as always in entertainment, the question remains.
What is next?
