Sat, September 15, 2007
Let’s pretend I’m the Producer of a show and ‘Jeff’ is a travel agent who sells Broadway tickets. Like most shows do, I send out an email blast with a special discount offer of 2 for 1 tickets to a Broadway discount email list (i.e., Playbill, Theatermania, etc.). The next day, I get the following letter from ‘Jeff’:
My name is Jeff and I’m a travel agent who sells travel and theatre tickets to my hundreds of customers who trust me. To help sell your show, you give me access to tickets at a discount price so I can sell them to my customers. You know my customers – they fall into the ‘out-of-towners’ market with the cameras around their neck that make up about 50% of the Broadway audience.
I tell my customers that because they are buying through me, they are getting a competitive rate than if they were going to buy tickets from the box office. Now, I didn’t say ‘best rate’ – I said a competitive rate than what is publicly in the market. I get my folks to commit to see your show at an $85 ticket price point only to receive a flood of emails from my consumers saying they received a discount offer of 2 for 1 offer listed on a theater based website or email list.
In short, I look bad to my customers and the current way that we do business will have to change because there is no sense in me promoting your show to only get cut out of the picture at a later date.
If you were the Producer, what response would you give to give Jeff? Would love to hear the general consensus here.
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