By Jim McCarthy Feb 12, 2009 0 comments

Anti-Valentine’s Day: A Live 2.0 Phenomenon

Last year, Forbes magazine wrote a piece about the trend in Valentine Day-themed events away from your traditional pink hearts and cuddling with your date.

Instead, the last few years have seen a trend toward non-traditional or even Anti-Valentine’s Day events.  Here’s a key tidbit:

“Launching on Valentine’s Day wasn’t random for us,” says [Jim] McCarthy [CEO of Goldstar]. “People want to go out and do something. [And] more and more people have a sense of humor about not being in a relationship. That’s why so many of these events cater to people who say, ‘Hey, I’m having fun anyway.’”

(Ha, ha, very funny.  I’m the one they quoted.  I just couldn’t resist.)

Anyway, there were some interesting stats in the article, including one that we (at Goldstar) reported, where in just six years, we went from almost completely having traditional Valentine’s Days events on our site to having just 60%.  In other words, fully 40% were non-traditional events, either designed for singles or for those with an active dislike of Valentine’s Day.

A great example of this is the Boston Flirt Fest, with drinks, snacks, dancing, a best and worst pick-up line contest, and a biggest flirt contest.

Now, I am not going to try to sell you stock in the non-traditional Valentine’s event.  Obviously, it’s an alternative taste, for just one night a year.

But I will use it to point out how the whole Live 2.0 revolution makes it possible to stage, brand and market an event of strong appeal and decent quality in a way that would have been extremely difficult before.  The overhead of marketing and producing an event like this once a year before the innovation in the live entertainment business over the last few years would have made it impossible to do without taking a massive loss.

Now, though, these events can exist and even thrive, if only on a once a year scale.

Isn’t that really what we want?  A robust ecosystem of live entertainment.  Some shows or organizations will be bigger and more permanent; some will not.  All of it makes our industry better because it communicates to the world of entertainment buyers that there’s a world of rich content and that they’re missing out by not being there.

Which might mean they pay attention more the rest of the time.

(By the way, if you’ve been to Flirt Fest in Boston or another of these events, let me know how it was!)

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