By Jim McCarthy Feb 12, 2009 3 comments

Innovation, with Mustard and Relish

Ok, ok, it’s a press release and not a true news story, but read this anyway.  Here’s the key tidbit:

“Tickets.com and closed loop card technologies provider Givex conducted a successful pilot of their stored value technology, Uptix(TM), at the Giants 16th Annual FanFest at AT&T Park in San Francisco.”

Translating that out of Press Release-ian, it means that the San Francisco Giants tested a program whereby you can use the ticket you bought to get into an event to then get stuff once you go in.

For example, you might buy a $25 seat and have a hot dog and a beer as “stored value.”  The sticker price for all that could be $35, for example, but you pay just $30.

Another example is that you might get your ticket through a certain promotion at the regular face value, but if you take it to the souvenir stand, you get a pennant or a t-shirt.  All of that would be encoded on your ticket.

Actually, Russ Stanley of the Giants mentioned this briefly in his article in the Inaugural Edition, but it’s interesting to see this unfolding in real life.

(Do I even have to do the full disclosure thing that we (Goldstar) work with both the Giants and Tickets.com?  Ok, we do.  Generally assume we work with everyone, and you’ll have to put up with this disclosures less often.)

Again, in Press Release-ian, Tickets.com says this feature “provides myriad promotional and sponsorship opportunities including rewards tied to on-field events.”

Translating that into English, it means you could do a lot of different things with it.

Baseball has been pioneering this area, but it’s not by any means limited.  Why couldn’t an opera “store” intermission drinks on the ticket?  Or maybe Cirque Du Soleil could “store” a DVD of the performance on the ticket.

These ideas are good and possibly very useful, but mildly boring (plus the Giants beat us to it), and surely, we can do better than that.  How about “storing” access to an after-party or an online downloadable?

Here’s a crazy idea:  how about “storing” the possibility of being involved in the show?  In other words, if your bar code is the one identified as the winner, at some point during the performance, the performers will actually involve you in the show.  They’ll just be told in advance where the person will be who is to be included.

Ok, let’s try this.  Any other uses for ‘stored’ value?  I’ll give a couple tickets on Goldstar to the one I like best.  (Goldstar employees, you can give ideas too, but you can’t win the tickets.  Sorry about that.)  If I don’t get any suggestions, I will award the tickets to myself, which would be sad.  :)

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3 Comments

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