With Your Help, We Can Stop Pretendinitis

I talked a couple months ago about the terrible affliction Pretendinitis, in which somebody in the theatre business is gripped with the uncontrollable urge to pretend that shows are sold out that aren’t in fact sold out.

Let’s review: shows selling out is the exception to the rule, and it always has been.  And, as I discussed last week, this obsessive need to claim that your show is sold out may have serious negative consequences for the health of your show.

A Live 1.0 thinker would be focused not on audience, but on critics and the chatter of insiders, and that’s why they’d rather PRETEND to be sold out than to take steps to actually sell tickets to get actual patrons (especially new ones) into the theatre.

A Live 2.0 thinker would be focused on audience, building it, bringing this audience to the venue and giving the audience a delightful experience.  A Live 2.0 thinker would give critics their due, but realize that they have only so much influence on the audience, and a Live 2.0 thinker would ignore the chatterers altogether.  The chatterers are not the audience, and they never will be.

This article (be forewarned that this article contains several references to my company, Goldstar) in the L.A. Times today unfortunately exhibits the kind of thinking that, if followed, could severely damage the health and long-term viability of any organization that chooses to follow it.  Here’s a key tidbit:

“Hoping to boost attendance after a year of production cuts and emergency fundraising appeals, the financially stretched Geffen Playhouse has worked in a new marketing wrinkle: using the Web-based ticket-discounter Goldstar to sell season subscriptions at half price…The Geffen’s producing director, Gilbert Cates, and its new managing director, Ken Novice, don’t see the deep discount as a desperate measure for desperate times…he point, says Novice, wasn’t so much to bank a quick $25,000 in upfront revenue that the offer brought in as to ensure fuller houses for each preview performance. He said he hopes the Goldstar buyers will include many newcomers who’ll buzz about the plays at an early stage of the run, when good word of mouth has more time to spread and pay off at the box office. “

Cates and Novice are right on the money: using an offer like this to build audience makes a lot of sense, but notice how at every turn, they are having to argue against the article’s presumption that offering a discount  is an indicator of economic distress.  This presumption is built into the  article, and I think it’s an important sign of a dangerous and unproductive mindset.

Roughly, that mindset goes like this:

1.  Everything sells out, and if you’re discounting, you didn’t sell out, and since everything else sells out, you must be in trouble.

To which I reply, “In some other world, perhaps everything sells out, but under the yellow sun, sell outs are the exception, not the rule.  Maybe you imagine some time in the past where this wasn’t the case, but in reality, I’d bet it’s a combination of your rose-colored memories and the fact that hiding the truth was much easier back then.”

2.  If you’re not sold out, it’s better to accept it with dignity than do something different (especially with prices) to try to change that situation.

To which I reply, “Why? I thought the point was to get more people in to see the show and secure more financial resources so your institution could further its mission.  Taking your lumps and leaving seats unsold is a great way to guarantee less net revenue for the organization and fewer people seeing the show.  That’s known as a lose-lose.”

3.  If you’re discounting, you must be desperate.

To which I reply, “Or maybe you just understand math.  If you’re managing Revenue Per Seat the way you should be, discounts have an almost magical effect on your bottom line.  In fact, if you’re really managing RPS, not discounting when it’s called for is negligence that should get you fired.”

At its worst, Pretendinitis is about ego, resume-building and a pointless need to make oneself feel superior to others.  At its best, it’s uninformed and outmoded.

In other words, an organization that pretends to sell out is primarily fooling only itself.  Any consumer can (and does) take a look in the secondary market on sites like Stubhub to get the real story on your sales.

If you, as an industry observer, fall for it, you’re part of the problem.  You’re creating a false feedback loop that punishes innovation and the spirit of continuous improvement and rewards, well, lying.

Because discounting is a tool that can be applied for significant strategic advantage on the part of venues of all kinds.  It takes an expiring asset (a seat for a given show on a given night) and turns it into both revenue and marketing reach if it’s done right.  It can be used as a sampling technique or a frequency builder, and, depending on where the discount is offered, can be a way to have entirely new groups of good customers find their way into your building.

But the saddest part of all about Pretendinitis is that its victims never get these benefits.  They just sit in their partially empty buildings, waiting for someone to write something nice about them in the newspaper.

(By the way, when you visit the link above in the LA Times story, don’t miss the chance to take advantage of the offer for 50% off your subscription to the LA Times at the bottom of the page.  No takers? Hmmm.)