Ask Yourself

The Economy "This too shall Pass"

I bought a subscription to the New York Times for my wife’s Birthday only to discover that I am a NYT junkie. If you read the past few Sunday Times perhaps you are like me and getting nervous that the economy is coming to an end and that soon we will be buying our clothing with stalks of corn instead of cash. I feel like I should be taking every penny I find in the streets of Inwood and putting it under my overstuffed mattress incase the price of my Barilla Pasta skyrockets through the roof due to some natural disaster or the price of the gas.

Week after week and article after article there is mention of how people are staying  at home. This pattern in the news leads me to the point out how the trends of gas prices and the economy bear a toll on us theatre folk.  According to a pole taken By Access America take a look at the following statistics…

--

Americans traveling for vacation this year:

33% of Americans are taking a vacation this year
65% of Americans are not planning on a vacation this year
2% Don’t know if they are taking a vacation

Out of those 33% who ARE planning a vacation:

48% will scale back their trip
52% won’t scale back their trip

--

Will gas prices prevent people from traveling to our shows from distances far away? If it does, will it keep the locals closer looking for something to do? How do we grab the limited people who are traveling and hook the locals looking to stay within their city boundaries?

For one thing, I will be looking to partner up with local businesses to make an “evening out”. Discounted prices to restaurants and attractions while still being able to see quality entertainment at the end of their trip. Make it easy for the audience member to come to our show. Make the night a mini-vacation.

We have the choice to look at our economic crunch (Thanks George) as an opportunity to get our neighbors to have dinner with us and our out of town guests to run home and tell everyone what they missed out on. Randy Buck, the COO of Troika once said to me, “This too will pass….”, and it will. So while we are in this financial freak out, lets take advantage of the relationships we can build with our audiences and make sure they bring their friends after we get back up on our feet.

The Man Behind Remarkable

Interested in the current trends in marketing ?

Meet the man and his blog which branded the term "Remarkable"... Seriously - Type the word "remarkable" into Google.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

HAVE YOU HUGGED A PRODUCER LATELY ?

.....And Ladies and Gentlemen we are back from our commercial break! I have neglected my musing on the TrendErtainment Blog, but I assure you I am not gone.

Things became a whirlwind over the past two weeks. Recently I have been bestowed the honor of becoming the General Manager for a multi-venue new show. (Stay tuned, more on what show in a future entry – I will give you a hint, a past entry on TrendErtainment got me the position.)

Now that my Jewish guilt is starting to pass that I have not said hello to you all in a while, I think I am ready to more on….

So….

Amid the multiple meetings and budget sessions over the past two weeks one thing keeps coming to my mind, “Numbers Don’t Lie”.

My wife, an avid Pistons Basketball fan always curses at the TV screen and yells “The Ball Don’t Lie!”, whenever she disagrees with the ref. The same thing is true about Producing Entertainment. The numbers just don’t lie. You can crunch them, squeeze them, pounce on them, stretch them to the limit, but facts are facts. You can entertain audiences until the laughter breaks their gut, but if you are answering to a bank account, chances are you have to say “No” to your creative team and managers more often than you would like.

As a Manager, Producer, Investor, you look at what is, and what can be, and determine what will be. Regardless to if you are working with a not-for-profit or a good ol’ LLC, there are limits.

Here is a formula from a recent projection document I created:

=IF(L58<0,0,(L58*$C$62))

For those of you who don’t understand excel, what that crazy formula above means is that by week 25 field L58 better be greater than 0, and C62 better be a number above 12. If they are the favorable numbers I wish they to be, we get to have a nice cast party, if they are not, then a bunch of people have to answer to unemployment, a bunch of investors will get indigestion, and I may very well have done my job incorrectly.

Having company managed and associate produced,  I have seen time and time again the actors and creative teams often not understand what the producer is trying to do. “Why are they trying to sabotage their production?”, they ask me. “why don’t they give just a little BIT more?”. In case you are not a member of management, please let me assure you that a little BIT of this and that times 7 performances and a cast of 23 adds up to be a whole lot more than you would ever imagine to the financial health of a company.

Next time you have a nasty thought about the one who authorizes the payroll, go up to them with understanding open arms and say “The numbers don’t lie….They just don’t” . Embrace your producer, hug them…